Beyond ‘Left’ and ‘Right’? The Role of Culture and Context in Young People’s Understanding of Ideology

Explaining youth radicalism as a positioning of the self at opposite extremes

“…Scholars have paid far less attention to the political attitudes of young people. Some consider the latter as not well equipped to make informed political decisions (Everett, 2013), and we hardly know what young people mean when they make reference to the 'left' or the 'right' (Mieriņa, 2018). Political orientation, in relation to the general population, has been considered important for the sustainability of representative democracy (Gomez et al, 2016;Rooduijn et al, 2017;Visser et al, 2014).…”

“…We acknowledge that it is difficult to define the concept of being 'radical', since it mostly depends on the equally problematic notion of its point of reference -being 'moderate'. Both concepts are also context-dependent, as a person, attitudes, or an action that is radical in comparison to a person, attitudes, or action that is moderate at one time or in one space, might not be radical or moderate in another period or space (Beck, 2015;Mieriņa, 2018). At the same time, it is important to remember that those who label people decide who is moderate and who is radical depending on his or her values, political position, moral scope and the nature of his or her relationship with radical and moderate people.…”

“…Despite emerging studies in youth political attitudes (Mieriņa, 2018;Mitrea et al, 2020), we still have very limited knowledge of young people holding radical political attitudes. While the overall general research question driving this article is, who are these young 'radicals', we specifically ask two main questions: first, how do young 'radicals' differ from those young people who place themselves anywhere else than at the edges of the scales?…”

“…Second, in contrast to the uniform understanding of radicals often conveyed in the literature, we seek to answer, what are the differences between the young 'radicals' at both ends of the scales? Contrary to a recent study on a similar topic (Mieriņa, 2018), which investigated the meaning of left and right for young people, we focus on factors that have been used to explain why people use violent repertoires of action (social background, gender, political values, and prior experience in radical forms of political activism), and investigate whether these also hold for explaining the radical attitudes among young people.…”