Youth Civic Development: Theorizing a Domain with Evidence from Different Cultural Contexts

The authors use examples of youth civic engagement from Chile, South Africa, Central/Eastern Europe, and the United States--and also emphasize diversities among youth from different subgroups within countries--to illustrate common elements of the civic domain of youth development. These include the primacy of collective activity for forming political identities and ideas and the greater heterogeneity of civic compared to other discretionary activities, the groupways or accumulated opportunities for acting due to the groups (social class, gender, ethnic, caste, etc.) to which a young person belongs, and the role of mediating institutions (schools, community-based organizations, etc.) as spaces where youths' actions contribute to political stability and change.