do young people want to take part in society? - a comparative studies between japan and sweden

Do young people want to take part in society?

A comparative studies between Japan and Sweden

Assignment for the course International and Comparative Education

Tatsuhei Morozumi

(November, 2014)

InstituteofInternationalEducation

DepartmentofEducation

1. Table of Contents 2. Introduction ............................................................................. 3

Global concern on youth participation and citizenship education ........ 3 3. Aim and Objectives of the Study ............................................. 5 4. Method ..................................................................................... 6 Levels of comparison ............................................................................ 6 Source of the data .................................................................................. 7

5. Limitations of the Study .......................................................... 9 Limitation of the purpose ................................................................. 9 Limitation of the demography and socio-political systems .............. 9

Commonalities between Japan and Sweden ....................................... 11 Youth policy and participation in Japan and Sweden ..................... 11 Educational achievement in Japan and Sweden ............................. 12

Comparative studies between Japan and Sweden ............................... 12 6. Key concepts .......................................................................... 14

In the Context of Children’s Rights ................................................ 14 What is youth “participation”? ....................................................... 15 The degree of the participation ....................................................... 17

6 Presentation of the results ....................................................... 19 Citizen participation ............................................................................ 19

Social environment: Is society prepared enough for young people’s citizen participation? ...................................................................... 19 Do young people wants to participate to society? .......................... 21 Freedom of choice and control over own life ................................. 24

Political participation .......................................................................... 26 Young people’s turn out in national election .................................. 26 Membership of political parties ...................................................... 29 Attending demonstrations and signing a petition ........................... 30

7. Findings & Conclusion .......................................................... 32 Further studies ................................................................................ 33

8. Reference list ......................................................................... 34 9. Appendix ............................................................................... 37

3

2. Introduction Global concern on youth participation and citizenship education Today, the growing concern regarding young people is increas-ingly becoming significant. There are approximately, 1.6 billion young people aged between 12 and 24 (United Nations, 2014). That is to say, half of the world population is under 25 (CSIS, 2014). However, recent massive globalization and the changes of societal environment have cast a shadow on the youth generation at the same time.

A White Paper on Youth published by Commission of the Euro-pean Communities pointed out the socio-economic transition sur-rounding young people (“EC White paper,” 2001). The report point out, based on the post-industrialization within the economi-cally developed countries, demography has shifted to aging society with low birth rate and increased longevity, which may partly cause the financial pressure on social welfare systems. Along with the economical changes highlighted by the report, following as-pects of societal and cultural changes among youths are mentioned as common issues: the period of youth lasting longer, liner paths though life and personal pathways becoming more individualized instead of traditional collective models such as family, marriage and career plans. Hence, proper understanding of the transitional period of youths is needed in order to form and provide adequate policy and avoids social-exclusion on young people. An unprece-dented consultation exercise gathered 450 young delegates in Paris in October 2000 under the French Presidency, by the European Commission (2001) with the purpose of listening to young peo-ple’s voices by providing an opportunity to participate in the poli-cy-decision making. The consultation concluded 4 different focal points: - Active citizenship for young people - Expanding and recognizing areas of experimentation - Developing autonomy among young people - For a European Union as the champion of values

4

Especially, as it was exercised in the process of the consultation,

the European Commission prioritized young people’s participation as first and foremost priority theme (2001). This decision affects many of the member states improving their own national youth policy with new perspectives listed above. In England, the citizen-ship education was introduced into the National Curriculum in 2002 as a compulsory subject for students from 11 to 16 years old. The installation was suggested by the Citizenship Advisory Coun-cil (CAG) founded 1997, chaired by Professor Bernard Crick (Keating, Kerr, Benton, Mundy, & Lopes, 2010). The reasons for the establishment of the CAG are the growing concern about less youth participation in civil and political life represented by the decreased voting rate among the young generations (Keating et al., 2010). This whole backgrounds indicate close-relation between citizenship education and political participation as well as growing concerns on youth participation and citizenship education.

5

3. Aim and Objectives of the Study The course paper highlights the young people’s status regarding

the civil and political participation in Japan and Sweden and com-pare the differences of its character. Firstly, several common grounds Japan and Sweden encompass are presented by focusing on development of youth policy and educational achievements. Second of all, definition of the youth participation is explored by quoting literatures and policy documents. Subsequently, the paper describes the numbers and figures about youth civil and political participation in Japan and Sweden. This study may contribute to build the background prior to the research, which will focus on analysis on youth policy in Sweden and Japan.

6

4. Methodology Levels of comparison Bray and Thomas provide a useful framework for international

comparative education which enables to select the level and type of the comparison (Bray, Adamson, & Mazon, 2007). Table 1 shows how this paper chose the level of comparison. At geograph-ical location, adopted “Countries” are Japan and Sweden. At the non-locational demographic group, “Age groups” is selected due to the focus of the comparison is for not only pupils at schools but also including a more wider range of children and young people. Because the age groups of young people differ in Japan and Swe-den according to the policy and survey, specific age is not specified here. At the aspects of education and of society level, “Other as-pects” is employed, which, in this paper will be the situation of young people’s civic and political participation. Table 1

Geographical location Countries: Japan and Swe-den

Non-locational demographic group Age groups Aspects of education and of society Other aspects

Levels of comparison Source: Adapted from Bray et al. 2007

7

Source of the data

Global Youth Wellbeing Index

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and International Youth Foundation (IYF) have published a Global Youth Wellbeing Index in 2014, which collects and concatenates the youth-related data to illuminate and compare the situation of young people globally. The first section of the presentation of the results references this index and focus on the domain of the citizen participation.

A White Paper on Children and Youth (Japan)

The white paper is a government report, which has long tradi-tion of investigating the children and young people’s situation in Japan. Newly published paper introduced an international inquiry that compare the consciousness of young people in different coun-tries; Japan, South Korea, U.S, U.K, Germany, France and Swe-den. This investigation succeeds the World Youth Survey, which is conducted from 1972 in every 5 years by the Cabinet Office (Ja-pan). The discreet inquiry have implemented in 6 domains; views on life, nation and society, community and volunteer, occupation, school and family. The objectives of the age of the young people are 13 to 29 years and it was implemented via Internet survey. The number of the respondents in covered countries was between the rages of the 1006 to 1175. This source of data will target on the theme as follows: - Young people who have willingness to be involved in social

issue - Young people who feel they can change the society

World Value Survey

Another source of data set concerning young people’s participa-tion is acquired from World Value Survey (Hereinafter: WVS).

8

WVS is an international project conducted by social scientist in order to investigate the people’s value and beliefs and how it changes over the decades and socio-political impact they encom-pass. Almost 100 countries have partaken in the research since 1981. The research is conducted every 5 year and each of the re-search periods is called “Wave”.

This section quotes the data from the 6th wave (from 2010-2014), which only extracts the data for Japan and Sweden broken down by age.

Inquiries/values below are selected based on the paper’s recog-nition on the participation discussed former chapter and data avail-ability. - V29. - Active/Inactive membership: Political party - V85. - Political action: Signing a petition - V87. - Political action: Attending peaceful demonstrations - V55. - How much freedom of choice and control over own

life

9

5. Limitations of the Study Limitation of the purpose

As stated at the earlier chapter, the paper aims at profiling the

young people’s status regarding with civil and political participa-tion in Japan and Sweden. Though the paper will briefly touch upon development of the youth policy in the two countries, policy analysis and causes analysis are not dealt with in the study.

Limitation of the demography and socio-political systems

The international comparison tends to “gross over the fact that national boundaries are entirely arbitrary, and that forces of geog-raphy, history and politics happen to created unit of greatly differ-ing size and content”(Bray et al., 2007). Thus, it is worth to men-tion the limitation of the demography and social political systems in the two countries.

Albeit both countries are characterized as objects of the compar-isons and commonalities are pointed out in this paper, there are more dissimilar aspects within the two countries. First of all, the scale of population; Japan’s population is more than 10 times larger than that of Sweden. Indigenous population. This huge de-mographic dissimilarity may affect the development and imple-mentation of the youth and educational policies as well as young people’s sense of feeling. Furthermore, the difference of social and welfare policy implementation should be pointed out. Saito and Yamai describes decentralization played a great role on effective implementation of welfare service in Sweden, which was intro-duced and developed since 1960 (Saitō & Yamanoi, 1994). The authors also suggested the importance of decentralization of Japa-nese governance, which implies the distinction between Swedish and Japanese policy implementation systems that may affect policy distributions and citizen involvement to the communities. Regard-ing civil participation of politics, the type of government legisla-ture have influence on the behavior of civics. A study shows that several variables that affect voter turnout are electoral systems and unicameralism (Blais, 2006). In Japan, members of the national

10

bicameral parliament are elected under the single-member constit-uency systems (lower house) and under the local constituency sys-tem (upper house) combining with the proportional representation systems for each house (IPU, 2014a). On the other hand, Sweden employs party-list proportional representation systems under the unicameral parliament (IPU, 2014b). Both countries encompass the variable that affects the voting behaviors of citizens.

11

Commonalities between Japan and Sweden

To make comparative study being meaningful, it is important to display the commonalities to see their difference notable (Bray et al., 2007).

Youth policy and participation in Japan and Sweden

On the basis of the European youth policy, Sweden has formed and developed its national youth policy. The Youth law, so-called, Power to decide- right to welfare (Makt att bestämma - rätt till välfärd) was enacted in 2004. Its aim is to strengthen the young people’s access to the substantial influence to the society and as-suring the access to the wellbeing. It indicates Swedish youth poli-cy puts emphasis on the involvement of young people into the so-ciety in accordance with European perspective.

Across the continent even in Japan, the same social dynamic changes have been perceived. Around the end of the 1970s in Western nations, youth unemployment had been regarded as one of the biggest issue affecting young people, which, however, was not recognized as a matter of concern of youth unemployment issue until the end of the 90s in Japan (Miyamoto, 2005a). As “freeters” has began to be recognized by social survey around the end of the 90s, later on they are described as a “NEETs” in 2000s which drew more attention of discussion over the young people (Yajima & Mimizuka, 2001). Since then, arguments over young people in Japan have progressed rapidly with a number of researches on youth issue and the government taking measures to counter social-ly excluded young people.

In 2010, the Cabinet Office issued a Vision for Children and Young People followed by the enforcement of the 2009 Act on the Promotion of Development and Support for Children and Young People(“VisionforChildrenandYoungPeople,”2010). The vision is discussed as epoch-making ambition due to the fact that it in-cludes the provision: education of young people’s social participa-tion, promotion of citizenship education and ensuring the opportu-nities for children and youth to express their views and opinions based on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Hereinafter: UNCRC).

12

While Swedish youth policy underline the actual “influence” of young people and Japan stresses the “social participation”, both countries refer to the young people’s participation. Considering the historical development and its feature today, one can say that Japa-nese youth policy have progressed to the certain standards as close enough to European and Swedish youth policy, which is one of the characteristics and commonalities in the countries.

Educational achievement in Japan and Sweden

Another commonalities can be identified within the arena of ed-ucation. When looking at it, both Japan and Sweden are well-performed countries. For instance, NET enrollment rate marks more than 90% (United Nations, 2014), educational attainment is 87% in Sweden and 92.7% in Japan, which results in pretty high results for the OECD Better Life Index of Education e.g. Japan ranks 8th and Sweden does 6th (OECD, 2014). Moreover, it is also stressed that both Japan and Sweden provide fairly equal access to quality education.

On the other hand, there are discrepancies between the two countries regarding educational out-come. Well-known comparable educational consequence is PISA ranking. Japan took 540 scores which is the second highest after Korea within the OECD coun-tries, whereas Sweden scored 482 which is below the OECD aver-age 497 and ranked 28 out of 36 OECD member countries(OECD, 2014). Another educational measurement that is different between Japan and Sweden is the years in education. While Japanese chil-dren are expected to engage in formal education 16 years, it is 19 years for Swedish students, which is higher than that of OECD average of 17.7 years (OECD, 2014).

From the perspective of international standards, it is relative to utter both of the countries provide high-quality education. Adding the feature of national youth policy in Japan and Sweden, com-parative studies between Japan and Sweden is feasible despite the geographical, social, cultural difference.

Comparative studies between Japan and Sweden Despite a greater or lesser degree of the difference between Jap-an and Sweden, it is fair to say that both countries attained certain

13

educational standards of the quality of education. Its success is due to the plenty of comparative educational research between Japan and Sweden conducted so far.

However, less academic research have implemented in terms of the young people and participation between Sweden and Japan. Miyamoto describes how Swedish youth policy underlines the im-portance of the youth-participation policy (Miyamoto, 2005b). Sawano describes the background and process of the Swedish mul-tidisciplinary sector policy in charge of children and youth, which puts more focus on the administrative structures (Sawano, 2012). Kobayashi (2010) published a suggestive journal about Swedish youth policy and educational systems from the socio-economical perspective, which presented a great insight on youth participation policy in Sweden. Yet, comparative studies between Sweden and Japan in this field are far from adequate. Thus, doing a compara-tive research in the field of youth participation is significant and challenging at the same time.

14

6. Key concepts Before describing the results of the research, it is needed to clear

the concept of the “participation” in the context of this paper in order to choose measurement of young people’s participation. Hence, this section explores the definition of youth participation.

In the Context of Children’s Rights

United Nations Conventions of the Rights of the Child (herein-

after: UNCRC) was adopted in 1989, which has become widely recognized as one of the most fundamental canon in the field of the child as well as youth participation(United Nations, 1989). The Convention put the emphasis on the necessity and significance of the “3P” which is consisted of the capital letters of: children’s rights to Provision, Protection and Participation. Article 12 in the UNCRC is the basis for the child participation as it says:

“States Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight”(United Nations, 1989).

This, in other words, means the every concern affecting the children should be taken into consideration with the views of chil-dren and states parties should make decision based on it. UNCRC articulates other children’s rights, which encourage the implemen-tation of the Article 12 as follows.

• Freedom of expression, including the right to seek and re-ceive impartial information of all kind (Article 13)

• Freedom of thought, conscience and religion (Article 14) • Freedom of association (Article 15) • The right of access to information and material from na-

tional and international sources (Article 17) • The right to participate in the cultural life of the community

(Article 31).

15

What is youth “participation”?

Although the aforementioned UN article states children are enti-

tled to express their views freely in “all matters affecting the child”, it is necessary to find out what the “all matters affecting the child” is. Where children’s participation happens? What forms of participation do they apply? What is the meaning of “participation” itself?

Loncle et al. (2008) traced the origin and meaning of participa-tion to Latin word which means both to take part in and to take part of something, being involved in as well as sharing something. It is worth to mention that participation - which sometimes sub-consciously interpreted as only political participation or participa-tion in employment- itself doesn’t specify the context and usage.

Hence, participation of young people takes place in different levels, different forms of structures as Loncle (Loncle & Muniglia, 2008) ramified as follow. - Voluntary (e.g. youth event, demonstration) versus non-

voluntary (e.g. unemployment scheme) - Bottom up, top down in a cooperative form - Active (e.g. charity work) versus passive (citizenship, mem-

bership in voluntary organization) - Conscious or unconscious - Socially or institutionally sanctioned, conforming (voting,

charity work) versus non-sanctioned, challenging, “bad” par-ticipation (riots; resistance; political extremism)

- Collective (institutionalized: e.g. activity in a trade union; non-institutionalized: e.g. local pressure group) versus indi-vidual (e.g. taking to school teacher to “sort out things by my-self”)

The list lighted up how diverse and multiple the means and

forms of participation is. Participation permeates widely though our daily society and social praxis.

Then, where does youth participation take place? Young people participate to where? Loncle (Loncle & Muniglia, 2008) presented the 6 various societal contexts and arenas which are related with

16

the different means and forms of participation as follows: political participation, social or associative participation, civic participation, user or consumer participation, participation in and through educa-tion, participation in employment.

Another insightful division of participation is identified though the European youth policy document. A Recommendation 8 (1998) on children’s participation in family and social life by Council of Europe set the measures for the promotion of children’s participa-tion in family and social life, which includes, information, educa-tion, out-of-school activities, children’s associations, participation in public life, work, training, media, social cohesion, research, le-gal framework, European co-operation (COUNCIL OF EUROPE & COMMITTEE OF MINISTERS, 1998).

To sort four mentioned categories out, one can profile the 4 di-mension of youth participation as follows: 1; Public life (politics, media, information, civil society, social association), 2; Economics (employment, training, consuming), 3; Education (school, out-of-school), 4; Legal and policy framework (research, funds, institu-tionalized opportunities).

17

The degree of the participation

It is important to refer that the participation itself doesn’t always function perfectly. Sometimes it is made used of by adults with specific purpose. Without paying attention to how children and young people taking part in decision making process may lead the failure of the participation as well as cause lack of the trust, which is a precondition for children’s active citizenship(Warming, 2013). The useful and classic framework to refrain from fake-

participation is represented by “The ladder of participation” by Roger Hart (1992) which illustrate the eight-stage of children’s participation. The original model of the Hart’s ladder is from “eight rungs on the ladder of citizen participation” by Arinesten (1969).

Hart describes the lower three stage of the participation as ma-nipulation, decoration and tokenism, which he meant was the false means of the participation, where there is no participation. It is followed by 4; Assigned but informed, 5; Consulted and informed, 6; Adult-initiated shared decisions with children, 7; Child-initiated and directed, 8; Child-initiated shared decision with adults. (The latter, the higher the participation is). Roberts (2003) criticized the risk of paralyzing action because

of the fear of not reaching the highest level of participation. Alt-hough, there has been a massive debate over Hart’s ladder, yet one can say this model is the most prevailing and used framework for the local practitioner (Shier, 2001). Participation Works (2014) clearly defines the meaning of the participation by quoting Trese-der (1997) as follows: “Participation is a process where someone influence decisions about their lives and this leads to change”

Considering the concept discussed above, the chapter conclude that participation is one’s act on making decision regarding with everything that holds substantial influence on one’s life and vari-ous aspect of societies.

Due to the purpose of the paper and availability of the data, this research focuses on the citizen and political participation of young people. The couple of the criteria will measure citizen participa-tion: social environment of young people’s citizen participation,

18

whether young people have a will to participate to society, if young people think they can change the society, if they have a feeling of freedom of choice or not. Young people’s political participation will be measured by both formal and informal channel of political participation: young people’s voter turnout, the involvement of political parties, if young people do attend peaceful demonstrations and sign petition.

19

6 Presentation of the results This part describes the results of the young people’s situation in

Japan and Sweden referring to the citizen and political participa-tion. The first section presents the result of the citizen participation of young people. The latter part illustrates young people’s situation concerning political participation. Both results are measured by international or national inquiry covering Japanese and Swedish young people.

Citizen participation

Social environment: Is society prepared enough for young people’s citizen participation?

The first angle deals with social environment of youth civil par-

ticipation. It is important to look not only at the status of young people but also at social systems surrounding young people regard-ing citizen participation. Hence, the section starts from the analysis of the social circumstance of the youth civic participation.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and International Youth Foundation (IYF) have published Global Youth Wellbeing Index (2014), which collects and concatenates the youth-related data to illuminate and compare the situation of young people globally. The countries covered are not whole but specific 30 high- to low-income countries in five regions that represent nearly 70% of the world population of youth. The index employs 40 different indicators across six domains of youths: citizen partic-ipation, economic opportunity, education, health, information and communications technology (ICT), and safety and security. Table 2 displays the ranking of the index for each domain in Japan and Sweden. Table 2

Index Domains Japan Sweden Overall 7th / 30 2nd / 30 Citizen participation 23rd / 30 12th / 30

20

Economic Opportunity 2nd / 30 7th / 30 Education 9th / 30 6th / 30 Health 8th / 30 7th / 30 ICT 6th / 30 2nd / 30 Safety and Security 2nd / 30 1st / 30

Despite the geographical difference, Japan and Sweden ranked

fairly high (Overall, Japan ranked 7th and Sweden ranked 2nd) among the most of the domains. Only in the domain of the citizen participation, both of the countries marked under the 10th and Japan ranked far lower than that of Sweden (Japan ranked in 23rd, Sweden 12th). It is worth to mention that despite the fact that both Japan and Sweden marked relatively high score on Education in-dex domain, the two of the countries ranked low in citizen partici-pation domain.

The indicator for citizen participation includes 6 indicators in-clude Democracy Index, existence of youth policy, candidacy age, frequency of the volunteering, if young people think the are be-lieved enough, and percentage of respondents who agreed that their government respected them (See more detail in Appendix 1).

Democracy Index

Democracy Index is the index based on 60 indicators catego-rized in 5 different spheres: electoral process, pluralism, and civil liberties, functioning of government, political participation and political culture, collected by Economist Intelligence Unit. The index refer Japan ranks 20th out of 167 countries and regions, whereas Sweden ranks 2nd. Within the indicator of the Democracy Index, political participation and political culture record the big-gest gap between those of Japan and Sweden.

Existence of youth policy

Youth policy is significant for youth civic participation due to the reason that policy targeting young people holds significant in-fluence on young people’s daily life. Non-existence of the youth policy means young people are left behind from other policies and even from society. The facts and figures of existence of youth poli-cy and candidacy age are acquired from youthpolicy.org(2014). According to the source, both Japan and Sweden holds national

21

youth policy. Hypothetically speaking, slight but significant differ-ence between the two countries is that though both of the countries hold youth law, the contexts of the histories and characteristic of the policy might be dramatically dissimilar, which require further studies and analysis. Nevertheless, from the global point of view, at least existence of youth policy in Japan and Sweden is enough to be prepared for youth civil participation.

Candidacy Age

One of the dramatic differences between Japan and Sweden may refer to this point. Candidacy age is the legal minimum age of be-ing candidate of politician in national election. While, both legal age of voting and candidacy age is consistent in any level from municipal to national at the age of 18 in Sweden, Japan holds can-didacy age at 25 for lower house and 30 years old for upper house in national elections. In municipal and province level age 30 is set for a prefectural governor and for a head of municipality, while people can be candidate for a member of prefectural assembly and a municipal assembly at the age of 25. The fact clearly describes the high thresholds of young people’s involvement of the political participation. This also means there is lack of the political spokes-man of youths, which may results in political apathy and lack pub-lic policy for the youth generations.

Due to the inaccessibility to the TRU Survey, which is the origi-nal source of rest of the three indicator of the citizen participation in Global Youth Wellbeing Index, there is no more presentation in this section.

Do young people wants to participate to society?

What about the young people themselves? Do they think they really feel that they want to be a part of society? This part illus-trates how young people feel about relation between themselves and society.

A White Paper on Children and Youth is a Japanese government report, which has long tradition of investigating the children and young people’s situation in Japan. The latest white paper in 2013 attempted to compare the young people’s consciousness toward society between several countries including Sweden. Hence,

22

despite it is Japan’s national report, it plays significant role on comparative studies.

The objectives of the age of the young people are 13 to 29 years in this report and the research was implemented via Internet sur-vey. Table 3 below shows the countries involved in the studies, the number of the respondents and language used for the survey. Table 3

Country Number of respond-ents

Language used

Japan 1,175 Japanese South Korea 1,026 Korean U.S 1,036 English U.K 1,078 English Germany 1,034 German France 1,006 French Sweden 1,076 Swedish

23

According to the report, the proportion of young people aged 13 to 29 who have willingness to take part in social issue in order to improve the society is 44.3% in Japan and 52.9 % in Swe-den(Figure 1). The highest is Germany and the lowest is Japan.

44.360.4 64.3

57.1

76.2

50.9 52.9

0

20

40

60

80

100

JapanSouthKorea U.S theU.KGermany France Sweden

Youngpeoplewhohavewillingnesstotakepartinsocialissueinordertoimrovethesociety

(aged13-29)

� Total percentage of people who "agree" and "somewhat agree" to the opinion: "I am willing to take part in social issue in order to make society better".

Figure 1

30.239.2

52.945

52.644.4 43.4

0

20

40

60

Japan SouthKorea

U.S theU.K Germany France Sweden

Youngpeoplewhofeeltheycanchangethesociety(aged13-29)

�Total percentage of people who "agree" and "somewhat agree" with "I may change the society by my involvement"

Figure 2

24

Sweden is 8.6% higher than that of Japan. Another figure from the same report states that the share of young people 13 to 29 years old who feel they can change the society is 30.2 % in Japan and 43.4% in Sweden (Figure 2). The highest is U.S and the lowest is Japan. Sweden is 13.2% higher than Japan.

Freedom of choice and control over own life

As discussed above chapter, the meaning of the participation is not only restricted to the political context. Participation itself is a process of influences the decisions about their lives (Treseder, 1997). In order to investigate it, this unit describes a data set avail-able from World Value Survey regarding with the young people’s decision over their life.

The statistics pull out from World Value Survey asked the par-ticipants about how much freedom of choice and control they feel they have over the way their life turns out. Respondents selected the scale from 1: “no choice at all” to 10: “a great deal of choice”. Table 4 shows the fact and figures about the research. Table 4

Country Japan Sweden Total number of respondents 2,443 1,206 Number of respondents up to age 29

296 244

Selected sample From 2010 From 2011 Mean 6.11 7.59 Standard Deviation 2.06 1.75 Base Mean 286 243

Figure 3 below demonstrates over view of young people aged

up 29 years old in Japan and Sweden recognize their freedom of choice and control over their own life.

25

Clearly differences can be seen from the statistics that 20.0% of young people in Sweden identify themselves that they have a great deal of choice over their life, whereas it is only 6.8% for the Japa-nese young people. Moreover, the total percentage of respondents who selected “6” to “A great deal of choice (10)” accounts 86.6% for Swedish youth, while it is 58.9% for Japanese. On the contrari-ly, the sum of the answer “No choice at all (1)” to “4” by Swedish respondents is 4.1%; on the other hand, it is 18.6% for Japanese respondents. It is not too much to say that Japanese young people feel less self-determination over their life comparing to the ones in Sweden.

Source: World Value Survey Wave 6 (2010-2014)

Figure 3

26

Political participation

To assess the young people’s participation in political sphere, one can refer to different data set. This section will depict the out-come of the figures and numbers concerning youth political partic-ipation in Japan and Sweden.

Young people’s turn out in national election

Without any doubt, one can say that the most conventional form of the political participation is casting a valet in the election. Voter turnout is explained as the total percentage of the registered popu-lation that cast valet during the election. This part takes a look at the voter turnout in Japan and Sweden and how much young gen-eration participates to the national election process.

Japan

The national election for lower house took place in July, 2013 in Japan and its overall voter turnout was 52.6%, which is the third lowest turnout in Japanese history of election since 1945. Figure 4

Turn out of national election for lower house in 2013 by age in Japan.

Source: Association for Promoting Fair Election, 2014

Figure 4

27

displays the voter turnout at the national election (2013) crossing by the cluster of the age groups.

The figure clearly describes young generations vote less than

older generations. While those who aged 20-29 voted in the elec-tion shares 33.37%, senior generation (aged 60-69) took part in the election holds 67.56%. Notably, the results of the election are near-ly close to that of upper house of parliament of Japan. The average turnout was 59.32 and the voter turnout of younger generation aged 20-29 was nearly 38%, whereas it is almost 75% for the sen-ior generation aged 60-69 (Association for Promoting Fair Election, 2014). Sweden

National election in Sweden takes place every four years. The latest was the one held in September 2014. Due to the availability of source, this section only quotes the voter turnout of the national election that took place in 2010 and 2006. Over the time, Sweden has marked a high turnout throughout the generations. Since 1944, voter turn out in the national level election has kept its results over more than 70% (Allmännavalen2006.Del1,Del1,2007).

28

In 2010, voter turn out rate was 84.6% for the national election. Screening it out by the age, 79.5% of young Swedish aged between 18-29 voted, while 88.9% of senior generation aged from 50 to 64 cast a valet (Figure 5).

In the same way as Japanese results, older generation partake in the election more than younger generation. This tendency can be seen in the previous election held in 2006. Youth voter turnout rate was 75.7%, whereas it was 87.1% for those who aged 50-64. Comparing to 2006, young people’s (18-29) turnout increased by 4% in 2010.

Source: (Allmänna valen 2006. Del 1, 2007)

Figure 5

29

Membership of political parties

It is fair to say that one of the useful measurements of the young

people’s involvement of the politics is to look at the membership of the political parties. An inquiry conducted by WVS between 2010-2014 includes the question about the involvement of the po-litical parties. General facts and figures on the research can be seen in the table below (Table 5). The figure 6 shows the results crossed by age up to 29. Table 5

Country Japan Sweden Total number of respondents 2,443 1,206 Number of respondents age up to 29 296 244 Selected samples In 2010 In 2011

Apparently, the involvement of political party among the young generation is not mainstream as Figure 6 manifested. A majority of both Japanese and Swedish young people is not a member of the any political parties.


Figure 6

30

However, it is notable to point out that while less than 1% of

Japanese young people are inactive or active members of the polit-ical party, nearly 7% of young Swedish are inactive members and 2.7% of them hold an active membership. The sum of the “inac-tive” and “active” membership of young Japanese is 1.4%, while young Swedish accounts to 8.6%.

Informal political action: attending demonstrations and signing a petition

Political participation does not only include the formal channel but in-formal collective action as Loncle (2008) pointed out in the above chapter. A study by WVS (2010-2014) encompasses the fig-ures relating to informal political action: Attending peaceful demonstrations and signing a petition. Information regarding with the each of the surveys can be seen in the Appendix 2.

The result says that 18.8% of young Swedish have done a peaceful demonstration, whereas only 0.7% of young Japanese did (Figure 7). Remarkably, young Japanese who answered they


Figure 7

31

“would never do” attending peaceful demonstrations shares nearly 50%, while it accounts approximately 23% for young Swedish. Similarly to the result of the attending demonstration, the young

Japanese are less involved in signing a petition (Figure 8). The

statistics says that while 64.8% of young Swedish “have done” the signing a petition in the past, it is only 13.9% of young Japanese who took part in signing a petition before. Those who answered they “would never do” for signing petition accounts 30.4% in Ja-pan, whereas it is just 5.9% in Sweden.

Overall, it is fair to conclude that young people in Japan partake in informal political activity less than one in Sweden. Incidentally, in both inquiries, more than 20% of young Japanese answered “don’t’ know” while, it is less than 3% for young Swedish.


Figure 8

32

7. Findings & Conclusion “Nonetheless, young Europeans have a lot to say; after all, these are precisely the people who are primarily affected by economic change, demographic imbalance, globalization or cultural diversity. We are expecting them to create new forms of social relations, different ways of expressing solidarity or of coping with differences and finding enrichment in them, while new uncertainties appear(“ECWhitepaper,”2001).”

This statement described in the European Commission White

paper express the views of European youth policy, recognizing societal dynamic changes that influence the young people’s living condition as well as young people themselves, recognizing young people themselves as a main actor to form the youth policy and the uncertain future of our societies.

Though Japan and Sweden encompass a number of different so-cial aspects and cultures, there to be seen commonalities. Firstly, both youth policy in Japan and Sweden articulates the importance of the young people’s participation. Though it’s background and development differs, the countries hold close enough features to do comparison. Secondly, young people in Japan and Sweden enjoy high quality of education. The author pointed out the significance of the research by referring to a small number of comparative studies in the fields of youth participation between Japan and Swe-den.

The presentation of the results evidently describes young Japa-nese don’t exercise their civic and political rights of participation in contrast to young Swedish. Figures display that social environ-ment of civic participation such as the quality of democracy and thresholds of becoming young politician is more restricted in Japan than Sweden. To a certain extent, there are young Japanese who express their will to be involved in social issue and some of them feel they can change the society; however it is not a great number comparing to that of young Swedish. Swedish youths feel they have more freedom of choice over their life than Japanese, which is also a fundamental aspect of participation.

The same tendency can be seen in the arena of political partici-pation. Whether it is formal or not, overall, the political participa-tion among young people is higher in Sweden than in Japan. Sur-

33

prisingly enough, the whole figures of citizen and politic participa-tion of young people in Japan are consistently lower than that of Sweden.

Further studies

Nevertheless, above comparative facts and figures between Jap-an and Sweden contributed to highlight the contrast about young people’s participation in the two countries, there are more room be improved in the studies. A close study of classifying and exploring the meaning of youth participation is also necessary for the further studies.

A future avenue for the further study is to conduct the compara-tive analysis of youth policy in Japan and Sweden in lights of their histories and clarify the meaning of the participation within the policy.

34

8. Reference list Allmänna valen 2006. Del 1, Del 1,. (2007). Stockholm: Statistiska

centralbyrån (SCB). Arnstein, S. R. (1969). A ladder of citizen participation. Journal of

the American Institute of Planners, 35(4), 216–224. Association for Promoting Fair Election. (2014). Historical chang-

es of voter turnout by age groups. Retrieved October 13, 2014, from http://www.akaruisenkyo.or.jp/070various/071syugi/693/

Blais, A. (2006). What affects voter turnout? Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci., 9, 111–125.

Bray, M., Adamson, B., & Mazon, M. (2007). Comparative Educa-tion Research: Approaches and Methods. Springer Science & Business Media.

COUNCIL OF EUROPE, & COMMITTEE OF MINISTERS. (1998). RECOMMENDATION No. R (98) 8. Retrieved from https://wcd.coe.int/com.instranet.InstraServlet?command=com.instranet.CmdBlobGet&InstranetImage=532375&SecMode=1&DocId=486272&Usage=2

CSIS. (2014). The Global Youth Wellbeing Index. Retrieved from http://www.youthindex.org

European Commission White Paper - A new Impetus for European Youth. (2001). European Commision. Retrieved from http://eryica.org/files/EC_White%20Paper%20on%20Youth_2001_EN.pdf

Hart, R. A. (1992). Children’s Participation: From tokenism to citizenship (Innocenti Essay No. inness92/6). UNICEF In-nocenti Research Centre. Retrieved from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ucf/inness/inness92-6.html

IPU. (2014a). IPU PARLINE database: JAPAN (Shugiin), Full text. Retrieved October 16, 2014, from http://www.ipu.org/english/parline/reports/2161.htm

IPU. (2014b). IPU PARLINE database: SWEDEN (Riksdagen), Full text. Retrieved October 16, 2014, from http://www.ipu.org/parline-e/reports/2303.htm

35

Keating, A., Kerr, D., Benton, T., Mundy, E., & Lopes, J. (2010). Citizenship education in England 2001-2010: young peo-ple’s practices and prospects for the future: the eighth and final report from the Citizenship Education Longitudinal Study (CELS). Retrieved from http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/11579/

Kobayashi, Y. (2010). Youth policy and participation in Japan from the perspective of Sweden’s experience: current status and issues. Quarterly Journal of Public Policy & Management, 2010(3), 89–107.

Loncle, P., & Muniglia, V. (2008). Introduction: Youth Participa-tion in Europe --- between social and political challenges and youth practice. UP2YOUTH - Thematic Final Report - Youth Participation, (21). Retrieved from http://www.most.ie/webreports/civic%20engagement/Youth%20Particiaption%20in%20Ireland%20and%20a%20couple%20of%20other%20states.pdf

Miyamoto, M. (2005a). Prolonged transitional period and policy. Japan Labor Review, 2(3), 73.

Miyamoto, M. (2005b). Toward the society from youth “par-ticitipatin” to “influence.” Chirirekishi-Kyoiku, (690), 28–33.

OECD. (2014). OECD Better Life Index Education. Retrieved Oc-tober 14, 2014, from http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/education/

Participation Works Network. (2014). Participation Works Net-work. Retrieved October 14, 2014, from http://www.participationworks.org.uk/about-us

Roberts, H. (2003). Children’s participation in policy matters. Hearing the Voices of Children: Social Policy for a New Century, 26–37.

Saitō, Y., & Yamanoi, K. (1994). Suwēden hatsu kōrei shakai to chihō bunken: fukushi no shuyaku wa shichōson = Äldresamhället och kommunalt självstyre (Shohan.). Kyoto: Mineruva Shobō.

Sawano, Y. (2012). Consolidation of Child and Youth Administra-tion in Sweden. Annual Report of JASEP, Japan Academic Society for Educational Policy(19), 8–22.

36

Shier, H. (2001). Pathways to participation: openings, opportuni-ties and obligations. Children & Society, 15(2), 107–117. doi:10.1002/chi.617

United Nations. (1989, November 20). Convention on the Rights of the Child. Retrieved from http://www.ohchr.org/documents/professionalinterest/crc.pdf

United Nations. (2014). UNdata | record view | Total Secondary Net enrolment rate. Retrieved October 14, 2014, from http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?d=UNESCO&f=series%3ANER_23

Vision for Children and Young People —Supporting the develop-ment of children and young people, aiming for a society inclusive of every single person—. (2010). Headquarters for Promotion of Development and Support for Children and Young People. Retrieved from http://www.youthpolicy.org/national/Japan_2010_Youth_Policy_Vision.pdf

Warming, H. (Ed.). (2013). Participation, Citizenship and Trust in Children’s Lives. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Re-trieved from http://www.palgraveconnect.com/pc/socialsciences2013/browse/inside/chapter/9781137295781.0004/9781137295781.0004.html?page=0&chapterDoi=9781137295781.0004#pdf-viewer

Yajima, M., & Mimizuka, H. (2001). Kawaru Wakamono to Sho-kugyo Sekai” (Changing Young People and the Vocational World). Tokyo: Gakubunsya.

youthpolicy.org. (2014). Retrieved October 15, 2014, from http://www.youthpolicy.org/

37

9. Appendix Appendix 1 - Democracy Index - the index based on 60 indicators catego-

rized in 5 different spheres: electoral process, pluralism, and civil liberties, functioning of government, political participa-tion and political culture. Source: Economist Intelligence Unit

- Existence of youth policy - if the country holds national

youth policy or not Source: youthpolicy.org

- Candidacy age – the legal minimum age of being candidate of politician in national election Source: youthpolicy.org

- How often do you do the following? (Volunteer work)(Few

times a month) - percentage of respondents who volunteered a few times a week Source: TRU Survey

- I don’t believe young people are respected enough (agree

net) - percentage of respondents who agreed that they did not believe that young people were respected Source: TRU Survey

- My government cares about my wants and needs (agree net) - Percentage of respondents who agreed that their gov-ernment respected them Source: TRU Survey

Appendix 2

Political action: Attending peaceful demonstrations

Japan Sweden

Total number of respondents

2,443 1,206

38

Number of re-spondents up to age 29

296 244

Selected samples From 2010 From 2011

Political ac-tion: Signing a petition

Japan Sweden

Total number of respondents

2,443

1,206

Number of respondents age up to 29

296 244

Selected sam-ple

In 2010 In 2011