political socialization essay outline

Political Socialization: Definition and Examples

Charlotte Nickerson

Research Assistant at Harvard University

Undergraduate at Harvard University

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Political socialization is the process whereby individuals are initiated into the dominant values and traditions of a society, including those values which define the legitimate processes of politics and the way that power is exercised.

Political socialization occurs throughout an individual’s life, but is most pronounced during childhood and adolescence. The family is generally considered to be the primary agent of political socialization, followed by educational institutions, the media, and peer groups.

As a phenomenon, political socialization has been around for centuries, but it has been studied extensively and systematically since the early 20th century.

Around the turn of the twentieth century, educators in the United States conducted studies of school children that included choices of national figures most admired by the children (Greenstein, 1965).

Early research also focused on understanding how World War II and the Cold War influenced children’s attitudes toward politics and government (Greenstein, 1965).

In more recent years, scholars have taken a broader approach to political socialization, studying factors such as race, gender, and social class in addition to age, education, and family background.

Hyman (1959) conceptualized political socialization along three dimensions: participation or involvement in politics, radical or conservative goals, and democratic or authoritarian forms.

According to Hyman, these three dimensions are interrelated but independent of each other. That is, individuals can be high or low on any single dimension without being high or low on the others.

Key Takeaways

• Political socialization is the process by which individuals develop their political beliefs.
• Family, friends, school, media, and government are all main agents of political socialization.
• Classically, sociologists have thought of political socialization as occurring largely during one”s childhood, resulting in stable political views; however, this view has shifted in later sociological research accounting for the role of one”s current environment and attitudes on political beliefs.
• More recently, consensus theories have been Nonetheless, a large number of secondary agents – such as work and political parties – can serve as agents of secondary socialization. Their number typically depends on the political complexity of a society.

Agents of political Socialization

The family is considered to be the primary agent of political socialization. From an early age, children learn about politics and government from their parents or guardians.

Parents often share their own political views with their children, which can have a significant impact on the development of those views. In addition, parents provide information about how to participate in the political process, such as voting or running for office.

For example, a parent who is active in their local community may take their child to city council meetings, help them register to vote when they turn 18, or take them to political protests and rallies aligned with their own political views (Jennings & Niemi, 2015).

While the family is the main agent of political socialization , there is little overt indoctrination into political traditions. Rather, the traditions and values of a society are absorbed through the expression of general sentiments towards political symbols and personalities.

Although they are a possible agent of political socialization, parents are not necessarily significant, or influential one. There is no guarantee that the children will reflect their parents” political views. Indeed, many parents and children have radically different views on politics.

For example, a child raised in a religious and conservative household may rebel by becoming a liberal atheist (Jennings & Niemi, 2015).

Friends can play an important role in our political socialization. While family, schools, and the media all provide people with information about politics and government, friends are often the first people we turn to when we want to discuss these topics.

One’s friends can help shape one’s political views by providing them with new perspectives and ideas and by serving as a sounding board for one’s own beliefs (Reidy et al., 2015).

In addition to shaping views on politics, friends can also influence participation in the political process. If someone’s friends are politically active, people are more likely to be engaged in politics themselves. Friends can also provide people with motivation and support when it comes to taking action on issues they care about.

Of course, not all of one’s friends will share their political views. In fact, it is often through people”s interactions with people who hold different viewpoints that solidify one”s own beliefs.

However, even when people disagree with their friends on political issues, they can still play an important role in one’s political lives. Friends can help people see both sides of an issue, which can lead to a more nuanced understanding of the complex issues people face as a society (Reidy et al., 2015).

Another important agent of political socialization is schools. From a young age, children learn about government and politics in their social studies classes. They also engage in classroom discussions and debates about current events and controversial issues.

As children get older, they may participate in student government or extracurricular activities that involve politics, such as Model United Nations. Schools play a significant role in shaping students” political views and preparing them to be active citizens.

In general, effective civic education programs engage students in activities that prepare them for the real world of politics, such as mock elections and legislative hearings (Jennings & Niemi, 2015).

The college environment can provide a further opportunity for students to develop their political views and to become politically active.

Many campuses have organizations that promote various causes and engage in political activism, sometimes enduring for someone”s entire life.

One famous study at Bennington College in the 1930s showed that 1/3 of Bennington students, who came predominantly from wealthy families with conservative values but were educated by political progressives — adopted the progressive ideals of their teachers (Alwin, Cohen, & Newcomb, 1991).

Nonetheless, schools are not necessarily active or effective agents of political socialization. They may neglect to teach basic facts about government to students, favoring more “core” academic subjects like math and reading.

In addition, schools may shy away from controversial topics or current events, for fear of offending parents or sparking heated debates among students.

As a result, many young adults graduate from high school without a good understanding of how government works or what their civic responsibilities are. This lack of knowledge can make it difficult for young adults to fully participate in the political process.

Children also learn about politics from the media . Television, movies, and music often contain messages about political issues and events.

For example, a child might see a news story about a hurricane and learn about the government”s role in providing emergency assistance.

Or a child might watch a movie that depicts a corrupt politician and learn about the importance of honesty in government.

In general, as the number of media outlets has increased and new technologies enable for more engaging media experiences, mass media”s ability to socialize people to politics has grown substantially.

Because individuals do not have personal access to government or politicians, most people”s political experiences occur vicariously through the news. The typical American spends about forty hours per week consuming mass media (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2007).

This high level of media consumption means that people are likely to encounter political messages on a regular basis (Adoni, 1979).

While the amount of time that people spend exposed to mass media has increased, there has also been a shift in the types of media that people use.

In particular, there has been a move away from traditional forms of media, such as newspapers and television news programs, and towards newer forms of media, such as the internet and social networking sites.

One consequence of this shift is that people are now more likely to encounter political content through their personal networks, rather than through broader, more impersonal sources.

Many have argued that this can lead to political radicalization, as this has led to the development of echo chambers, where people only encounter information and opinions that confirm their existing beliefs (Adoni, 1979).

Religion is a central aspect of many people”s lives and can play an important role in political socialization. Religious beliefs and values can influence the way people think about political issues and candidates, and religious institutions can provide resources and support for political campaigns.

In addition, religious leaders can help shape public opinion on political issues.

Religion can also affect people”s voting behavior. Studies have shown that religious affiliation is a strong predictor of voting behavior in the United States.

People who identify as evangelical Christians are more likely to vote Republican, while people who identify as mainline Protestants or Catholics are more likely to vote Democrat.

People who do not have a religious affiliation are more likely to vote for third-party candidates or not vote at all. In addition, religious institutions can provide resources and support for political campaigns (Pearson-Merkowitz & Gimpel, 2009).

Political parties

Political parties and political socialization are two important concepts in the study of political science. Party identification was originally conceptualized as an identity.

It was seen as something that could be developed without the cognitive skills to fully understand the political world. Later, scholars characterized partisanship as a “lifestyle” rather than a lifelong identity. Although it often endures across time.

One”s affiliation with a political party is in large part an attitude developed in reaction to the actions of governments and other political actors, notably the economy (Stoker & Bass, 2011).

Political parties are an example of secondary agents of political socialization that have a distinctly political character. They are designed explicitly to spread political ideas, mobilize political engagement, and develop political leaders.

The role of political parties in political socialization is important because they provide a way for people to connect with others who have similar political views. This can help people to develop a better understanding of the political process and make informed decisions about who to vote for.

Additionally, political parties can be a source of information about candidates and issues. They can also help people feel like they are part of a larger community and have a say in the political process.

Being surrounded by members of and advocating for a political party can further solidify the party”s political beliefs in its members (Stoker & Bass, 2011).

With the average American spending over eight hours per day at work, the workplace is an important site for political socialization.

For many people, coworkers become some of their closest friends, and the workplace provides a built-in support system.

In addition, workplaces provide structure and routine, which can be helpful in difficult times. As people become more and more enmeshed in the community of the work, they become more likely to identify with the beliefs of those around them. In this way, work serves a similar function to peer groups (Washburn & Covert, 2017).

Employers can explicitly use their employee”s work as a vehicle for political socialization by requiring attendance at politically-charged seminars or viewing of films and messaging promoting the workplace”s political views.

However, more common is the subtle pressure to support the company”s favored candidates or policies. Employees who do not conform to these pressures may find themselves passed over for promotions or even lose their jobs.

As a result, people tend to self-censor their views on politics while at work, which can have a significant impact on their overall political views (Washburn & Covert, 2017).

Characteristics and Importance

Children realize they belong to a town and eventually develop political awareness of their nationality. The development of a political self begins when children start to become aware of politics as its own distinct realm in the preschool years. (Dennis, Easton, & Easton, 1969).

Younger children often think of the government personally. The first political objects recognized by children, in America, are the president of the United States and the police officer.

Children tend to idealize these political figures, though this has become less of a trend in recent years as scandals have been made more and more visible by the media (Dennis, Easton, & Easton, 1969).

Many young children have positive attitudes about the political system. School ceremonies such as singing the “Star-Spangled Banner” at the start of each day may inspire patriotism in children. Older children tend to think of the government more abstractly.

By ages 8-10, most children have a basic understanding of government as an institution separate from the individual (Dennis, Easton, & Easton, 1969).

Sociologists believe that people are most politically impressionable during the period from their mid-teens through their mid-twenties, when their views are not set and they are open to new experiences.

Nonetheless, significant events in anyone’s life – such as work, marriage, parenthood, and retirement, can significantly alter one’s political views (Steckenrider & Cutler, 1989).

Political socialization does not automatically lead to political participation, but it is an important factor in understanding why some people participate in politics and some do not.

According to classical theories of political socialization, people who are more politically active have typically had more contact with agents of political socialization, such as parents, teachers, and friends (Greenstein, 1965).

In recent years, however, scholars have argued that there are other factors – such as education level or socio-economic status – that are better predictors of political participation than exposure to political socialization agents (Griffin & Newman, 2005).

Some political scientists are concerned about the impact of political socialization on society, particularly how political institutions function. Others concentrate more on what socialization implies for people and how they deal with their political environment.

The breadth of topics those who study political socialization are interested in extends from broad topics such as national identity and consensus political norms to narrower ones such as partisanship and issue preferences.

These broad topics are especially important in understanding how political culture is preserved, while the narrower ones help explain individual-level behavior and attitudes (Jennings & Niemi, 2015).

Adoni, H. (1979). The functions of mass media in the political socialization of adolescents. Communication Research, 6 (1), 84-106.

Alwin, D. F., & Krosnick, J. A. (1991). Aging, cohorts, and the stability of sociopolitical orientations over the life span.  American journal of sociology, 97 (1), 169-195.

Alwin, D. F., Cohen, R. L., & Newcomb, T. M. (1991). Political attitudes over the life span: The Bennington women after fifty years . Univ of Wisconsin Press.

Campbell, D. E. (2009). Civic engagement and education: An empirical test of the sorting model.  American Journal of Political Science, 53 (4), 771-786.

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Greenstein, F. I. (1965). Personality and political socialization: The theories of authoritarian and democratic character. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 361 (1), 81-95.

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Jennings, M. K., & Niemi, R. G. (2015). Political character of adolescence: The influence of families and schools . Princeton University Press.

Pearson-Merkowitz, S., & Gimpel, J. G. (2009). Religion and political socialization. The Oxford handbook of religion and American politics, 164-190.

Reidy, C. M., Taylor, L. K., Merrilees, C. E., Ajduković, D., Biruški, D. Č., & Cummings, E. M. (2015). The political socialization of youth in a post-conflict community. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 45 , 11-23.

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Steckenrider, J. S., & Cutler, N. E. (1989). Aging and adult political socialization: The importance of roles and transitions. Political learning in adulthood: A sourcebook of theory and research , 56-88.

Stoker, L., & Bass, J. (2011). Political socialization : Ongoing questions and new directions.

Wasburn, P. C., & Covert, T. J. A. (2017). Making citizens: Political socialization research and beyond. Springer.

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6.2 Political Socialization

Learning objectives.

After reading this section, you should be able to answer the following questions:

• How do people develop an understanding of their political culture?
• What is political socialization, and why is it important?
• What constitutes a political generation?

This section will define what is meant by political socialization and detail how the process of political socialization occurs in the United States. It will outline the stages of political learning across an individual’s life course. The agents that are responsible for political socialization, such as the family and the media, and the types of information and orientations they convey will be discussed. Group differences in political socialization will be examined. Finally, the section will address the ways that political generations develop through the political socialization process.

What Is Political Socialization?

People are inducted into the political culture of their nation through the political socialization process (Greenstein, 1969). Most often older members of society teach younger members the rules and norms of political life. However, young people can and do actively promote their own political learning, and they can influence adults’ political behavior as well (McDevitt & Chaffee, 2002).

Political scientists Gabriel Almond and James Coleman once observed that we “do not inherit our political behavior, attitudes, values, and knowledge through our genes” (Almond & Coleman, 1960). Instead, we come to understand our role and to “fit in” to our political culture through the political learning process (Conover, 1991). Political learning is a broad concept that encompasses both the active and passive and the formal and informal ways in which people mature politically (Hahn, 1998). Individuals develop a political self , a sense of personal identification with the political world. Developing a political self begins when children start to feel that they are part of a political community. They acquire the knowledge, beliefs, and values that help them comprehend government and politics (Dawson & Prewitt, 1969). The sense of being an American, which includes feeling that one belongs to a unique nation in which people share a belief in democratic ideals, is conveyed through the political learning process.

Political socialization is a particular type of political learning whereby people develop the attitudes, values, beliefs, opinions, and behaviors that are conducive to becoming good citizens in their country. Socialization is largely a one-way process through which young people gain an understanding of the political world through their interaction with adults and the media. The process is represented by the following model (Greenstein, 1969):

who (subjects) → learns what (political values, beliefs, attitudes, behaviors) → from whom (agents) → under what circumstances → with what effects.

Agents of socialization , which include parents, teachers, and the mass media, convey orientations to subjects, who are mostly passive. For example, parents who take an active role in politics and vote in every election often influence their children to do the same. Young people who see television coverage of their peers volunteering in the community may take cues from these depictions and engage in community service themselves. The circumstances under which political socialization can take place are almost limitless. Young people can be socialized to politics through dinner conversations with family members, watching television and movies, participating in a Facebook group, or texting with friends. The effects of these experiences are highly variable, as people can accept, reject, or ignore political messages.

People develop attitudes toward the political system through the socialization process. Political legitimacy is a belief in the integrity of the political system and processes, such as elections. People who believe strongly in the legitimacy of the political system have confidence that political institutions will be responsive to the wants and needs of citizens and that abuses of governmental power will be held in check. If political leaders engage in questionable behavior, there are mechanisms to hold them accountable. The presidential impeachment process and congressional ethics hearings are two such mechanisms.

Political efficacy refers to individuals’ perceptions about whether or not they can influence the political process. People who have a strong sense of political efficacy feel that they have the skills and resources to participate effectively in politics and that the government will be responsive to their efforts. Those who believe in the legitimacy of the political system and are highly efficacious are more likely to participate in politics and to take strong stands on public-policy issues (Craig, 1993). Citizens who were frustrated about the poor state of the economy and who felt they could influence the political process identified with the Tea Party in the 2010 election and worked to elect candidates who promised to deal with their concerns.

Much political socialization in the United States passes on norms, customs, beliefs, and values supportive of democracy from one generation to the next. Americans are taught to respect the democratic and capitalist values imbedded in the American creed. Young people are socialized to respect authorities, such as parents, teachers, police officers, and fire fighters, and to obey laws.

The goal of this type of socialization is deliberately intended to ensure that the democratic political system survives even in times of political stress, such as economic crisis or war (Dennis, Easton, & Easton, 1969). One indicator of a stable political system is that elections take place regularly following established procedures and that people recognize the outcomes as legitimate (Dennis, Easton, & Easton, 1969). Most Americans quickly accepted George W. Bush as president when the 2000 election deadlock ended with the Supreme Court decision that stopped the recounting of disputed votes in Florida. The country did not experience violent protests after the decision was announced, but instead moved on with politics as usual (Conover, 1991).

2000 Presidential Election Bush vs. Gore

(click to see video)

This citizen-produced video shows peaceful protestors outside of the Supreme Court as the case of Bush v. Gore was being considered to decide the outcome of the 2000 presidential election.

Some scholars argue that political socialization is akin to indoctrination , as it forces people to conform to the status quo and inhibits freedom and creativity (Lindbolm, 1993). However, socialization is not always aimed at supporting democratic political orientations or institutions. Some groups socialize their members to values and attitudes that are wildly at odds with the status quo. The Latin Kings, one of the largest and oldest street gangs in the United States, has its own constitution and formal governing structure. Leaders socialize members to follow gang rules that emphasize an “all for one” mentality; this includes strict internal discipline that calls for physical assault against or death to members who violate the rules. It also calls for violent retribution against rival gang members for actions such as trafficking drugs in the Kings’s territory. The Kings have their own sign language, symbols (a five-point crown and tear drop), colors (black and gold), and holidays (January 6, “King’s Holy Day”) that bond members to the gang (Padilla, 1992).

Political Socialization over the Life Course

Political learning begins early in childhood and continues over a person’s lifetime. The development of a political self begins when children realize that they belong to a particular town and eventually that they are Americans. Awareness of politics as a distinct realm of experience begins to develop in the preschool years (Dennis, Easton, & Easton, 1969).

Younger children tend to personalize government. The first political objects recognized by children are the president of the United States and the police officer. Children tend to idealize political figures, although young people today have a less positive view of political actors than in the past. This trend is partially a result of the media’s preoccupations with personal scandals surrounding politicians.

Young people often have warm feelings toward the political system. Children can develop patriotic values through school rituals, such as singing the “Star Spangled Banner” at the start of each day. As children mature, they become increasingly sophisticated in their perceptions about their place in the political world and their potential for involvement: they learn to relate abstract concepts that they read about in textbooks like this one to real-world actions, and they start to associate the requirements of democracy and majority rule with the need to vote when they reach the age of twenty-one.

Young people who participate in community service projects can develop a long-term commitment to volunteering and political participation.

Hebron – Community Service Day 2013 – CC BY-NC 2.0.

People are the most politically impressionable during the period from their midteens through their midtwenties, when their views are not set and they are open to new experiences. College allows students to encounter people with diverse views and provides opportunities for political engagement (Niemi & Hepburn, 1995). Young people may join a cause because it hits close to home. After the media publicized the case of a student who committed suicide after his roommate allegedly posted highly personal videos of him on the Internet, students around the country became involved in antibullying initiatives (Sapiro, 1983).

Significant events in adults’ lives can radically alter their political perspectives, especially as they take on new roles, such as worker, spouse, parent, homeowner, and retiree (Steckenrider & Cutler, 1988). This type of transition is illustrated by 1960s student protestors against the Vietnam War. Protestors held views different from their peers; they were less trusting of government officials but more efficacious in that they believed they could change the political system. However, the political views of some of the most strident activists changed after they entered the job market and started families. Some became government officials, lawyers, and business executives—the very types of people they had opposed when they were younger (Lyons, 1994).

Student activists in the 1960s protested against US involvement in the Vietnam War. Some activists developed more favorable attitudes toward government as they matured, had families, and became homeowners.

Wikimedia Commons – CC BY 2.0.

Even people who have been politically inactive their entire lives can become motivated to participate as senior citizens. They may find themselves in need of health care and other benefits, and they have more time for involvement. Organizations such as the Gray Panthers provide a pathway for senior citizens to get involved in politics (Miles, 1997).

Agents of Political Socialization

People develop their political values, beliefs, and orientations through interactions with agents of socialization. Agents include parents, teachers, friends, coworkers, military colleagues, church associates, club members, sports-team competitors, and media (Dawson & Prewitt, 1969). The political socialization process in the United States is mostly haphazard, informal, and random. There is no standard set of practices for parents or teachers to follow when passing on the rites of politics to future generations. Instead, vague ideals—such as the textbook concept of the “model citizen,” who keeps politically informed, votes, and obeys the law—serve as unofficial guides for socializing agencies (Langton, 1969; Riccards, 1973).

Agents can convey knowledge and understanding of the political world and explain how it works. They can influence people’s attitudes about political actors and institutions. They also can show people how to get involved in politics and community work. No single agent is responsible for an individual’s entire political learning experience. That experience is the culmination of interactions with a variety of agents. Parents and teachers may work together to encourage students to take part in service learning projects. Agents also may come into conflict and provide vastly different messages.

We focus here on four agents that are important to the socialization process—the family, the school, the peer group, and the media. There are reasons why each of these agents is considered influential for political socialization; there are also factors that limit their effectiveness.

Over forty years ago, pioneering political-socialization researcher Herbert Hyman proclaimed that “foremost among agencies of socialization into politics is the family” (Hyman, 1959). Hyman had good reason for making this assumption. The family has the primary responsibility for nurturing individuals and meeting basic needs, such as food and shelter, during their formative years. A hierarchical power structure exists within many families that stresses parental authority and obedience to the rules that parents establish. The strong emotional relationships that exist between family members may compel children to adopt behaviors and attitudes that will please their parents or, conversely, to rebel against them.

Parents can teach their children about government institutions, political leaders, and current issues, but this rarely happens. They can influence the development of political values and ideas, such as respect for political symbols or belief in a particular cause. The family as an agent of political socialization is most successful in passing on basic political identities, especially an affiliation with the Republican or Democratic Parties and liberal or conservative ideological leanings (Dennis & Owen, 1997).

Children can learn by example when parents act as role models. Young people who observe their parents reading the newspaper and following political news on television may adopt the habit of keeping informed. Adolescents who accompany parents when they attend public meetings, circulate petitions, or engage in other political activities stand a better chance of becoming politically engaged adults (Merelman, 1986). Children can sometimes socialize their parents to become active in politics; participants in the Kids Voting USA program have encouraged their parents to discuss campaign issues and take them to the polls on Election Day.

The home environment can either support or discourage young people’s involvement in political affairs. Children whose parents discuss politics frequently and encourage the expression of strong opinions, even if it means challenging others, are likely to become politically active adults. Young people raised in this type of family will often initiate political discussion and encourage parents to become involved. Alternatively, young people from homes where political conversations are rare, and airing controversial viewpoints is discouraged, tend to abstain from politics as adults (Saphir & Chaffee, 2002). Politics was a central focus of family life for the Kennedys, a family that has produced generations of activists, including President John F. Kennedy and Senator Ted Kennedy.

Members of the Kennedy family have been prominently involved in politics for over a century, illustrating how the desire to participate in politics is passed on generationally.

Wikimedia Commons – public domain.

There are limitations on the effectiveness of the family as an agent of political learning and socialization. Most families are not like the Kennedys. For many families, politics is not a priority, as they are more concerned with issues related to day-to-day life. Few parents serve as political role models for their children. Many activities, such as voting or attending town meetings, take place outside of the home (Merelman).

Some scholars consider the school, rather than the family, to be the most influential agent of political socialization (Hess & Torney, 1967). Schools can stimulate political learning through formal classroom instruction via civics and history classes, the enactment of ceremonies and rituals such as the flag salute, and extracurricular activities such as student government. Respect for authorities is emphasized, as teachers have the ability to reward and punish students through grades.

The most important task of schools as agents of political socialization is the passing on of knowledge about the fundamentals of American government, such as constitutional principles and their implications for citizens’ engagement in politics. Students who master these fundamentals feel competent to participate politically. They are likely to develop the habit of following politics in the media and to become active in community affairs (Nie, Junn, & Stehlik-Barry, 1996).

The college classroom can be an environment for socializing young people to politics. Faculty and student exchanges can form, reinforce, or change evaluations of politics and government. A famous study of women students who attended Bennington College during the Great Depression of the 1930s illustrates how the college experience can create long-lasting political attitudes. The Bennington women came predominantly from wealthy families with conservative values. The faculty consisted of political progressives who supported the New Deal and other social programs. About one-third of the Bennington women adopted the progressive ideals of their teachers. Many of these women remained active in politics their entire lives. A number became leaders of the women’s rights movement (Alwin, Cohen, & Newcomb, 1991).

Figure 6.10

Women at Bennington College in the 1930s became active in community affairs as a result of their political socialization in college.

Wikimedia Commons – CC BY-SA 2.0.

While schools have great potential as agents of political socialization, they are not always successful in teaching even basic facts about government to students. Schools devote far less time to civics and history than to other subjects that are considered to be basic skills, such as reading and math. The average amount of classroom time spent on civics-related topics is less than forty-five minutes per week nationwide, although this figure varies widely based on the school. Students whose exposure to civics is exclusively through lectures and readings generally memorize facts about government for tests but do not remember them or make connections to real-world politics. The most effective civic education programs engage students in activities that prepare them for the real world of politics, such as mock elections and legislative hearings (Niemi & Junn, 1998).

Peers (a group of people who are linked by common interests, equal social position, and similar age) can be influential in the political socialization process. Young people desire approval and are likely to adopt the attitudes, viewpoints, and behavior patterns of groups to which they belong. Unlike the family and school, which are structured hierarchically with adults exercising authority, the peer group provides a forum for youth to interact with people who are at similar levels of maturity. Peers provide role models for people who are trying to fit in or become popular in a social setting (Walker, Hennig, & Krettenauer, 2000).

Peer-group influence begins when children reach school age and spend less time at home. Middle-childhood (elementary school) friendships are largely segregated by sex and age, as groups of boys and girls will engage in social activities such as eating together in the lunchroom or going to the mall. Such interactions reinforce sex-role distinctions, including those with political relevance, such as the perception that males are more suited to hold positions of authority. Peer relationships change later in childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood, when groups are more often based on athletic, social, academic, and job-related interests and abilities (Harris, 1995).

The pressure to conform to group norms can have a powerful impact on young people’s political development if group members are engaged in activities directly related to politics, such as student government or working on a candidate’s campaign. Young people even will change their political viewpoints to conform to those held by the most vocal members of their peer group rather than face being ostracized. Still, individuals often gravitate toward groups that hold beliefs and values similar to their own in order to minimize conflict and reinforce their personal views (Dey, 1997). As in the case of families, the influence of peer groups is mitigated by the fact that politics is not a high priority for most of them.

As early as the 1930s, political scientist Charles Merriam observed that radio and film had tremendous power to educate: “Millions of persons are reached daily through these agencies, and are profoundly influenced by the material and interpretations presented in impressive form, incessantly, and in moments when they are open to suggestion” (Merriam, 1931). The capacity of mass media to socialize people to politics has grown massively as the number of media outlets has increased and as new technologies allow for more interactive media experiences. Most people’s political experiences occur vicariously through the media because they do not have personal access to government or politicians.

Since the advent of television, mass media have become prominent socialization agents. Young people’s exposure to mass media has increased markedly since the 1960s. Studies indicate that the typical American aged two to eighteen spends almost forty hours a week consuming mass media, which is roughly the equivalent of holding a full-time job. In one-third of homes, the television is on all day. Young people’s mass-media experiences often occur in isolation. They spend much of their time watching television, using a computer or cell phone, playing video games, or listening to music alone. Personal contact with family members, teachers, and friends has declined. More than 60 percent of people under the age of twenty have televisions in their bedrooms, which are multimedia sanctuaries (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2006).

The use of more personalized forms of media, such as text messaging and participation in social networking sites, has expanded exponentially in recent years. Young people using these forms of media have greater control over their own political socialization: they can choose to follow politics through a Facebook group that consists largely of close friends and associates with similar viewpoints, or they may decide to avoid political material altogether. Young people, even those who have not reached voting age, can become involved in election campaigns by using social media to contribute their own commentary and videos online.

Media are rich sources of information about government, politics, and current affairs. People learn about politics through news presented on television, in newspapers and magazines, on radio programs, on Internet websites, and through social media. The press provides insights into the workings of government by showcasing political leaders in action, such as gavel-to-gavel coverage of Congress on C-SPAN. People can witness politicians in action, including on the campaign trail, through videos posted on YouTube and on online news sites such as CNN and MSNBC. Entertainment media, including television comedies and dramas, music, film, and video games also contain much political content. Television programs such as The West Wing and Law and Order offer viewers accounts of how government functions that, although fictionalized, can appear realistic. Media also establish linkages between leaders, institutions, and citizens. In contrast to typing and mailing a letter, it is easier than ever for people to contact leaders directly using e-mail and Facebook.

Some factors work against the media as agents of political socialization. Media are first and foremost profit-driven entities that are not mandated to be civic educators; they balance their public service imperative against the desire to make money. Moreover, unlike teachers, journalists do not have formal training in how to educate citizens about government and politics; as a result, the news often can be more sensational than informative.

Group Differences

Political learning and socialization experiences can differ vastly for people depending on the groups with which they associate, such as those based on gender and racial and ethnic background. Certain groups are socialized to a more active role in politics, while others are marginalized. Wealthier people may have more resources for participating in politics, such as money and connections, than poorer people.

Figure 6.11

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is one of an increasing number of women who has achieved a highly visible political leadership role.

There are significant differences in the way that males and females are socialized to politics. Historically, men have occupied a more central position in American political culture than women. This tradition was institutionalized at the time of the founding, when women did not receive the right to vote in the Constitution. While strides have been made over the past century to achieve political equality between the sexes, differences in sex-role socialization still exist. Traits associated with political leadership, such as being powerful and showing authority, are more often associated with males than females. Girls have fewer opportunities to observe women taking political action, especially as few females hold the highly visible positions, such as member of Congress and cabinet secretary, that are covered by mass media. This is starting to change as women such as Madeleine Albright and now Hillary Clinton attract media attention in their roles as secretary of state or as Nancy Pelosi did as Speaker of the House of Representatives. Sarah Palin gained national attention as Republican John McCain’s vice presidential running mate in 2008, and she has become a visible and outspoken political figure in her own right. Despite these developments, women are still are socialized to supporting political roles, such as volunteering in political campaigns, rather than leading roles, such as holding higher-level elected office. The result is that fewer women than men seek careers in public office beyond the local level (Sapiro, 2002).

Political Generations

A political generation is a group of individuals, similar in age, who share a general set of political socialization experiences leading to the development of shared political orientations that distinguish them from other age groups in society. People of a similar age tend to be exposed to shared historical, social, and political stimuli. A shared generational outlook develops when an age group experiences a decisive political event in its impressionable years —the period from late adolescence to early adulthood when people approach or attain voting age—and begins to think more seriously about politics. At the same time, younger people have less clearly defined political beliefs, which makes them more likely to be influenced by key societal events (Carpini, 1986).

The idea of American political generations dates back to the founding fathers. Thomas Jefferson believed that new generations would emerge in response to changing social and political conditions and that this would, in turn, influence public policy. Today people can be described as being part of the Depression Era/GI generation, the silent generation, the baby boom generation, generation X, and the millennial generation/generation Y. Depression Era/GIs, born between 1900 and 1924, were heavily influenced by World War I and the Great Depression. They tend to trust government to solve programs because they perceived that Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal programs helped the country recover from the Depression. The silent generation, born between 1922 and 1945, experienced World War II and the 1950s during their impressionable years. Like their predecessors, they believe that government can get things done, but they are less trusting of leaders. The Vietnam War and the civil rights and women’s rights movements left lasting impressions on the baby boomers, who were born between 1943 and 1960. The largest of the generations, this cohort protested against the government establishment in its youth and still distrusts government. Generation Xers, born between 1965 and 1980, came of age during a period without a major war or economic hardship. The seminal events they relate to are the explosion of the Challenger spacecraft and the Iran-Contra hearings. This generation developed a reputation for lacking both knowledge and interest in politics (Strauss & Howe, 1992). The political development of the millennials, those born between 1981 and 2000, is influenced by the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and its aftermath, as well as by the rise of digital technologies. This generation is more multicultural and has more tolerance for racial and ethnic difference than older cohorts. Sociologists William Strauss and Neil Howe have identified an emerging cohort born after 2000, which they label the homeland generation. This generation is influenced by omnipresent technology, the war on terror, and parents who seek to protect them from societal ills (Strauss & Howe, 2000).

Conflicts between generations have existed for centuries. Thomas Jefferson observed significant differences in the political worldviews of younger and older people in the early days of the republic. Younger government leaders were more willing to adapt to changing conditions and to experiment with new ideas than older officials (Elazar, 1976). Today generation Xers and the millennials have been portrayed as self-interested and lacking social responsibility by their elders from the baby boom generation. Generational conflicts of different periods have been depicted in landmark films including the 1950s-era Rebel without a Cause and the 1960s-era Easy Rider . Generation X has been portrayed in films such as Slacker , The Breakfast Club , and Reality Bites . Movies about the millennial generation include Easy A and The Social Network .

Key Takeaways

Political socialization is the process by which people learn about their government and acquire the beliefs, attitudes, values, and behaviors associated with good citizenship. The political socialization process in the United States stresses the teaching of democratic and capitalist values. Agents, including parents, teachers, friends, coworkers, church associates, club members, sports teams, mass media, and popular culture, pass on political orientations.

Political socialization differs over the life course. Young children develop a basic sense of identification with a country. College students can form opinions based on their experiences working for a cause. Older people can become active because they see a need to influence public policy that will affect their lives. There are subgroup differences in political socialization. Certain groups, such citizens with higher levels of education and income, are socialized to take an active part in politics, while others are marginalized.

Political generations consist of individuals similar in age who develop a unique worldview as a result of living through particular political experiences. These key events include war and economic depression.

• Do you believe you have the power to make an impact on the political process?
• What is the first political event you were aware of? What did you think about what was going on? Who influenced how you thought about it?
• How do members of your political generation feel about the government? How do your attitudes differ from those of your parents?

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Alwin, D. F., Ronald L. Cohen, and Theodore M. Newcomb, Political Attitudes Over the Life Span (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991).

Carpini, M. X. D., Stability and Change in American Politics (New York: New York University Press, 1986).

Conover, P. J., “Political Socialization: Where’s the Politics?” in Political Science: Looking to the Future, Volume III, Political Behavior, ed. William Crotty (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1991), 125–152.

Craig, S. C., Malevolent Leaders (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993).

Dawson, R. E. and Kenneth Prewitt, Political Socialization (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1969).

Dennis, J., David Easton, and Sylvia Easton, Children in the Political System (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969).

Dennis, J. and Diana Owen, “The Partisanship Puzzle: Identification and Attitudes of Generation X,” in After the Boom, ed. Stephen C. Craig and Stephen Earl Bennet (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), 43–62.

Dey, E. L., “Undergraduate Political Attitudes,” Journal of Higher Education , 68 (1997): 398–413.

Elazar, D. J., The Generational Rhythm of American Politics (Philadelphia: Temple University, Center for the Study of Federalism, 1976).

Greenstein, F. I., Children and Politics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1969).

Hahn, C. L., Becoming Political (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998).

Harris, J. R., “Where Is the Child’s Environment? A Group Socialization Theory of Development,” Psychological Review 102, no. 3 (1995): 458–89.

Hess, R. and Judith Torney, The Development of Political Attitudes in Children (Chicago: Aldine, 1967).

Hyman, H., Political Socialization (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1959), 69.

Kaiser Family Foundation, The Media Family (Menlo Park, CA: Kaiser Family Foundation, 2006).

Langton, K. P., Political Socialization (New York: Oxford, 1969).

Lindblom, C. E., “Another Sate of Mind,” in Discipline and History, ed. James Farr and Raymond Seidelman (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 327–43.

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Merelman, R. M., Making Something of Ourselves (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).

Merriam, C. E., The Making of Citizens (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1931), 160–61.

Miles, A. D., “A Multidimensional Approach to Distinguishing between the Most and Least Politically Engaged Senior Citizens, Using Socialization and Participation Variables” (PhD diss., Georgetown University, 1997).

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American Government and Politics in the Information Age Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Political Socialization and the Making of Citizens

Associate Professor, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Nottingham

Senior Lecturer in Politics (Quantitative Methods) Department of Political Science and International Relations University of London

• Published: 06 February 2017
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Political socialization describes the process by which citizens crystalize political identities, values and behavior that remain relatively persistent throughout later life. This chapter provides a comprehensive discussion of the scholarly debate on political socialization, posing a number of questions that arise in the study of political socialization and the making of citizens. First, what is it about early life experiences that makes them matter for political attitudes, political engagement, and political behavior? Second, what age is crucial in the development of citizens’ political outlook? Third, who and what influences political orientations and behavior in early life, and how are cohorts colored by the nature of time when they come of age? Fourth, how do political preferences and behavior develop after the impressionable years? The chapter further provides an outlook of the challenges and opportunities for the field of political socialization.

Introduction

Observing the regularity and continuity of individuals’ patterns of political behavior over time, already in the 1950s scholars were drawing attention to the need to study processes of early political socialization. Hyman (1959 , 25) defined political socialization as an individual’s “learning of social patterns corresponding to his societal position as mediated through various agencies of society.” It is a process of largely informal learning that almost everyone experiences throughout life as a consequence of interactions with parents, family, friends, neighbors, peers, colleagues, and so forth. Merelman (1986 , 279; emphasis added) further describes political socialization as “the process by which people acquire relatively enduring orientations toward politics in general and toward their own political system.”

Early life experiences are generally considered to form the basis for political attitudes (e.g., political values and identity), political engagement (e.g., political interest and political efficacy), and ultimately political behaviors (e.g., conventional and unconventional forms of political participation). Young citizens, it is believed, are not yet set in their political ways and are subsequently more easily influenced by external factors. Yet today there is no agreement on how enduring these early socialization experiences are. Some argue for lifelong plasticity, based on the idea that citizens update their preferences and behavior as they go through the life span and experience important life events ( Alwin and Krosnick 1991 ). Others argue that basic orientations acquired early in life structure later political orientations and beliefs, and that these orientations and beliefs tend to be enduring and persistent ( Easton and Dennis 1969 ).

This chapter provides a comprehensive discussion of the scholarly debate on political socialization, posing a number of questions that arise in the study of political socialization and the making of citizens. First, what is it about early life experiences that makes them matter for political attitudes, political engagement, and political behavior? Second, what age is crucial in the development of citizens’ political outlook? Third, who and what influences political orientations and behavior in early life, and how are cohorts colored by the nature of time when they come of age? Fourth, how do political preferences and behavior develop after the impressionable years?

The first section of this chapter discusses the development of the field of political socialization and its quest for the origin and development of political preferences and behaviors. We address the impressionable years and the mechanisms behind the socialization approach. Then we discuss the influence of socializing agents. An important factor that has often been overlooked in the literature is how the political, economic, and social contexts in which people grow up color the political views of entire generations, leading to potential societal changes. In connection to this we also discuss the idea of generational change. The third section describes the long-term dynamics of socialization through an overview of the age, period, and cohort (APC) approach. In the final section we provide an overview of the theoretical and methodological challenges and opportunities for the study of political socialization.

Political Socialization: History and Key Concepts

Early empirical socialization studies mainly focused on political orientations and behaviors of young children, as it was believed that political attitudes were acquired very early in life (see, e.g., Easton and Dennis 1969 ). This early research was driven by two assumptions. First, it was assumed that what is learned earliest in life is most important, as early experiences serve as a value basis for future attitudes and behaviors ( Niemi and Hepburn 1995 ). Second, it was presumed that attitudes and behaviors acquired prior to adulthood remained unchanged in later life. A large volume of research on the formation of political attitudes and behavior assessed these two assumptions (cf. Dennis and McCrone 1970 ; Jennings and Niemi 1974 ; Sears and Valentino 1997 ), and the classical example of an enduring attitude is the concept of party identification, studied in detail in the seminal work The American Voter by Campbell et al. (1960) .

However, later research showed that the persistence of preferences and behaviors developed in early life had been overestimated ( Searing, Wright, and Rabinowitz 1976 ), and it became evident that political ideas developed during childhood were revised later in life ( Searing, Schwartz, and Lind, 1973 ). In fact, a decade later Kinder and Sears (1985 , 724) concluded that a more plausible view of the development of political preferences and behavior is one that combines the impressionable years and persistence hypotheses with the possibility of small but still noticeable levels of change in later life. The focus of scientific discussion at this point shifted from early political socialization to more in-depth studies of aging. Especially Marsh’s (1971) critique of the early studies of political socialization changed the understanding of “what, when and how people learn political behaviour and attitudes” ( Hepburn 1995 , 5). Marsh challenged in particular the assumption that “adult opinions are in a large part the end product of political socialisation” (1971, 455). Such persistence, Marsh concluded, applies only to important personality variables, whereas the enduring nature of political attitudes remains uncertain.

Research accordingly shifted focus from attitude stability to the conceptualization of socialization as an individual political development and a process of learning. Party identification is a central concept in the study of political science and served as the main battlefield for the advocates of different views. Party identification was originally conceptualized as an identity, that is, something that could be developed without the cognitive skills to fully understand the political world. Later scholars proposed to think of partisanship less as an identity—being stable over the life cycle—and more of an attitude that arises as a function of informed reactions to the performance of governments and opposition parties in a number of policy areas, most notably the economy (cf. Ordeshook 1976 ; Fiorina 1981 ; Page and Jones 1979 ; Franklin and Jackson 1983 ; MacKuen, Erikson, and Stimson 1989 ). Because governments and economic good times are never permanent, an individual’s affiliation with a political party is always subject to “rational updating.” Hence this research tries to uncover how the nature of the current time affects the direction and strength of certain political attitudes such as partisanship.

The focus on performance-based evaluations of government and their impact on party identification diminished the importance of early political socialization. This explains why political socialization disappeared from the academic agenda for a period of time between the 1970s and 1990s, before re-emerging as important and salient in the early 2000s.

The Impressionable Years: When and What

The general consensus after decades of research thus appears to be that political learning is a lifelong process, starting at an early age ( Easton and Dennis 1969 ; Jennings and Niemi 1981 ; van Deth et al. 2007 ). The “impressionable or formative years” between childhood and adulthood are generally believed to be a crucial period during which citizens form the basis of political attitudes and behaviors (see, e.g., Jennings 1979 ; Strate et al. 1989 ; Highton and Wolfinger 2001 ; Kinder 2006 ). Young citizens have not yet developed political habits and are therefore more easily influenced by external factors ( Alwin and Krosnick 1991 ; Flanagan and Sherod 1998 ; Sears and Levy 2003 ). Personal, social, cultural, political, and historical changes affect young citizens disproportionately, thus creating generational differences in patterns of political attitudes and behavior.

The crucial impressionable years are traditionally between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five ( Jennings and Niemi 1981 ). For example, when examining macro-partisan trends among adults, Erikson, MacKuen, and Stimson (2002) found that political events had the largest impact at ages eighteen and nineteen. Nonetheless, both a clear definition and operationalization of the impressionable years are lacking, and political learning is certainly not confined to these adolescent and early adulthood years. Moving away from predefining the boundaries of the impressionable years, recent studies have found that children in their first year of primary school, who are not yet literate or numerate, can recognize political problems and issues and already show consistent, structured political orientations ( van Deth, Abendschön, and Vollmar 2011 ). Bartels and Jackman (2014) , in their study of political learning, as expected found evidence for a period of heightened sensitivity to political events during adolescence, but the peak period of sensitivity was found to be between the ages of seven and seventeen. Ghitza and Gelman (n.d.) , following up on the work by Bartels and Jackman, likewise present empirical estimates of the formative years. Based on their estimation, the height of formative experiences is between the ages of fourteen and twenty-four, with two peaks: one at fifteen to sixteen years and another at twenty-one to twenty-two years.

Recent research therefore suggests that children may be socialized into politics at a very young age. This implies that the lower age band of the impressionable years should be brought down. At the same time there is also evidence that the period of political learning nowadays is extended. Research by Bhatti and Hansen (2012b) , for example, suggests that turnout drops after the first voting experience at the age of eighteen, and that only around the age of thirty-five do citizens bounce back to their first-time turnout levels. This can be linked to the theoretical expectation that life-cycle events experienced during early adulthood influence the development of political interest and political participation ( Neundorf, Smets, and García Albacete 2013 ). Delays in the transition to adulthood imply that defining the impressionable years too narrowly entails missing out on a number of important life-cycle changes ( Iacovou 2002 ; Council of Europe 2005 ; Smets 2016 ). Boundaries of the impressionable years may, moreover, be context dependent.

How Does Socialization Work?

If political socialization processes start at a young age, what are the mechanisms through which children learn about politics? First, children learn directly or indirectly about social and political issues from various socializing agents. Such agencies can be diverse: family, peers, school, mass media, and even the political context. There is also a mobilizing element to political socialization, as those around us can influence, encourage, or discourage our behavior. We address these two mechanisms in more detail in the next section.

Thinking about the mechanisms of political socialization, let us make an analogy to describe the idea of socialization as forming relatively stable political preferences. Imagine that we each have a finite bookshelf that holds our political values, identities, and behavior, which is empty when we are born. During our childhood and adolescence these shelves are slowly filled with stories that we receive from the various agents of socialization and our own experiences. We learn about the political world and are exposed to (biased) information about political ideas. Each experience, conversation, and piece of information gets stored on our mental bookshelves. But at some point there is no more space on the shelves, and we start to have pretty definite ideas about politics and our own opinions. If asked what we think about political issues or how we should behave politically, we go to our mental shelves and take out the books that contain information and experiences related to this topic. The problem, however, is that as one’s shelf fills up, it is more and more difficult for new information to be considered, as this implies that old books need to be disregarded. New books might pile up somewhere on the floor, but they will not be stored as considerations in our set of beliefs and values. This idea of predispositions that are quite fundamental in a person’s belief system and that come from socialization processes goes back to the work of John Zaller (1992) .

Another viewpoint on political socialization is the idea of habit formation, a mechanism that has mostly been researched in relation to individual level voter turnout, that is, a citizen’s decision to vote or abstain from voting in elections. In the political learning approach to political behavior, it is argued that citizens learn the habit of either voting or nonvoting in the early stages of their adult lives, and that past behavior predicts present behavior ( Green and Shachar 2000 ; Kanazawa 2000 ; Bendor, Diermeier, and Ting 2003 ; Gerber, Green, and Shachar 2003 ; Aldrich, Montgomery, and Wood 2011 ; Dinas 2012 ). Plutzer (2002 , 44) explains the political learning perspective with the example of someone aged forty with a higher than average income. Based on this information we would expect this man or woman to have an above average level of political participation. What if a couple of years later the person loses his or her job and has to take on one that pays an average wage? Thinking of voting as a habit, a change in income is not likely to influence levels of political participation, even though the possibility of disruptions in the habit of voting can never be completely excluded ( Plutzer 2002 ; Strate et al. 1989 ).

The large impact of past turnout on current turnout decisions observed in the literature is explained through various mechanisms (see, e.g., Cutts, Fieldhouse, and John 2009 ; Aldrich, Montgomery, and Wood 2011 ; Dinas 2012 for overviews). First, turnout is caused by a set of factors such as political interest or partisanship that are relatively stable over the life span ( Prior 2010 ; Neundorf, Smets, and García Albacete 2013 ). These factors may therefore influence the starting level of political participation (i.e., whether someone will vote at his or her first opportunity) but not so much the subsequent levels of political participation over the life span ( Plutzer 2002 ). Second, the act of voting is self-reinforcing, as it increases positive attitudes toward voting and alters one’s self-image to the extent that voting contributes to that image. Third, once voters have been to the polls they face lower information barriers and can make use of their hands-on experience and knowledge of the political system during subsequent elections. Despite a fair amount of empirical evidence for the existence of a habitual voting effect, the literature is not yet settled on the cause of repeated behavior. Whether other forms of political behavior are also habitual is also yet to be determined.

Socialization Agents: Family, Schools, and Beyond

The previous section addressed the importance of the impressionable years as well as the concepts of political learning and habit formation. The question we have not yet answered is who and what influences young people’s political perceptions and behaviors during childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood years. With political learning already taking place at a very young age, it comes as no surprise that much of the literature has focused on the influence that parents have on their children. Likewise, the influence of education, or more specifically civic education, has received ample attention in the literature. Some newer research also investigates the role of other socialization agents: peers, (conventional and social) media, and even political events. Socializing agents either directly or indirectly teach children about politics but also have a mobilizing function as they influence, encourage, or discourage young people’s political preferences and political action.

Parents as Socialization Agents

Scholars have emphasized the impact of the family as one of the main socialization agents in the transmission of basic political orientations ( Dalton 1980 ; Jennings and Niemi 1968 , 1981; Jennings, Stoker, and Bowers 2009 ). The determinant influence of parental socialization has mostly been stressed in conjunction with the development of party identification ( Taylor, Peplau, and Sears 1994 ; Campbell et al. 1960 ; Jennings and Niemi 1974 ; Kroh and Selb 2009 ), political ideology ( Percheron and Jennings 1981 ), and political participation ( Beck and Jennings 1982 ; Verba, Schlozman, and Burns 2005 ).

Parents are considered to influence the development of their children’s political orientations in at least two ways. First, parents influence their children’s levels of political awareness through the explicit political characteristics of family life ( Jennings and Niemi 1968 ; Beck and Jennings 1982 ). Highly politicized parents may foster positive civic orientations that stimulate engagement in politics ( Beck and Jennings 1982 , 98). Moreover, Jennings, Stoker, and Bowers (2009) offer evidence that successful parent-child transmissions occur more often when the family environment is more politicized, arguing that in this case parents provide consistent signals about where they stand politically. The presence of role models, parents in particular, may lead to imitation and subsequently even adoption of behaviors and attitudes (see, e.g., Kandel and Andrews 1987 and Dryer 1998 for more on imitation and socialization).

The second way in which parents influence their children is through parental socioeconomic status (SES). Parental SES can contribute to political involvement due to a direct effect on children’s SES. Parents with higher SES have children who are more likely to have high levels of education. Children’s levels of education, in turn, influence levels of political interest and knowledge. Parental SES, moreover, can contribute to the development of class-specific political orientations as well as encourage civic attitudes and involvement ( Beck and Jennings 1982 , 96–97; Verba, Schlozman, and Burns 2005 , 97; Jennings, Stoker, and Bowers 2009 , 790).

However, Westholm (1999) shows that parent-child socialization is not just a two-step process whereby children create an image of where parents stand politically and subsequently adapt their own behavior and thinking to this. Instead, the image that children have of their parents’ political views serves as an intervening rather than as a conditioning factor. Moreover, the relationship between children’s own views and the image they have of their parents’ views is reciprocal. Substituting children’s image of their parents’ views for actual parent data obscures some of the socialization mechanisms. Westholm (1999 , 542, 548) thus warns that the use of children’s subjective images of their parents’ political views should be avoided in favor of studies based on multiple sources of parental political preferences (i.e., using both children and parents as sources).

Newer research on the influence of parents on their offspring has challenged the idea that children to a large extent adopt the views of their parents. Dinas (2014) shows that parent-child correspondence in party identification is dependent on parental politicization. Those with politically interested and involved parents are indeed most likely to adopt their parents’ party identification as adolescents but are also more likely to revise their party affiliation in (early) adulthood, because “those who are politically engaged are most likely to be exposed to new political stimuli in early adulthood” ( Dinas, 2014 , 827). Also researching the imperfections of parental transmissions, Wolak (2009) found that both the personality of adolescents and their wider political environment mediated parent-child transmission in party identification. Like Dinas, Wolak (2009 , 581) finds that amore inquisitive adolescents and those who are more attentive to political news tend to have more volatile party preferences and thus are more likely to challenge their parents’ political views.

The Influence of School

Besides parent-child transmission of political attitudes and behaviors, the influence of school on the development of political engagement has been the focus of much research. Education itself is highly correlated with political knowledge, interest, voter turnout, and other forms of political participation. Yet it has been repeatedly suggested that this connection might exist largely because education serves as a proxy for social class or cognitive ability, or that education simply serves as a sorting mechanism that divides the population into higher and lower statuses ( Nie, Junn, and Stehlik-Barry 1996 ; Denny and Doyle 2008 ; Campbell 2009 ). These and similar questions about the effects of education mean, in David Campbell’s words, that “we know relatively little about the civic development of adolescents. Specifically, we have a limited understanding of how schools do, or do not, foster political engagement among their adolescent students” ( Campbell 2009 , 438).

With respect to the influence of civic education, the uncertainty is even greater. For a long time it was argued that civic education and the curriculum more broadly had almost no influence at all on students’ attitudes ( Langton and Jennings 1968 ). That proposition has been under fire for almost two decades ( Niemi and Junn 1998 ; Nie and Hillygus 2001 ). Still, the precise way in which schooling influences students is unclear. One possibility is that civics instruction itself—the classes students take that teach about one’s government and one’s role as a citizen—is the causal agent. Even then, the influence may stem from specific features of the class: whether it consists mostly of lectures, incorporates class discussions, involves students in group projects, and so forth. Another possibility, which has found support from a major cross-national study, is that the climate of the classroom—how free students feel to express their opinions and have them discussed and respected—underlies student attitudes, political engagement, and even political knowledge ( Torney-Purta 2002 ). Community service, which may or may not be a part of formal classroom instruction, is yet another factor that may influence youths’ feelings and actions about civic and political participation ( Finlay, Wray-Lake, and Flanagan 2010 ).

The role of civic education in mobilization and political participation has not only been explored in Western democracies. Based on research in the Dominican Republic and South Africa, Finkel (2002) finds that civic education also mobilizes citizens in developing democracies, but that the impact depends on citizens’ levels of political resources. Civic education and other mobilizing processes are complementary, which implies that civic education alone cannot overcome the unequal distribution of politically relevant resources in developing democracies.

More recent work on civic education has attempted to gauge the relative influence of multiple socializing agents. For example, Neundorf, Niemi, and Smets (2016) study the combined effect of parental socialization and civic education. As discussed previously, the political environment in the parental home has a strong impact on the political development of children. However, many young people do not come from political families and hence are disadvantaged in developing political preferences and being mobilized into politics. Neundorf, Niemi, and Smets (2016) hence investigate whether civic education in school can compensate for missing parental socialization. Their findings are based on panel data and suggest that civics training in schools indeed compensates for inequalities in family socialization with respect to political engagement. This conclusion holds for two very different countries (the United States and Belgium), at very different points in time (the 1960s and the 2000s), and for a varying length of observation (youth to old age and impressionable years only).

Peers and (Social) Media

School is one of the first environments in which children have contact with other people who are not parents, siblings, or other family members. Not only are children mobilized by their peers, they also discuss sociopolitical issues together, share popular culture, and develop (common or opposing) sets of values ( Langton 1967 ; Tedin 1980 ). Peer groups also introduce social norms; moreover, being part of a social network establishes useful democratic and economic principles such as the exchange of goods, services, and information ( Cochran and Brassard 1979 ).

Peer cultures are also transmitted via (social) media. Wattenberg (2008) argues that media nowadays socialize young people in a different way than they did in previous generations. Commercialization of the media has had consequences for both the content and form of all items broadcast. As a consequence, young people are less likely to be exposed to political information and more likely to be exposed to entertainment (see also Prior 2005 ). This in turn has led to a growing lack of interest in politics as well as lower levels of political knowledge among young people.

Of course nowadays citizens spend an increasingly larger portion of their time online. One of the questions that has garnered a lot of scholarly interest is whether such new media forms foster interaction with people with different views or rather tend to be echo chambers in which citizens interact with like-minded people only. Work on the mobilizing effects of new social media shows that these networks tend to be homophilic and that citizens mostly interact with people who have similar ideological preferences and political views ( Barberá et al. 2015 ). These findings open up avenues for new ways of using big data collected through social media websites. For example, Barberá (2015) shows how social network activity—such as the use of Twitter—can be used to estimate citizens’ ideological positions.

Political Events

The political context in which citizens grow up has often been overlooked as a socializing agent. In his contribution on turnout in established democracies and the learning effect of voting, Mark Franklin argues that the way in which young voters react to the character of an election is crucial to this incoming cohort’s future turnout levels (2004, 65). Short-term characteristics of elections influence younger citizens’ turnout decisions but have much less impact on the decisions of older voters, who have already established a habit of voting or abstaining ( Franklin 2004 , 80). Electoral competition is especially important in this respect.

As Smets and Neundorf (2014) demonstrate, high-stakes elections tend to attract more voters than elections in which the outcome is a foregone conclusion. This mobilization effect is strongest for young voters. Cohorts that grew up in a highly politicized context have a higher propensity to turn out to vote in later life. However, using data from the US General Social Survey, Smets and Neundorf show that those coming of age in a highly polarized political context are less likely to vote in later life. In a two-party system like the United States, large ideological distances may imply that voters have to choose between two parties that do not represent their views ( Fiorina, Abrams, and Pope 2004 ). This is especially the case for voters placing themselves in the center ( Callander and Wilson 2007 ). Hence, in the US setting large ideological distances are more likely to have a negative effect on individual level turnout.

Schuman and Corning (2012 , 25) research the impact of critical periods that occur in the lives of citizens from adolescence onward and show that the experience of a transformative event during the critical years of later childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood, as well as the experience of an event after the critical years, can contribute to generation-defining memories. The role of political context in political socialization is certainly not confined to the role of elections and electoral behavior. Dinas (2013) , for example, shows how the Watergate scandal disproportionately affected young people’s (negative) evaluations of President Richard Nixon. Another example by Erickson and Stoker (2011) demonstrates how the Vietnam War impacted political attitudes related to partisanship and international intervention among young Americans affected by the draft, a selective service system applied by the US military in 1969 and 1971. The idea of critical events influencing behavior has also been addressed outside the realm of political science. Malmendier and Nagel (2011) , for example, show that experiencing macroeconomic shocks leads to lower levels of financial risk-taking in later life.

The Dynamics of Socialization: Age, Period, and Cohorts

The previous sections focused mainly on the impressionable years and what triggers political learning in early life. Another key question is whether early socialization experiences persist in later life or are overwritten and updated by newer experiences. For this we turn to the dynamics of socialization through a discussion of APC effects.

Defining APC Effects

Research into the question of how an individual develops specific political attitudes or behaviors will usually hold three different—but highly related—factors accountable: aging, enduring intercohort experiences, and time. The idea behind the life-cycle or age approach is that people’s patterns of political behavior change as they age, and that the relationship between age and political behavior is curvilinear: people are most active in middle life and least active in the earliest and latest stages of the life cycle. While the curvilinear relationship with age does not seem to hold for all modes of political participation (see, e.g., Stolle and Hooghe 2011 ), there is ample evidence that the relationship between age and voter turnout can indeed be described with an inverted U-shape. However, it is not the number of candles on one’s birthday cake, but the life experiences that accompany the transition to different life stages, that matter for political participation.

According to the life-cycle argument, young people participate less in politics given their low attachment to civic life, a characteristic that is fueled by young people still going through education, being occupied with finding a partner, establishing a career, having higher mobility, dealing with the psychological transformation into adulthood, and so forth. These characteristics lead young people to be politically inexperienced and to have little interest in politics, low levels of knowledge, and fewer skills (i.e., to have few political resources). This in turn makes political participation both more difficult and less meaningful in this first stage of the life cycle ( Strate et al. 1989 ; Jankowski and Strate 1995 ).

In middle life participation rates are thought to stabilize at a higher level as people experience life-cycle events that mark the transition to adulthood. Such events include leaving the parental home, starting a full-time job, cohabiting or getting married, buying a house, starting a family, settling down in a community, and so forth ( Vogel 2001 ; Billari 2005 ). Even though many of these processes put a demand on time, they are associated with activities (involvement in organizations, associations, the community, etc.) that tend to enhance political participation due to increased mobilization, skills, and pressure ( Strate et al. 1989 , 444; Lane 1959 , 218; Kinder 2006 ). As stakeholders, homeowners are more likely to be interested in property tax and mortgages. To those with (full-time) jobs, issues such as pensions and income tax become relevant ( Flanagan et al. 2012 ). As a result the transition to adulthood increases attention to and familiarity with parties’ and candidates’ positions, which in turn fosters party attachment and other forms of political engagement. All in all, the middle aged seem to have the best cards to understand politics and their part in it ( Jankowski and Strate 1995 , 91), which is most likely the reason that this stage of the political life cycle is often used as a base against which to compare the political participation levels of younger and older citizens ( Braungart and Braungart 1986 , 210).

Participation rates among older age groups, finally, tend to drop under the influence of, for example, health problems, the loss of a politically active spouse, retirement, and declining family income. To summarize, the more general disengagement from social life leads to a lower attachment to political life ( Cutler and Bengtson 1974 , 163).

Focusing on individuals’ life experiences, the political life-cycle or age approach neglects the fact that social, cultural, and historical events can impact political attitudes and political participation. This is how the cohort or generation approach entered the spotlight of socialization research. Common within these cohort and generation approaches is the idea that it is not so much the dynamics of biological aging that make one grow into political life, but rather social, cultural, and historical factors that shape the political participatory patterns of a cohort or generation ( De Graaf 1999 ; Braungart and Braungart 1986 ). Historical differences and social change are thus considered to be the driving factors behind age differences in political preferences and behavior.

The resulting cohort effects or, as they are sometimes called, generation effects , are defined to be “enduring intercohort distinctions that are attributable to the common ‘imprinting’ of cohort members. With regard to attitudinal dependent variables, generation effects are often presumed to be the result of cohort members having shared similar socialising experiences, especially during late adolescence and early adulthood” ( Markus 1983 , 718; cf. Mannheim 1952 ; Ryder 1965 ).

A cohort is very generally defined as a “number of individuals who have some characteristics in common” ( Glenn 2005 , 2). This common characteristic is often the year of birth. Usually cohorts are divided into equal time periods (e.g., five- or ten-year birth year periods), whereby the span of years for each cohort may be dictated by theoretical concerns or data constraints. But cohorts may also be defined with reference to other variables of interest (e.g., persons who came of age at the same time or individuals who finished high school in a particular year). 1

Finally, specific observed attitudes or behavior may be a function of the current political, economic, or societal situation, as well as idiosyncratic events that produce fluctuations over time. These period effects are therefore major events, such as the presence of war or economic downturn, that affect the population as a whole, not just certain age, regional, gender, education, or income groups ( De Graaf 1999 , 261; Norris 2003 , 9; Cutler and Bengtson 1974 , 165; Alwin, Hofer, and McCammon 2006 , 21).

Conover (1991 , 130) argues that life-cycle and cohort effects are interwoven, as “people change in political orientations throughout their life, (but) generations respond differently to the same events.” In his famous studies on value change ( Inglehart 1977 ; Abramson and Inglehart 1995 ), Inglehart also argues that later learning must overcome the inertia of preexisting orientations. Jennings (1989 , 347) summarizes these considerations:

Young adulthood is the time of identity formation. It is at this age that political history can have a critical impact on a cohort’s political make-up in a direct, experiential fashion…. The political significance of the crystallisation process lies in the content of that which is crystallising, the social, political, and historical materials that are being worked over and experienced by the young during these formative years. For it is this content that colours the cohort. If the colour differs appreciably from that attached to past cohorts, we have the making of a political generation.

In another work he adds that “what each cohort brings into political maturity has a good deal of continuity and provides a certain degree of stability in terms of what that cohort is likely to draw on as it moves through the rest of the life cycle” ( Jennings 1996 , 249). But as Niemi and Sobieszek (1977 , 228) pointed out twenty years earlier: “Sorting out the relative impact of life cycle, generational, and period effects will no doubt prove to be extraordinarily complicated.” Disentangling these various effects was and remains one of the central challenges of socialization research.

Generational Change and Generational Replacement

Political research on socialization processes has accumulated a vast body of valuable insights into how citizens acquire their political attitudes. Nevertheless, we still know relatively little about whether these socialization experiences lead to true generational differences in how citizens perceive and evaluate politics or behave in the political arena. Taking into account constantly changing societies, it is important to understand generational features of the electorate in order to make predictions for the future.

Figure 1 illustrates the interrelationship of period and cohort effects by plotting the annual averages of attitudes against interracial marriage for four different birth cohorts from the United States between 1972 and 2004. 2 While same-sex marriage may have now replaced interracial marriage as a salient political issue, the example illustrates the idea of generational replacement by focusing on a concrete political attitude. Figure 1 allows us to explore whether birth cohorts differ in their racial attitudes. The oldest cohort—born before 1930—was still socialized in a highly racially divided country, whereas the cohort born after 1970 grew up after the turbulent times of the civil rights movement in the 1950 and 1960s, when racial discrimination was legally abolished. 3 These changing historical legacies during the formative years of these four cohorts are assumed to have shaped racial attitudes and “colored”—as Jennings would put it—each group in a different way.

Illustration of Cohort Differences on Anti-Interracial Marital Attitudes

According to figure 1 , the cohort born before 1930 consistently exhibits the highest anti-interracial attitudes, with as many as 50% of the respondents advocating laws against interracial marriage in the mid-1970s. Each cohort born and socialized later in time is less averse to interracial marriage. This simple graph reveals three findings. First, we observe a period effect, as all cohorts seem to become less racially intolerant over time. Second, the declining parallel lines of each cohort confirm that clear differences exist regarding racial attitudes depending on the time a respondent was born and hence socialized. Third, figure 1 further illustrates what some people call generational replacement . The thick solid line plots the overall trend in anti-interracial statements, which is declining. From the mid-1990s the overall trend is lower than the average attitude among the cohorts born before 1950. The issue of interracial marriage becomes less salient over time; the explanation for this observation is simply that the weight of “older” cohorts in the overall population is declining. The absolute number of members dwindles as the members of the two cohorts born before 1950 age. To use Ryder’s (1965) words: “Cohort succession, aging, and period-specific historical events provide accounts of social and demographic change” (cited in Smith 2008 , 287). The importance of cohort effects remains manifest today. Using longitudinal data, Watson (2015) shows how interaction with welfare state programs influences cohorts’ patterns of democratic engagement.

Bartels and Jackman (2014) propose a new model of political learning and how to think about these dynamics. They conceptualize two interrelated factors that capture the dynamics of political preferences: (1) period-specific “shocks” that reflect the distinctive political events of a given time period and (2) age-specific “weights” that reflect the extent to which these shocks are internalized by individuals at various points in the life cycle. Generational patterns of political change arise endogenously from the interaction of these basic elements. This model is a critique of the classic “running tally” model by Fiorina (1981) and Achen (1992) , who assume that the age-specific “weights” are equal. This posits that political scandals; presidential or government approval rates; natural disasters; economic crises; and any other political, economic, or social events impact each citizen equally no matter where a person is in the life cycle.

Challenges and Opportunities for the Study of Political Socialization

This chapter has discussed four main questions that arise in the study of political socialization and the making of citizens. First, what is it about early life experiences that makes them matter for political attitudes and behavior in later life? Second, what age is crucial in the development of citizens’ political outlooks? Third, who and what influences political behavior in early life, and how are cohorts colored by the nature of the times when they come of age? Fourth, how do political preferences and behavior develop after the impressionable years?

The problem in finding answers to these questions is usually of an empirical nature. Previous studies have often used inappropriate data (e.g., cross-sectional data) or methods (e.g., macro correlations over time) to answer questions about attitudinal and behavioral dynamics. More recently, researchers have used multiwave panel studies that follow the same individuals over time to study the stability or volatility of political preferences (see, e.g., Clarke and McCutcheon 2009 ; Prior 2010 ; Neundorf, Stegmueller, and Scotto 2011 ; Neundorf, Smets, and García Albacete 2013 ). These studies provide convincing evidence that the impressionable years are indeed important for the development of political orientations, and that there is a great deal of stability in citizens’ political identities and engagement in later life. There are, however, limitations to these studies, which rely mainly on household panel studies. Not designed by political scientists, the indicators available in these data sets are limited to just a few political variables: often only partisanship and political interest. It is both important and interesting to investigate attitude stability for other more policy-oriented preferences as well. Such preferences are, however, usually only included in election panel studies that span just a few years.

New Internet-based panel studies might provide an exciting new avenue for this type of research. For example, the Dutch Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social Sciences (LISS), based on a probability sample, includes a wide range of questions on political preferences and behavior. The more than eight thousand respondents have been interviewed annually since 2007. A similar online panel study, the German Internet Panel (GIP), which includes numerous political variables, was initiated in Germany in 2012. 4 These studies have the potential to provide data to test remaining questions about the dynamics of political preferences. Unfortunately, comparable data collection efforts have not yet been initiated in the United States or the United Kingdom.

As better data sources and better statistical methods become available, more fine-grained theoretical questions can be tackled. Recent research, for example, focuses on the interaction of different socializing agents (see, e.g., Neundorf, Niemi, and Smets 2016 ), as well as on more complex household dynamics (see, e.g., Dinas 2014 ). Other work seeks to understand whether socialization processes known to exist in Western democracies can be extended to new and emerging democracies (see, e.g., Finkel 2002 for work on the impact of civic education on political participation in emerging democracies; Neundorf 2010 for work on the legacy of post-communist and post-authoritarian regimes; and Lupu and Peisakhin n.d. for a study of the long-term impact of political violence on parental transmission of political views in post-Soviet states). Potentially heterogeneous political socialization processes have also recently gained scholarly attention. As Ghitza and Gelman (n.d.) demonstrate, socialization patterns are different for people from different ethnic backgrounds.

With regard to the timing of the formative or impressionable years, shifting away from predefining the age boundaries of this crucial period, recent studies point to socialization processes starting at a much younger age than previously assumed. Both van Deth, Abendschön, and Vollmar (2011) and Bartels and Jackman (2014) suggest that the impressionable years are in late childhood and early adolescence, not only in late adolescence and early adulthood. The study by van Deth, Abendschön, and Vollmar (2011) only includes young children and does not follow them growing up. It is therefore not clear whether these early imprints have a long-lasting impact. On the other hand the study by Bartels and Jackman (2014) relies on a mathematical estimation of the formative years. These results, again, have not yet been fully put to the test. Both studies, however, point to the importance of including in panel studies younger respondents who can then be followed as they grow older.

The timing of the formative years is important for studying the making of political generations. If we want to understand which are the factors that shape such generations, we need to make important assumptions about when citizens are most receptive to external influences. Hence, the timing of political, economic, and social circumstances needs to be determined based on the age when citizens are socialized. However, the scientific debates of APC effects on the one hand, and the origins of political attitudes and behavior on the other, are often unconnected. 5 We see, however, an enormous opportunity in the study of cohorts and the making of citizens. Cohort analysis, for example as done by Dinas and Stoker (2014) and Smets and Neundorf (2014) , provides us with a tool to understand social changes. Based on new and innovative statistical methods, 6 these studies allow testing of the impact of factors such as the political, economic, and social environment during a cohort’s formative years on long-term political preferences and behavior. These APC cohort studies thus allow us to gain insights into the socialization processes and what colors whole generations or what makes political citizens.

By definition, studying socialization processes focuses on the impact of the personal and social environment of an individual on his or her values, attitudes, and behavior. This ignores the potential impact of biology. The last decade has seen fascinating new opportunities in studying the link between genetics and political attitudes, demonstrating that “nature” or inheritance can have a strong impact on a person’s political beliefs (Hatemi et al. 2007 , 2009a , 2009b , 2010 ; Oxley et al. 2008 ; Smith et al. 2011 ). Questions about which factors and contexts can enhance or weaken certain genetic predispositions are still unexplored. There is still very little research on the interplay between genetics and environmental factors and how these interact over the life span (with the exception of Hatemi et al. 2009a , 2009b ), which is an exciting new avenue for future research in the field of political socialization.

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van Deth, Jan W. , Simone Abendschön , Julia Rathke , and Meike Vollmar . 2007 . Kinder und Politik: Politische Einstellungen von jungen Kindern im ersten Grundschuljahr . Wiesbaden: VS Verlag.

van Deth, Jan W. , Simone Abendschön , and Meike Vollmar . 2011 . “ Early Political Socialization. ” Political Psychology 32 (1): 147–174.

Verba, Sidney , Kay Lehman Schlozman , and Nancy Burns . 2005 . “Family Ties: Understanding the Intergenerational Transmission of Political Participation.” In The Social Logic of Politics. Personal Networks as Contexts for Political Behaviour , edited by Alan S. Zuckerman , 95–114. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

Vogel, Joachim . 2001 . “European Welfare Regimes and the Transition to Adulthood: A Comparative and Longitudinal Perspective.” In Family Forms and the Young Generation in Europe , edited by Lynne Chisholm , Antonio de Lillo , Carmen Leccardi , and Rudolf Richter , 125–142. Vienna: Austrian Institute for Family Studies.

Wass, Hanna . 2007 . “ The Effects of Age, Generation and Period on Turnout in Finland 1975–2003. ” Electoral Studies 26 (3): 648–659.

Watson, Sara . 2015 . “ Does Welfare Conditionality Reduce Democratic Participation? ” Comparative Political Studies 48 (5): 645–686.

Wattenberg, Martin P.   2008 . Is Voting for Young People? New York: Pearson Longman.

Westholm, Anders . 1999 . “ The Perceptual Pathway: Tracing the Mechanisms of Political Value Transfer across Generations. ” Political Psychology 20 (3): 525–551.

Wolak, Jennifer . 2009 . “ Explaining Change in Party Identification in Adolescence. ” Electoral Studies 28 (4): 573–583.

Zaller, J.   1992 . The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

The terms cohort and generation are often used interchangeably. Generations are characterized by some common historical event such as the Great Depression ( Elder 1974 ). The distinction between generations is therefore not necessarily as strict as for cohorts. A common way to distinguish between generations in Western democracies is the following: prewar generation (born before 1944), the baby boomers (1945–1959), the 1960s generation (1960–1969), the 1970s generation (1970–1979), and the post-1970s generation (born in 1980 or later) (see, e.g., Bhatti and Hansen 2012a ; Blais et al. 2004 ; Wass 2007 ).

The exact wording reads as follows: “Do you think there should be laws against marriages between Negroes/Blacks/African-Americans and whites?—Yes or No.” Figure 1 plots the percentages of those agreeing with the statement. The data were taken from the US General Social Survey, which was administered annually or biannually between 1972 and 2010. The question on interracial marriage, however, was not included after 2004.

Most important for the abolition of discrimination in public life was the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

For more information on the LISS, see http://www.lissdata.nl/lissdata/Home, and for the GIP : http://reforms.uni-mannheim.de/internet_panel/home/ .

Examples of studies that explicitly focus on APC analysis are Baker (1978) ; Abramson (1979) ; Claggett (1981) ; Markus (1983) ; Miller (1992) ; Tilley (2002) and Tilley and Evans (2011) —partisanship; Klecka (1971) ; Lyons and Alexander (2000) ; Franklin, Lyons, and Marsh (2004) ; Bhatti and Hansen (2012a) ; Smets and Neundorf (2014) —turnout; Cutler and Kaufman (1975) —ideology; Jennings (1996) —political knowledge; Jennings and Stoker (2004) —civic engagement; Down and Wilson (2013) —support for the European Union; Mishler and Rose (2007) and Neundorf (2010) —democratic attitudes. This list is by no means comprehensive.

Neundorf and Niemi (2014) , for example, present a series of articles in a special issue of Electoral Studies on methods of age, period, and cohort analysis.

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7.1: Public Opinion and Political Socialization

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“A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good.”

—James Madison (1)

What is Public Opinion?

Public opinion refers to an individual’s aggregated political view. In Federalist #10 James Madison referred to “popular governments” that base the source of their legitimacy and authority on the people rather than some other source like God, and that take into account peoples’ aggregate views when making policy. Indeed, if democracy is to mean anything it must refer to a government that periodically turns to the people to either make decisions directly or to select representatives to make decisions. In addition, the government's policies should align with what the public wants it to do.

Political Socialization

Political scientists and psychologists have long been interested in how people develop their individual approach to politics and political issues. There is no definitive answer, nor is there ever likely to be. Indeed, a mix of influences unique to each individual is likely to be the real source of our ideologies, attitudes, opinions, prejudices, and dispositions. We are each subject to political socialization , or “the process by which people acquire their political attitudes, beliefs, opinions, and behaviors.” (2) Here are four examples.

Innate --Research suggests that our political orientation may be in part a hard-wired component of our personality. Just as two siblings born to the same parents and raised in the same household can have vastly different personalities, we may be born with dispositions that affect the political ideologies we develop. Psychologists and political scientists have found that conservatives and progressives appear to have an innate difference in threat perception, with conservatives more attuned to potential threats. Similarly, conservatives may be more fearful of those threats and want government to respond to them with military or police forces and/or laws. Conservatives have a higher tolerance for ambiguity and a lower tolerance for disorder than do progressives. (3) Psychologist Jonathan Haidt has argued convincingly that political beliefs come from different moral standpoints. For instance, take the issue of fairness. According to Haidt, progressives see fairness as one of access to basic resources, whereas conservatives see fairness as getting what one deserves based on effort expended. In other words, both conservatives and progressives value fairness, but they may have innately different moral understandings of the concept. (4)

In Federalist #10 James Madison wrote that,

“the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views.” (5)

Occupation --In other words, one’s occupation is intimately tied to one’s vested interests and political opinions. For example, teachers have different opinions than do members of the general public on issues like teacher pay, vouchers, the impact of teachers’ unions, and how often students should be subject to standardized tests. (6) Factory workers are likely to have a different opinion of globalization and offshoring jobs than the people who own the company. Blue-collar workers are likely to have a different opinion of unskilled immigrants than are white-collar workers who don’t have to compete with such immigrants for jobs.

Those around us --Family and friends also shape our political opinions. Children are raised by parents who have more or less well-developed political outlooks and in families with particular moral or ethical values. Parental viewpoints can transfer to children. Psychologist Eugene Thomas found an average 75 percent congruence rate between college-age students and their parents with respect to political attitudes. Moreover, two aspects of the family dynamic contributed the most to fostering parent-child attitude congruence: the extent to which the parents were dedicated to political causes and the extent to which the parents explicitly tutored children “into an awareness of the political realm.” (7) As children grow, they engage with other young people who influence and reinforce their attitudes and behaviors. Sociologist Denise Kandel noted that “adolescents who share certain prior attributes in common tend to associate with each other and tend to influence each other as the result of continued association.” (8) What Dr. Kandel described is the importance of homophily , which is “the tendency for individuals to associate with similar others,” and it is “one of the most persistent findings in social network analysis.” (8)

Education --What about education? Broadly speaking, formal education can play a role in fostering tolerance for people who are racially, ethnically, or religiously different from us—assuming that the school is itself inclusive and promotes those values. Formal education also tends to promote what is known as political efficacy , or a person’s belief that they can influence public policy through their political behaviors like voting, demonstrating, donating to candidates, and organizing collectively for action. The famous psychologist Jean Piaget once asked and answered an important question: “How are we to bring children to the spirit of citizenship and humanity which is postulated by democratic societies? By the actual practice of democracy at school.” (10)

• James Madison, Federalist #10 . November 23, 1787. The Avalon Project at Yale Law School.
• Diana Owen, “Political Socialization,” Oxford Bibliographies . July 20, 2014.
• Emily Laber-Warren, “Unconscious Reactions Separate Liberals and Conservatives,” Scientific American . September 1, 2012. Vinita Mehta, “Why Liberals and Conservatives Think So Differently,” Psychology Today . February 27, 2017.
• Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion . New York: Pantheon Books, 2012.
• Paul E. Peterson, Michael Henderson, and Martin R. West, Teachers Versus the Public: What Americans Think About Schools and How to Fix Them . Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 2014.
• L. Eugene Thomas, “Political Attitude Congruence Between Politically Active Parents and College-Age Children: An Inquiry into Family Political Socialization,” Journal of Marriage and Family . May, 1971. Page 379.
• Denise B. Kandel, “Homophily, Selection, and Socialization in Adolescent Friendships,” American Journal of Sociology . September, 1978. Page 435.
• Per Block and Thomas Grund, “Multidimensional Homophily in Friendship Networks,” Network Science . August, 2014. Page 189.
• Ralph Mosher, Robert Kenny, and Andrew Garrod, Preparing for Citizenship. Teaching Youth to Live Democratically . Westport/London: Praeger, 1994. Piaget quoted on page xi.

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Home — Essay Samples — Government & Politics — Political Socialization — Political Socialization And Gaining A Political Perspective

Political Socialization and Gaining a Political Perspective

• Categories: Political Participation Political Socialization

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Published: May 31, 2021

Words: 1599 | Pages: 4 | 8 min read

Works Cited

• Beck, P. A., & Jennings, M. K. (1982). Pathways to participation: The role of social groups and institutions in explaining political participation. Political behavior, 4(1), 31-49.
• Campbell, D. E. (2009). Voice in the classroom: How an open classroom climate fosters political engagement among adolescents. Political Psychology, 30(5), 757-769.
• Denny, K., & Doyle, O. (2008). Does voting run in the family? Evidence from twentieth century Ireland. Economics Letters, 100(3), 395-398.
• Kerbel, M. R. (2018). Political socialization. The International Encyclopedia of Communication Research Methods, 1-7.
• Niemi, R. G. (1968). The political socialization of children. Journal of Politics, 30(1), 1-33.
• Plutzer, E. (2002). Becoming a habitual voter: Inertia, resources, and growth in young adulthood. American Political Science Review, 96(1), 41-56.
• Powell, L. W., & Cowart, L. W. (2017). Political socialization. In The SAGE Encyclopedia of Political Behavior (pp. 802-803). Sage Publications.
• Varkey, P. (2003). Political socialization: A study of the influences of family, school, community and gender on the political views of Indian adults. Doctoral dissertation, Georgia State University.
• Verba, S., Schlozman, K. L., & Brady, H. E. (1995). Voice and equality: Civic voluntarism in American politics. Harvard University Press.
• Youniss, J., & Smollar, J. (1985). Adolescent relations with social institutions and political and civic development. Youth and Society, 16(1), 61-87.

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Essay on Politics: Topics, Tips, and Examples for Students

Defining What is Politics Essay

The process of decision-making that applies to members of a group or society is called politics. Arguably, political activities are the backbone of human society, and everything in our daily life is a form of it.

Understanding the essence of politics, reflecting on its internal elements, and critically analyzing them make society more politically aware and let them make more educated decisions. Constantly thinking and analyzing politics is critical for societal evolution.

Political thinkers often write academic papers that explore different political concepts, policies, and events. The essay about politics may examine a wide range of topics such as government systems, political ideologies, social justice, public policies, international relations, etc.

After selecting a specific research topic, a writer should conduct extensive research, gather relevant information, and prepare a logical and well-supported argument. The paper should be clear and organized, complying with academic language and standards. A writer should demonstrate a deep understanding of the subject, an ability to evaluate and remain non-biased to different viewpoints, and a capacity to draw conclusions.

Now that we are on the same page about the question 'what is politics essay' and understand its importance, let's take a deeper dive into how to build a compelling political essay, explore the most relevant political argumentative essay topics, and finally, examine the political essay examples written by the best essay writing service team.

Politics Essay Example for Students

If you are still unsure how to structure your essay or how to present your statement, don't worry. Our team of experts has prepared an excellent essay example for you. Feel free to explore and examine it. Use it to guide you through the writing process and help you understand what a successful essay looks like.

How to Write a Political Essay: Tips + Guide

A well-written essay is easy to read and digest. You probably remember reading papers full of big words and complex ideas that no one bothered to explain. We all agree that such essays are easily forgotten and not influential, even though they might contain a very important message.

If you are writing an essay on politics, acknowledge that you are on a critical mission to easily convey complicated concepts. Hence, what you are trying to say should be your main goal. Our guide on how to write a political essay will help you succeed.

Conduct Research for Your Politics Essay

After choosing a topic for the essay, take enough time for preparation. Even if you are familiar with the matter, conducting thorough research is wiser. Political issues are complex and multifaceted; comprehensive research will help you understand the topic better and offer a more nuanced analysis.

Research can help you identify different viewpoints and arguments around the topic, which can be beneficial for building more impartial and persuasive essays on politics. Sometimes in the hit of the moment, opposing sides are not able to see the common ground; your goal is to remain rational, speak to diverse audiences, and help them see the core of the problem and the ways to solve it.

In political papers, accuracy and credibility are vital. Researching the topic deeply will help you avoid factual errors or misrepresentations from any standpoint. It will allow you to gather reliable sources of information and create a trustworthy foundation for the entire paper.

If you want to stand out from the other students, get inspired by the list of hottest essay ideas and check out our political essay examples.

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Brainstorm Political Essay Topics

The next step to writing a compelling politics essay is to polish your thoughts and find the right angle to the chosen topic.

Before you start writing, generate fresh ideas and organize your thoughts. There are different techniques to systematize the mess going on in your head, such as freewriting, mind mapping, or even as simple as listing ideas. This will open the doors to new angles and approaches to the topic.

When writing an essay about politics, ensure the topic is not too general. It's always better to narrow it down. It will simplify your job and help the audience better understand the core of the problem. Brainstorming can help you identify key points and arguments, which you can use to find a specific angle on the topic.

Brainstorming can also help you detect informational gaps that must be covered before the writing process. Ultimately, the brainstorming phase can bring a lot more clarity and structure to your essay.

We know how exhausting it is to come up with comparative politics essay topics. Let our research paper writing service team do all the hard work for you.

Create Your Politics Essay Thesis Statement

Thesis statements, in general, serve as a starting point of the roadmap for the reader. A political essay thesis statement outlines the main ideas and arguments presented in the body paragraphs and creates a general sense of the content of the paper.

Creating a thesis statement for essays about politics in the initial stages of writing can help you stay focused and on track throughout the working process. You can use it as an aim and constantly check your arguments and evidence against it. The question is whether they are relevant and supportive of the statement.

Get creative when creating a statement. This is the first sentence readers will see, and it should be compelling and clear.

The following is a great example of a clear and persuasive thesis statement:

 'The lack of transparency and accountability has made the World Trade Organization one of the most controversial economic entities. Despite the influence, its effectiveness in promoting free trade and economic growth in developing countries has decreased.'

Provide Facts in Your Essay about Politic

It's a no-brainer that everything you will write in your essay should be supported by strong evidence. The credibility of your argument will be questioned every step of the way, especially when you are writing about sensitive subjects such as essays on government influence on economic troubles. 

Provide facts and use them as supporting evidence in your politics essay. They will help you establish credibility and accuracy and take your paper out of the realm of speculation and mere opinions.

Facts will make your essay on political parties more persuasive, unbiased, and targeted to larger audiences. Remember, the goal is to bring the light to the core of the issue and find a solution, not to bring people even farther apart.

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Structure Your Political Essay

Your main goal is to communicate your ideas to many people. To succeed, you need to write an essay that is easy to read and understand. Creating a structure will help you present your ideas logically and lead the readers in the right direction.

Sometimes when writing about political essay topics, we get carried away. These issues can be very emotional and sensitive, and writers are not protected from becoming victims of their own writings. Having a structure will keep you on track, only focusing on providing supported arguments and relevant information.

Start with introducing the thesis statement and provide background information. Followed by the body paragraphs and discuss all the relevant facts and standpoints. Finish it up with a comprehensive conclusion, and state the main points of your essay once again.

The structure will also save you time. In the beginning, creating an outline for essays on politics will give you a general idea of what should be written, and you can track your progress against it.

Revise and Proofread Your Final Politics Essay

Once every opinion is on the paper and every argument is well-constructed, one final step should be taken. Revision!

We know nothing is better than finishing the homework and quickly submitting it, but we aim for an A+. Our political essay must be reviewed. You need to check if there is any error such as grammatical, spelling, or contextual.

Take some time off, relax, and start proofreading after a few minutes or hours. Having a fresh mind will help you review not only grammar but also the arguments. Check if something is missing from your essays about politics, and if you find gaps, provide additional information.

You had to spend a lot of time on them, don't give up now. Make sure they are in perfect condition.

Effective Political Essay Topics

We would be happy if our guide on how to write political essays helped you, but we are not stopping there. Below you will find a list of advanced and relevant political essay topics. Whether you are interested in global political topics or political science essay topics, we got you covered.

Once you select a topic, don't forget to check out our politics essay example! It will bring even more clarity, and you will be all ready to start writing your own paper.

Political Argumentative Essay Topics

Now that we know how to write a political analysis essay let's explore political argumentative essay topics:

• Should a political party take a stance on food politics and support policies promoting sustainable food systems?
• Should we label Winston Churchill as the most influential political figure of World War II?
• Does the focus on GDP growth in the political economy hinder the human development index?
• Is foreign influence a threat to national security?
• Is foreign aid the best practice for political campaigning?
• Does the electoral college work for an ideal political system?
• Are social movements making a real difference, or are they politically active for temporary change?
• Can global politics effectively address political conflicts in the modern world?
• Are opposing political parties playing positive roles in US international relations?
• To what extent should political influence be allowed in addressing economic concerns?
• Can representative democracy prevent civil wars in ethnically diverse countries?
• Should nuclear weapons be abolished for the sake of global relations?
• Is economic development more important than ethical issues for Caribbean politics?
• What role should neighboring nations play in preventing human rights abuse in totalitarian regimes?
• Should political decisions guide the resolution of conflicts in the South China Sea?

Political Socialization Essay Topics

Knowing how to write a political issue essay is one thing, but have you explored our list of political socialization essay topics?

• To what extent does a political party or an influential political figure shape the beliefs of young people?
• Does political influence shape attitudes toward environmental politics?
• How can individuals use their own learning process to navigate political conflicts in a polarized society?
• How do political strategies shape cultural globalization?
• Is gender bias used as a political instrument in political socialization?
• How can paying attention to rural communities improve political engagement?
• What is the role of Amnesty International in preventing the death penalty?
• What is the role of politically involved citizens in shaping minimum wage policies?
• How does a political party shape attitudes toward global warming?
• How does the federal system influence urban planning and attitudes toward urban development?
• What is the role of public opinion in shaping foreign policy, and how does it affect political decision making
• Did other countries' experiences affect policies on restricting immigration in the US?
• How can note-taking skills and practice tests improve political engagement? 
• How do the cultural values of an independent country shape the attitudes toward national security?
• Does public opinion influence international intervention in helping countries reconcile after conflicts?

Political Science Essay Topics

If you are searching for political science essay topics, check our list below and write the most compelling essay about politic:

• Is environmental education a powerful political instrument? 
• Can anarchist societies provide a viable alternative to traditional forms of governance?
• Pros and cons of deterrence theory in contemporary international relations
• Comparing the impact of the French Revolution and World War II on the political landscape of Europe
• The role of the ruling political party in shaping national policies on nuclear weapons
• Exploring the roots of where politics originate
• The impact of civil wars on the processes of democratization of the third-world countries
• The role of international organizations in promoting global health
• Does using the death penalty in the justice system affect international relations?
• Assessing the role of the World Trade Organization in shaping global trade policies
• The political and environmental implications of conventional agriculture
• The impact of the international court on political decision making
• Is philosophical anarchism relevant to contemporary political discourse?
• The emergence of global citizenship and its relationship with social movements
• The impact of other countries on international relations between the US and China

Final Words

See? Writing an essay about politic seems like a super challenging job, but in reality, all it takes is excellent guidance, a well-structured outline, and an eye for credible information.

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Related Articles

Introduction to Socialization

Chapter outline.

In the summer of 2005, police detective Mark Holste followed an investigator from the Department of Children and Families to a home in Plant City, Florida. They were there to look into a statement from the neighbor concerning a shabby house on Old Sydney Road. A small girl was reported peering from one of its broken windows. This seemed odd because no one in the neighborhood had seen a young child in or around the home, which had been inhabited for the past three years by a woman, her boyfriend, and two adult sons.

Who was the mystery girl in the window?

Entering the house, Detective Holste and his team were shocked. It was the worst mess they’d ever seen, infested with cockroaches, smeared with feces and urine from both people and pets, and filled with dilapidated furniture and ragged window coverings.

Detective Holste headed down a hallway and entered a small room. That’s where he found the little girl, with big, vacant eyes, staring into the darkness. A newspaper report later described the detective’s first encounter with the child: “She lay on a torn, moldy mattress on the floor. She was curled on her side . . . her ribs and collarbone jutted out . . . her black hair was matted, crawling with lice. Insect bites, rashes and sores pocked her skin . . . She was naked—except for a swollen diaper. … Her name, her mother said, was Danielle. She was almost seven years old” (DeGregory 2008).

Detective Holste immediately carried Danielle out of the home. She was taken to a hospital for medical treatment and evaluation. Through extensive testing, doctors determined that, although she was severely malnourished, Danielle was able to see, hear, and vocalize normally. Still, she wouldn’t look anyone in the eyes, didn’t know how to chew or swallow solid food, didn’t cry, didn’t respond to stimuli that would typically cause pain, and didn’t know how to communicate either with words or simple gestures such as nodding “yes” or “no.” Likewise, although tests showed she had no chronic diseases or genetic abnormalities, the only way she could stand was with someone holding onto her hands, and she “walked sideways on her toes, like a crab” (DeGregory 2008).

What had happened to Danielle? Put simply: beyond the basic requirements for survival, she had been neglected. Based on their investigation, social workers concluded that she had been left almost entirely alone in rooms like the one where she was found. Without regular interaction—the holding, hugging, talking, the explanations and demonstrations given to most young children—she had not learned to walk or to speak, to eat or to interact, to play or even to understand the world around her. From a sociological point of view, Danielle had not been socialized.

Socialization is the process through which people are taught to be proficient members of a society. It describes the ways that people come to understand societal norms and expectations, to accept society’s beliefs, and to be aware of societal values. Socialization is not the same as socializing (interacting with others, like family, friends, and coworkers); to be precise, it is a sociological process that occurs through socializing. As Danielle’s story illustrates, even the most basic of human activities are learned. You may be surprised to know that even physical tasks like sitting, standing, and walking had not automatically developed for Danielle as she grew. And without socialization, Danielle hadn’t learned about the material culture of her society (the tangible objects a culture uses): for example, she couldn’t hold a spoon, bounce a ball, or use a chair for sitting. She also hadn’t learned its nonmaterial culture, such as its beliefs, values, and norms. She had no understanding of the concept of “family,” didn’t know cultural expectations for using a bathroom for elimination, and had no sense of modesty. Most importantly, she hadn’t learned to use the symbols that make up language—through which we learn about who we are, how we fit with other people, and the natural and social worlds in which we live.

Sociologists have long been fascinated by circumstances like Danielle’s—in which a child receives sufficient human support to survive, but virtually no social interaction—because they highlight how much we depend on social interaction to provide the information and skills that we need to be part of society or even to develop a “self.”

The necessity for early social contact was demonstrated by the research of Harry and Margaret Harlow. From 1957 to 1963, the Harlows conducted a series of experiments studying how rhesus monkeys, which behave a lot like people, are affected by isolation as babies. They studied monkeys raised under two types of “substitute” mothering circumstances: a mesh and wire sculpture, or a soft terrycloth “mother.” The monkeys systematically preferred the company of a soft, terrycloth substitute mother (closely resembling a rhesus monkey) that was unable to feed them, to a mesh and wire mother that provided sustenance via a feeding tube. This demonstrated that while food was important, social comfort was of greater value (Harlow and Harlow 1962; Harlow 1971). Later experiments testing more severe isolation revealed that such deprivation of social contact led to significant developmental and social challenges later in life.

In the following sections, we will examine the importance of the complex process of socialization and how it takes place through interaction with many individuals, groups, and social institutions. We will explore how socialization is not only critical to children as they develop but how it is also a lifelong process through which we become prepared for new social environments and expectations in every stage of our lives. But first, we will turn to scholarship about self-development, the process of coming to recognize a sense of self, a “self” that is then able to be socialized.

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• Authors: Heather Griffiths, Nathan Keirns
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• Book title: Introduction to Sociology 2e
• Publication date: Apr 24, 2015
• Location: Houston, Texas
• Book URL: https://openstax.org/books/introduction-sociology-2e/pages/1-introduction-to-sociology
• Section URL: https://openstax.org/books/introduction-sociology-2e/pages/5-introduction-to-socialization

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How the New York City Chancellor Prepared for a Congressional Grilling

As David C. Banks prepares to testify about antisemitism in the New York City schools, he said he wasn’t intimidated by congressional Republicans.

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By Troy Closson

• May 8, 2024 Updated 8:42 a.m. ET

David C. Banks consulted his top deputies. He spoke with another school district leader. As the police cleared out pro-Palestinian demonstrators who had seized a building at Columbia University last week, he was there on campus — and went inside to survey the scene.

At a recent meeting with reporters, Mr. Banks, the New York City schools chancellor, outlined the ways he had prepared to testify on Wednesday in front of a subcommittee of the House Education and Work Force Committee examining antisemitism in schools, as student demonstrations have intensified in response to the Israel-Hamas war.

He can expect a grilling over concerns of antisemitism at city schools, including at his alma mater, Hillcrest High School in Queens. In recent months, Republican members of the committee have aggressively questioned leaders from some of the nation’s most elite universities over accusations that they have allowed antisemitic harassment and hate to fester on their campuses. Two presidents, Claudine Gay of Harvard and Liz Magill of University of Pennsylvania, eventually resigned, in part because of a strong backlash over their performance in Congress.

Another president, Nemat Shafik of Columbia University, returned to upheaval on her own campus, which she sought to contain by calling in the police to arrest hundreds of students and other activists. In recent days, she opted to cancel the school’s main graduation ceremony anyway, angering many students and families.

Mr. Banks offered little insight into how he might tackle questions on thorny issues that public schools districts have faced, like how to discipline students when protests over the war veer into hate speech or how to respond to teachers’ social media posts supporting the Palestinian cause.

But he is expected to deliver a message that both antisemitism and all other forms of hate have no place in public schools. The chancellor said that as a Black man “who is keenly aware of the trauma and pain and oppression that my own people have suffered in America,” he feels for the families both of Israeli hostages and of children killed in Gaza.

“That’s not an issue of taking sides,” Mr. Banks said.

After the fallout of the previous congressional hearings on antisemitism, some people urged Mr. Banks “to stay home,” he said in an opinion column in the New York Post on Tuesday evening.

“I refuse,” Mr. Banks wrote. “The victims of intolerance and hate cannot afford to look away, and neither should their leaders.”

The travails of the presidents who have come before illustrate the difficult balance Mr. Banks must strike.

New York City is one of the most diverse school districts in the world with large number of Jewish, Arab and Muslim families. He must convince Jewish families at home that the district will quell bigotry in schools, while also avoiding the ire of Arab and Muslim educators, some of whom have criticized his leadership since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel.

Mr. Banks vowed to not appear defensive over the district’s record on antisemitism: Schools have faced intolerance and hate, he acknowledged, while adding that “we’ve gotten a handle on a lot of it.”

But the chancellor also signaled that he might not adopt an entirely conciliatory approach. In an apparent reference to some Republican lawmakers, he told reporters last week that “trying to create gotcha moments” is not “how you solve problems.”

“I fundamentally believe that if we truly care about solving antisemitism, you don’t do it through cheap political theater,” Mr. Banks said.

He will outline several local efforts to combat hate, including recent training for principals on discipline and navigating “difficult conversations” and the creation of an interfaith advisory panel. The city will also release a Holocaust teaching guide in the fall and two curriculum series on Jewish and Muslim Americans next year.

Mr. Banks, who has twice traveled to Israel, added that he was “profoundly moved” on a visit to Yad Vashem, the country’s official Holocaust memorial.

After watching university leaders at the two prior hearings on antisemitism, Mr. Banks said his greatest takeaway was simply to be authentic.

“I’m from New York,” he said. “So I’m not intimidated by the process at all.”

Troy Closson reports on K-12 schools in New York City for The Times. More about Troy Closson