Empowering the young in an aging democracy

In ageing societies, demographic trends increasingly create a representation gap and skew political influence towards older generations, leaving younger citizens structurally disadvantaged in shaping and controlling collective decisions. The present study contends that the existing proposals aimed at empowering young people, including the lowering of the voting age, the implementation of age-weighted voting, and the introduction of youth quotas, are inadequate in addressing the fundamental democratic inequities experienced by young individuals. It is important to note that these approaches either misrepresent youth disadvantage as analogous to the structural oppression experienced by historically marginalised groups or rely excessively on electoral means to grant young people meaningful political control. It is argued that the political exclusion of youth is qualitatively distinct, rooted in their temporal marginality and lack of stable group identity over time. In order to address this issue, the introduction of contestation arenas is proposed. These democratic innovations enable citizens to scrutinise and veto political decisions that misrecognise their interests. In contradistinction to deliberative mini publics, these arenas embrace conflict and partiality, thereby allowing politicised interests to challenge representative decisions through structured contestation. The paper posits that contestation arenas offer a medium for active democratic control, political visibility, and symbolic recognition, particularly suited to the modes of participation favoured by younger citizens. By facilitating agency and equal authorship over decisions, such arenas promise a more robust democratic system capable of addressing generational asymmetries without undermining the legitimacy of existing electoral structures.