A project that studies young people in politics includes observations not only from European countries but also from North America. It is developed by the European Foundation for Progressive Studies and in its research part it is compiled by sociologists from the innovative platform Audience Net. Parvan Simeonov, Executive Director of Gallup International Bulgaria, admits that he was really curious to analyse the results of his colleagues who are known also in Bulgaria. It turns out that the millennium generation known as the Y generation - these are young people who around the year 2000 were aged between 16 and 35 years, are more and more distant from politics. Last year, Gallup International World Association published a book on the topic. Dutch researchers have shown that 1/3 of the members of the Y generation have declared interest in participating in the political process. For comparison, in the previous X generation, 40 per cent have such an interest while the interest in politics from baby boomers is 60 percent. The survey of sociologists from the Audience Net platform makes it clear that the millennium generation is characterized by strong individualism, addiction to computers, lack of collective identity, which make it stand apart from the grand political ideas and shows great political distances. This is observed both among Western and Bulgarian young people.

"When you ask them whether they are satisfied with their lives, whether they are optimistic about their future, young people always show higher levels of cheerfulness. In the project of Audience Net we will see that 88 percent of respondents are happy with their lives, 76 percent expect a better future. At the same time, only 15 per cent say they are very interested in politics, 35 per cent are just interested. Young people see no difference between the political alternatives, they do not feel represented, the connection between them and the politicians gets lost. This is considered a problem of the Western civilization group that is losing the connection between society and the political elites”, Parvan Simeonov says.

In the opinion of the expert, young people do not feel they are represented by politicians. Not accidentally, they cite a variety of options for change. Among them are the transparency and facilitation of election procedures, including through proposals such as the option to vote in a longer period, the option to vote everywhere, and the option to vote electronically, mostly by remote voting. “This is a fashionable topic in Bulgaria. Nearly 60 per cent of our young people want to be able to vote mandatorily. This caused surprise in our Western colleagues until it became clear that compulsory voting is in fashion in Bulgaria as a way to fight with the dependent groups and the corporate vote”, Parvanov explains.

The study also highlighted the fact that all young people are concerned over solving the problems related to education, healthcare and jobs. “With the Bulgarian respondents, there stands a problem which is lacking in the situation with other young people. If Western young people think that politics is not particularly interesting, that it does not represent them, then Bulgarians very often mention the word corruption. 77% of respondents agree with the statement that there is corruption in politics. Compared with other European countries, Bulgaria is experiencing much more corruption in its power. This means that in Bulgaria we regard politics as unrepresentative, boring, administrative, but also as unfair. In the qualitative part of the study there are answers comparing the incomes of politicians to those of ordinary people, i.e. politics is seen as a lucrative profession done “through the back door". This is the first thing that impresses in the Bulgarian context, unlike the western. The second thing are minorities. We are talking about the Roma minority and it is again in terms of fair-unfair, in terms of inequality-inequality before the law. The other findings overlap but this stands out in the Bulgarian case”, Simeon Parvanov concludes.

English: Milena Daynova