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Autor: Corina Morutan
Family Background Influence on
Romanian’s Youth Voting Behaviour
Iasi, 2009
134 pagini

Despite the fact that almost 20 years have passed from the May 20, 1990 founding elections and, in the mean time, a few rounds of national, local or European elections took place specialized studies on electoral issues are few. There are of course a few exceptions . Also missing are scientific discussions on youth political socialization. This book is a step forward in filling this void. The fact that an analysis of youth’s relationship with politics is carried out by a young sociology graduate is a plus, the insider view being often beneficial in social research.
What makes us go to the polls or vote for a certain party? Most people would answer these two questions by invoking personal or political actor related reasons and circumstances (or combinations of these two). Among voter responses we would surely find something like “we had no time”, “I was out of town”, “I was sick”, “we did not want to vote as a sign of protest”, “there was nobody to vote with ” or “I like this party/ candidate”, “I trust this party / candidate “, “I always vote with this party”, “I voted against the current government”, “He is honest, he is a good politician etc…”. All these responses have in common people’s implicit “belief” that they are (all) actors of their own thoughts, attitudes, values, decisions and behaviours. In other words, “What do I think and how do I act is due to me, is because I decided this.” Self-determination seems to be a constant feature in voters’ reasoning (or rationalization in some cases), when asked to justify their personal choices. If someone would tell peoplethat who they are and what they do it depends less on them, on their will, and is mostly due to the social context in which they live, that person, maybe a sociologist, would be looked at distrustfully. The situation is not surprising given that starting with the first studies in electoral sociology  experts have faced a similar situation.

The conclusions are, nevertheless, unequivocal : most voters decide who to vote for before the electoral campaign, political preferences show a remarkable stability over time and between generations and, more than this, they are closely related to social group affiliation (social class, religion, race, family, social network, etc.).

The present paper, “Family BackgroundInfluence on Komanian’s Youth Voting Behaviour”, falls into this tradition of analysing and explaining the voting behaviour. The author aims to find out whether and to what extent the parents’ voting choices are reproduced by their children. Also, the research aims are to identify how family background influences the voting behaviour of Romanian youth, and what are the family characteristics that allow us to predict youth voting behaviour.

The family background concept is operationalized on three dimensions and for each dimension several sub-dimensions were considered: socio-economic (parents’ occupational status, parents’ education, and the financial situation of the family), political
(parents’ partisanship, turnout and voting intentions) and informational (frequency of discussions on political issues, the frequency of accessing information on political issues through media channels, all at family level). Referring to youth voting behaviour, the measurements used focused on statements regarding turnout and the voting choice for the June 1st, 2008 local elections.

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