On-Site Citizenship Education: An Effective Way of Boosting Democratic Engagement and Reducing Inequalities Among Young People?

Abstract

In response to concerns about a lack of democratic engagement among youngsters, many governments intensify their efforts to stimulate democratic engagement and reduce inequalities between advantaged and disadvantaged adolescents. One of the ways in which they try to do this is by on-site citizenship education programs. These include visits to a government institution, interaction with government officials and the reenactment of government institutions. Yet, it remains unclear whether these programs actually boost democratic engagement and compensate inequalities in democratic engagement. This study explores the effect of on-site citizenship education on (inequalities in) democratic engagement. In order to ensure that potential effects are truly attributable to the on-site citizenship program, I isolate the hypothesized causal effects by employing a quasi-experimental design with Difference-in-Difference estimation, reducing selection effects, and controlling for pre-test sensitization and time period. Moreover, I assessed whether the effects last over the course of a school year. The newly collected data consist of four waves among 585 students in thirty classes and three schools. The results show that the high expectations of on-site citizenship education need to be tempered: the main Dutch on-site citizenship program has a robust and lasting effect on political knowledge, but not on political attitudes and behaviors. Moreover, the program generally does not reduce pre-existing inequalities.