Non-institutionalised Participation outside Organisations

Abstract

The 1974 Political Action Study, from which the above quotation is taken, was the first detailed examination of what was then called ‘unconventional’ political participation. Protests were considered to be a domain of the young and associated with the energy and ‘wildness’ of younger people. In other words, the authors implicitly concluded that protest was something that older people were less likely to engage in because they had fewer such characteristics.

Young people enjoy the physical vigor, the freedom from day-to-day responsibilities of career and family, and have the time to participate in the pursuit of the energetic kinds of political activity implied by high protest potential. Protest potential is therefore held to be primarily an outcome of the joie de vivre of youth itself.

(Emphasis in the original Barnes et al. 1979: 101)