Growing into politics? The development of adolescents’ views on democracy over time.

Adolescence is often seen as the stage of life in which young people become better acquainted with and more interested in politics, and in which they develop more complex views on democratic decision-making. However, because of a lack of longitudinal studies we are unaware of the ways adolescents develop their views on decision-making. In the present study forty Dutch adolescents were interviewed in their second year of secondary education and two years later. The results show that although, with age, the interviewees become more familiar with politics, their initial more complex views regarding democratic decision-making in everyday situations become attuned to their more one-dimensional perception of the workings of formal democracy. Instead of growing into politics, their perception of the functioning of parliamentary democracy is colonizing their preferences towards decision-making.