Are young Australians turning away from democracy?

In most advanced democracies, the decline in electoral turnout has been disproportionately concentrated amongst young people. This study investigates whether young Australians are turning away from the principles and processes of democracy. If so, it further enquires which of the three highly collinear time effects – age, period and cohort (APC) – best explains youth disengagement. Existing works, which focus mostly on generational effects, fail to control for the confounding age and period effects. Using survey data from 2001 to 2019 in the Australian Election Study (AES) and applying multilevel models, this study disentangles the three-time effects. The findings suggest that young Australians are no different from older people and older cohorts in their commitment to principles and both traditional and contemporary (online) processes of democracy. Instead, period effects – that is, short-term political, economic and social context – best explain democratic attitudes and behaviours in Australia.