Civic Drop-outs? What Young Citizens Know and Don?t Know About Politics. Canada in Comparative Perspective.

In this paper I draw the link between three developments in advanced Western democracies: the decline in voter turnout, the decline in political knowledge and attention to politics, and the depoliticization of youth. After summarizing what we know of these phenomena, I then, using both comparative and Canadian data in particular, investigate the extent to which the first two can be understood as outcomes of third. If, as I try to show, this is significantly the case, it places challenges on policy makers and political scientists alike, challenges I address in the conclusion of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]