YOUTH 2020 - The position of young people in Slovenia

170 “We’re a group of young people, young Istrians and we want to do the same as some of the members of the older generation from the Italian minority. They have and organise things, but if you think about it young people have slightly different tastes than they do. So we’re going to start being more ac- tive, because we want to do something for us.” (Alex, aged 22, member of the Italian minority) The problem of low participation does exist, but it is complex and is above all tied to the issues of institutionalised politics. The generally indisputable definition of political participation is defined as “an individual’s involvement in the political system at various levels of activity, ranging from complete lack of interest to holding political office” (Rush 1992; Della Porta, 2003: 64; Deželan 2015). Both political participa- tion and interest in politics can be seen as spectral phenomena that are not constant within an individual. It depends on the person whether both fac- tors increase or decrease during their lifetime or change in some alterna- tive way. This is due to several factors, such as life experiences, social con- tacts, and theenvironment. Thebasicsof researchonpolitical participation are based on the level of participation (high, medium, low, non-existent), and researchers introduce basic questions such as: who participates, how they participate, and why they participate (Della Porta, 2003: 66). In the last few decades, modern societies have faced a number of prob- lems and related challenges that seriously undermine the basic founda- tions of democratic plural societies (rule of law, democracy, fundamen- tal rights and freedoms). Some of the most important “challenges” include the growing socio-economic inequality, the rise of “illiberal” democracies, shrinking civic space and related rights and freedoms), radicalisation and violent extremism (terrorist attacks), lack of trust in democratic processes and institutions, declining participation in demo- cratic decision-making processes, hate speech and xenophobia (so- called “hate culture”), populism, fake news, cyberbullying, etc. Although each of these problems calls into question the individual foundations of