Towards All Voices, from All Levels and in Their Own Ways? A Discussion of the Youth Quota Proposal as an Incremental Policy Innovation for Sustainability

Abstract

If only a minority in national parliaments, provincial parliaments and town hall assemblies is below 30 years of age, do we have to worry about justice between generations and the long-term sustainability of the political system? Do we need an instrument such as the youth quota to improve the long-term justice of the parliamentary system? This chapter analyzes the youth quota proposal as a putative incremental policy innovation that seeks to improve the participation of young citizens via a quota that would increase youth access to the parliamentary system. The analysis, which conceptually draws on the capabilities approach and empirically on the experience with a youth campaign and a youth parliament, suggests that a youth quota could play a moderate role for promoting justice between generations—but only if it is carefully linked to political parties and a multi-level political system and if it is designed with sensitivity to the cultural conception of youth and the conflict this entails between participation and education. Moreover, the quota has to be integrated into a more general approach that does justice to distant generations in time and especially in space, or else the normative impetus will get lost due to incoherence.

Conclusion

As I asked at the beginning of this chapter, if youth participation rates in formal politics are disproportionally low, should we be concerned? And if yes, would a youth quote proposal improve matters?

There are constitutive and instrumental reasons to be concerned about disproportionally low levels of youth participation in the context of overlapping justice. A lack of equal opportunity to participate endangers basic justice and it can affect other central capabilities, such as education and health, due to a limited or distorted expression of youth experiences in decision-making. In this respect, the youth quota prima facie addresses an important sustainability issue where youth participation is diminished or absent.

A closer look suggests two important qualifications as far as sustainability is concerned. First of all, on the general level of design choices, the constituency of the quota leads beyond the youth of country X (here assumed to be an affluent, “developed” country) to the question of proxy-representation of young generations in the future as well as of young generations in other countries—an important point with a view to the current global population dynamics. Assuming central human capabilities as a standard of intergenerational and intragenerational justice, these other youth groups clearly also deserve attention. We need to think of the youth quota proposal on a continuum from incremental to disruptive policy innovations for sustainability . The consideration of young generations across space and time requires ideas concerning proxy representation or other means (such as possibly future chambers), and puts into question the legitimacy of a quota defined via citizenship. Rather than defining the quota via an age-subgroup of citizens, we would somehow first have to define the quota as an age-subgroup of the world population or similar. In both cases, the quota therefore leads to more general sustainability design questions and fundamental matters of global and intergenerational justice. A youth quota for sustainability is ultimately only convincing if it is contextualized vis à vis these larger matters.

Second, even on the level of the youth quota as an incremental policy innovation in a “developed” country, design questions remain. Drawing on the experience with a river parliament , I have highlighted three issues: (a) the relation to political parties , (b) the levels of politics and (c) communication in politics. A quota designed to effectively promote youth participation would need to consider supporting the cross-benching possibilities of youth parliamentarians from within their political parties, address the youth quota not only as an exclusive issue of national parliaments but also on the regional and local levels, and finally, seriously investigate the possibilities of dealing with the tension between youth participation and education. Both on the level of life-plan possibilities for young people (i.e. the tension between participation and education) and on the level of symbolic recognition of youth experience beyond the likely perception of lack of competence and knowledge, ways would have to be found to foster participation of equals, including the ways in which such communication happens. A preparatory step in this direction could be the lowering of the voting age , which as the youth election example above suggests, may promote sustainability related choices in the electorate. All these design questions show just how many further questions would accompany a quota that promotes real freedom to participate and not only formal inclusion.

If these design questions could be satisfactorily dealt with, the youth quota would be a contribution to sustainability primarily due to its inclusion of youth in overlapping justice and indirectly due to the likely instrumental importance of youth inclusion for promoting sustainability issues. However, even in this favourable case much depends on how this instrument is contextualized in regards to the consideration of not only youth here and now but also elsewhere in the future and especially in less affluent countries, where the majority of young people live and where they are the majority.