Fridays for Future's Disruptive Potential: An Inconvenient Youth Between Moderate and Radical Ideas

Marquardt, Jens U.

doi:10.3389/fcomm.2020.00048

Cited by 103 publications

(56 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…Within the FFF movement, previous studies suggest competing ideas regarding democracy and political participation. In Germany, the movement has brought climate change to the forefront of the political agenda without challenging the underlying rationales behind climate actions nor contesting the established climate change measures, thus working closely linked to the institutionalized politics, despite the existence of more radical subgroups in the movement (Marquardt, 2020). In Britain, on the other hand, the young activists state to be committed to reaching significant change in the power structures of society through non-violent direct action, as their demands do not operate within the borders of existing systems (Pickard et al, 2020).…”

Section: Literature Review: Youth Political Participation and Implications For Democracymentioning

confidence: 99%

Young Rebels Who Do Not Want a Revolution: The Non-participatory Preferences of Fridays for Future Activists in Finland

Huttunen

2021

Front. Polit. Sci.

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Young people’s lack of participation in elections has been taken as a sign that the young are wary of representative democracy and reject traditional authorities. Instead of election participation, it is expected that the young want more possibilities for direct involvement in political decision-making. Fridays for Future (FFF) is a global, youth-led climate movement that has been able to mobilize millions of young people around the world into political action (de Moor et al., 2020; Wahlström et al., 2019) in times when youth participation is generally declining, especially in traditional forms of political participation. While many have taken this as evidence that young people dismiss representative democracy in favor of a more participatory democracy, in-depth studies of their motivations are still lacking. This article helps fill this lacuna by providing a case study on Finnish FFF participants. Through semi-structured interviews and theory-guided content analysis with 15- to 20-year-old climate activists, the Finnish FFF participants’ attitudes toward political participation are examined. The data consists of 11 one-on-one in-depth theme interviews with young people, who participated in the FFF movement by attending at least one protest in Finland in 2019. The interviews focused on the following themes: motivation for participation in the FFF movement, interviewee’s background, and the participant’s ideas regarding politics, democracy, and political participation. The interviews were combined with material from various news sources to contextualize the information in the analysis phase. Based on the empirical evidence, I argue that although these young citizens have become politically active in a climate protest movement, it does not necessarily mean that they want major reforms to the representative democracy toward a more participatory system. Instead of more participatory possibilities, the Finnish climate activists want a better-functioning representative system with politicians who listen to their demands.

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Section: Literature Review: Youth Political Participation and Implications For Democracymentioning

confidence: 99%

Young Rebels Who Do Not Want a Revolution: The Non-participatory Preferences of Fridays for Future Activists in Finland

Huttunen

2021

Front. Polit. Sci.

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“…Social movements can give individually disempowered people a strong voice if they act collectively (Kashwan 2016;Otto et al 2020b). The example of the Fridays for Future youth climate protests has demonstrated collective agency among individuals -many of whom do not even have voting rights -with the movement becoming widely established across Europe, Africa, South America and Asia (Marquardt 2020).…”

Section: Citizen Participationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bridging the gap – implications of current COVID-19 fiscal rescue and recovery measures

Höhne

Hans

Olhoff

2021

Emissions Gap Report 2020

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The designations employed and the presentation of the material in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the United Nations Environment Programme concerning the legal status of any country, territory or city or its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. For general guidance on matters relating to the use of maps in publications please go to

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“…Thunberg, nevertheless, criticized the EU's position as a "surrender" because it failed to keep up with the 1.5 degree target of the Paris Agreement (BBC 2020). Similar to the student protests of the 1960s which called for democratizing Western societies, the current youth movement calling for more radical climate policies might have a chance to actually make an impact (Marquardt 2020). Fridays for Future is an indicator that climate change has become politicized in the sense that conflicts in this policy field are becoming more intense and visible (Schattschneider 1960;Hutter and Grande 2014).…”

Section: Transforming Carbon Democracies Through Green Deals?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate Change Politics in Canada and the EU—from Carbon Democracy to a Green Deal?

Lederer

2021

CJERS

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The idea of a green deal transforming industrialized societies’ climate policies in a sustainable manner has become highly popular in various countries. The study takes up this notion focusing on climate policy initiatives in Canada and the EU, raising three interrelated issues: (i) on a descriptive level, the study asks where we stand and what has so far been achieved regarding climate policy; (ii) analytically, the study provides a theoretical explanation of why progress has been slow in the EU and hardly visible in Canada, making use of the concept of carbon democracy; (iii) on a prescriptive level, the study explores what will be needed to make a green deal successful, arguing that one has to accept that a green deal is a deeply political project that will create winners and losers and that not all losers can be compensated under the label of a “just transition”. The argument advanced is that the EU and Canada represent a form of carbon democracy in which the extensive use of carbon laid the foundation for establishing democratic institutions and strongly shaped them. The paper shows that the extensive influence of carbon-related activities not only empowers specific non-state agents but is rather deeply enmeshed in the societal and political genome of both regions’ polities. The claim that follows is that climate politics in Canada and the EU will have to be deeply transformative and therefore disruptive in order to be successful.

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Fridays for Future's Disruptive Potential: An Inconvenient Youth Between Moderate and Radical Ideas

Cited by 103 publications

References 47 publications

Young Rebels Who Do Not Want a Revolution: The Non-participatory Preferences of Fridays for Future Activists in Finland

Young Rebels Who Do Not Want a Revolution: The Non-participatory Preferences of Fridays for Future Activists in Finland

Bridging the gap – implications of current COVID-19 fiscal rescue and recovery measures

Climate Change Politics in Canada and the EU—from Carbon Democracy to a Green Deal?

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