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Our study is focused on young people because, in our opinion this category is more vulnerable than other age categories regarding the process of values assimilation. Are the young people in Romania more or less active than the other age categories? Which is the rate of their civic and political participation? Do they use the same opportunities to express their attitudes and values as other people do? Which are the motivating factors for political participation? We try to answer all these questions using primary and secondary data. The primary data was obtained through in-depth interviews and public opinion surveys. We also used secondary data from different national public opinion surveys. The qualitative and quantitative analysis revealed some interesting aspects. Young people in Romania are not sufficiently motivated for political participation. They are strongly indifferent regarding politics. Their apathy is based on too many disappointments. They are disappointed by political actors and the lack of efficacity of public policies. But, of course, this is not the only reason for political absence as we try to identify other reasons.
Keywords: Young people, Political participation, Civic involvement, Values, Romania.
INTRODUCTION: SOCIAL CHANGE IN ROMANIA AFTER 1989. YOUNG PEOPLE AND THE POLITICAL FIELD
Political participation and the elections are some of the main topics, appearing with a relatively high frequency in sociological and political literature. Studies focusing on political participation are numerous and seems to have their roots in the United States especially after the second world war. Either we are talking about Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet (1944), Almond and Verba (1963) or more recently - Putnam, Leonardi and Nanetti (1993) or Rose, Mishler and Haerpfer (1998), there are a lot of situations in which scientific interest has been centred on attitudes directly or indirectly, in particular on the election behavior.
If we are talking about electoral participation strictly then is important to insist over the unchanging decline noticed in Romania after the fall of communism. Soon after the December 1989, the public participation, especially perceived as a political participation, deployed among other aspects in a very large number of parties that emerged, many of them, with a short life existence.
The decline is obvious if we study the levels of participation on recent years elections which drop...