Youth Bulge and Conflict

Ganie, Mohd Tahir

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-77954-2_113

Cited by 1 publication

(2 citation statements)

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“…Secondly, however, while existing literature strongly associates rising unemployment within an educated youth bulge with the growing propensity of involvement of affected young people in various politically destabilizing acts due to grievance (Alfy, 2016; Ganie, 2020; Ikelegbe, 2020; Weber, 2019), the findings of this study depart quite significantly from this well-founded expectation. The evidence presented in this paper shows that on the contrary, and particularly within democracies, rising unemployment among highly educated youth tends to reduce their engagement even in peaceful demonstrations.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 85%

“…The proportion of young people in the adult population of a country is a subject with long tradition of interest within the literature on political violence. Young people have been described as the protagonists in politically destabilizing acts such as ethnic conflicts, civil wars, and riots (Ganie, 2020; Huntington, 1996). Countries faced with youth bulge, defined as a disproportionately large number of young people within the adult population (Farzanegan & Witthuhn, 2017), have also been labeled as particularly prone to political instability and various forms of armed conflicts (Urdal, 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Youth Cohort Size, Structural Socioeconomic Conditions, and Youth Protest Behavior in Democratic Societies (1995–2014)

Nkansah

2022

Sage Open

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Conventional literature associates large youth cohort size (YCS) with increased risk of political violence in countries with such demographic profiles. Key questions which remain unanswered, however, are whether YCS is also associated with young people’s proclivities toward more peaceful forms of protests, and whether structural socioeconomic conditions influence such a relationship? Using multilevel binary logistic regression techniques on pooled individual level data for 51 democratic countries purposively sampled from World Values Survey Waves 3 to 6, and country level data from World Bank, and UN Population Division, I show that YCS demonstrates a positive relationship with young people’s participation in peaceful demonstrations. This relationship is, however, moderated by structural factors such as education and unemployment, which end up reducing young people’s likelihood of participation. I argue that resource limitation, as predicted by the Civic Voluntarism Model, better explains the relationship between YCS and individual youth protest behavior in democratic societies, more than socioeconomic grievance, as suggested by grievance theory. An important implication of this finding is that participation in elite-challenging behaviors such as peaceful protests, can be expected to be more common among young people in affluent democratic societies, than their peers elsewhere in the democratic world.

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