It’s More than Just Debating : The Political Participation and Democratic Attitudes of Debate Programme Participants in Seven “New” Democracies

This study is focused on the democratic competencies and political participation of young people taking part in debate programs in seven “new” democracies – the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania, and Slovakia. The research employs conventional methods adopted from various established surveys for capturing the political attitudes and values of youths. Using a longitudinal research design, we compare results from debaters and their non-debating peers on three dimensions: political competence, democratic values, and political participation. The results of the pre-tests indicate that debaters’ attitudes are more in accordance with what a democratic theory would expect from active and engaged citizens. Participating in debate activities did not reveal significant attitudinal improvements during the short timeframe of our research (one school year), but the initial differences between debaters and non-debaters remained stable over time

It’s More than Just Debating: The Political Participation and Democratic Attitudes of Debate Programme Participants in Seven “New” Democracies

This study is focused on the democratic competencies and political participation of youngpeople taking part in debate programs in seven “new” democracies – the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia,Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania and Slovakia. The research employs conventional methods adopted fromvarious established surveys for capturing the political attitudes and values of youths. Using a longitudinalresearch design, we compare results from debaters and their non-debating peers on three dimensions:political competence, democratic values and political participation. The results of the pre-tests indicatethat debaters’ attitudes are more in accordance with what a democratic theory would expect from activeand engaged citizens. Participating in debate activities did not reveal significant attitudinal improvementsduring the short timeframe of our research (one school year), but the initial differences between debatersand non-debaters remained stable over time

Simulating Stakeholder Support in a Policy Process: An Application to River Management

The authors present an agent-based model representing a policy process among stakeholders of river management. For evaluating the different river management alternatives, the agent-based model is coupled to an integrated river model that describes the impacts of river management, such as flood risk, nature development, and costs. The model is applied to the case of the ongoing Dutch river management project "Grensmaas." The authors analyze stakeholder support and reconstruct the observed policy outcomes of the Grensmaas project over the past 15 years to provide a first validation of the model. They then assess how stakeholder support and the policy outcome might change when stakeholders would change their preference structures or take climate change into account. They argue that the main virtue of the developed modeling framework lies in its application within participatory processes, to support stakeholders to reflect on their goals and uncertainty perspectives in a social context