PhD Defence Lotte Geunis

Keywords: Political elites, youth participation, education 
 

"Why Political Actors Engage Young People in Public Policy: Educational Reforms in Irelands and Flanders"
 

This dissertation investigates why political actors engage young people in public policy. It focuses on educational reforms in Ireland and Flanders, drawing on a thematic analysis of policy documents and interviews with senior policy makers.  The dissertation finds that in Ireland, political actors are primarily motivated by normative (rights-based) and public policy considerations. In Flanders, those motives are present also, but political considerations dominate. To explain this divergence, the dissertation explores key features of political elites (Ruostetsaari, 2006): their recruitment (how ideas and people get into politics) and their internal coherence (how elites relate to other elites). To this original framework, a third dimension is added: epistemic legitimacy (to what extent elites value young people’s views) (Fricker, 2007). The research finds that Ireland’s comparatively open recruitment, low coherence and strong epistemic legitimacy enabled substantive youth participation. In Flanders, findings point to a less favourable disposition across all three dimensions. While laudable initiatives emerged, they proved less robust. Finally, the dissertation encourages the use of its proposed analytical framework for further research on political elites. 

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