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Introduction
Drawing on the current debate on political participation, civic engagement and democracy, the aim of this paper is to suggest a new way of thinking about 'latent' forms of political participation among young citizens. We argue that the literature contains radically different notions of political passivity among adolescents; some scholars regard passivity as very harmful, while others tend to be more at ease with it. As we demonstrate, these differences are based on very different approaches, encompassing normative as well as empirical considerations. In order to expand the existing literature, we introduce a conceptual framework that considers three different varieties of political passivity. As a first step, we identify the need for looking beyond the simplistic active/passive distinction, in order to understand properly contemporary democracies. In a second step, we demonstrate empirically that what is sometimes dismissed as 'passivity' (i.e. the lack of manifest activity) actually consists of distinctly different orientations. Drawing on unique data on Swedish adolescents, we argue that political passivity is not a unidimensional phenomenon; rather, it encompasses unengaged as well as disillusioned young citizens, and also citizens who only appear passive, and in reality are prepared for political action, should circumstances warrant. Such 'standby' citizens are those who stay alert, keep themselves informed about politics by bringing up political issues in everyday life contexts, and are willing and able to participate if needed. Most previous research has failed to distinguish these citizens from unengaged citizens, since both standbyers and unengaged citizens appear, on the surface, to be passive. In this paper, we argue that these seemingly 'passive' standby citizens may in fact be an asset to democracy, due to their particular combination of political interest, trust, and inclination to participate. In this way, the paper contributes to the conceptual development concerning political behavior among adolescents, and also to the empirical analysis of the conditions for citizen participation in contemporary democracies.
The paper breaks down into five sections. In the first, we briefly review previous research. Second, we introduce a conceptual discussion of different forms of political orientations, covering active citizenship alongside three types of 'passive' citizenship. The third section covers method, data, and also a cluster analysis [multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA)]. The fourth...