“Inherited Political Beliefs: How Our Parents Shape Our Attitudes” is the topic of a panel discussion that will be held on March 20, 2025, starting at 10:00 a.m., at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Sarajevo. The panel discussion is organized by the Institute for Youth Development KULT in cooperation with the Institute for Social Research of the Faculty of Political Sciences in Sarajevo.
Professors from the Faculty of Political Science at the Department of Sociology, Samir Forić and Amer Osmić, psychologist Senka Čimpo, and the Head of the Monitoring, Evaluation and Research Department at the Institute for Youth Development KULT, Aziz Đipa, will discuss how young people are affected by the political beliefs of their parents and families.
In 2024, the Institute for Youth Development KULT conducted a survey on political literacy of youth in BiH, one of the few in BiH that is based on a representative sample of young people from the entire country. The study examined young people’s attitudes and opinions on various topics, revealing their level of political literacy and their participation in political and social events.
The survey results indicate that nearly half of respondents reported being somewhat or extremely interested in politics and political events. Notably, men showed greater interest in politics than women. Likewise, politics is more interesting to young people in older age groups, while younger people mostly show no interest in politics because “they’re too young to get involved in that”.
The most common form of political engagement of young people is voting in elections. In the 2024 elections, data from the Central Election Committee shows that 45.3% of young people voted. Two years earlier, in the 2022 general election, over 47% of young people in BiH exercised their right to vote. It is clear that, over the past few election cycles, there has been a trend of declining voter turnout among young people.
Conversations with young people revealed that their motivation for voting is driven by a sense of civic duty and a desire for change. However, some also expressed voting out of “fear that their vote might be misused.” Young people who do not participate in the elections are either minors or felt disappointed by the available options.
The research results show that young people in BiH primarily seek information on internet portals (76.7%) and social media, with Instagram and Facebook being the most popular platforms. Additionally, more than half of young people receive information through conversations with family, friends, or colleagues. However, the majority of respondents confirmed that they do not pay much attention to verifying the accuracy of the information they encounter in the media, unless they are particularly interested in a topic, in which case they will check multiple sources.
More than a third of young people do not read the political platforms of parties before voting. One of the reasons they give is that there’s no point in reading them because they “know the parties won’t fulfill any of those promises.”
The survey results show that family and friends have a strong influence on who young people trust and how they decide who to vote for in elections.
When asked how closely their political beliefs align with those of their parents, two out of five young people (41.2%) said they partly or completely agree that their beliefs match. In this case, women are slightly more likely than men to say that their political beliefs match those of their parents.
During focus group discussions, young people admitted that their political beliefs are mainly derived from “from home”. Parents and household members are authority figures to them—people they trust and believe have more knowledge about politics than they do, and they generally follow their lead. As they mentioned, they are most likely to vote for “one of their own,” whether it’s someone from their local area, an immediate or extended family member, or someone they consider “one of their own” for other reasons.
“I think we’re all influenced to an extent, at least by our parents, as far as politics is concerned. I mean, they talk more about all that, we hear their comments and I think they do influence at least some of our opinions,” said one of the young focus group participants.
Of course, there are exceptions to this pattern. Research shows that around 20% of young people do not follow their family’s political preferences but instead carefully evaluate candidates’ character and performance before voting.
Political literacy among young people in Bosnia and Herzegovina can only be improved through a structured and systematic approach that would involve both formal and informal education to achieve the best results. This is just one of the conclusions from the survey on youth political literacy conducted by the Institute with the support of the Embassy of Sweden in BiH (SIDA).
If you are interested in learning more about this topic and talking to the panelists, you can fill out the application HERE by 11:59 p.m. on March 18th.
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