Most political parties have youth wings (Allern and Verge 2017), and these are a key vehicle of policy development in the senior party (Heinze 2024; Seeberg 2024; Hooghe et al. 2004).
An increasing scholarly interest in these youth wing shows that young people join youth wings to influence policy (Bruter and Harrison 2009, McDonnell et al. 2024a), and they hold ideologically more extreme positions than their parent parties (McDonnell et al. 2024b). They are compassionate conservatives, socialists, liberalists etc., who is serious about politics and many of them consider a political career (Binderkrantz et al. 2020; Bolin et al. 2023; Ammassari et al. 2023; Hooghe et al. 2004). The ideologically pure positions of the youth wings can be a pain for the political parties if they get criticized for selling out the silver, and youth wings can make politicians in the parent party take more extreme positions (Seeberg 2024). Yet, what makes youth wings ideologically extreme in the first place?
Henrik Seeberg is Professor in Political Science at Aarhus University in Denmark. His research concerns the causes and consequences of party competition and political agenda-setting in advanced democracies. His research has appeared in Journal of Politics, British Journal of Political Science, European Journal of Political Research, West European Politics, JPART among others. Henrik is the winner of the Gordon Smith and Vincent Wright Memorial Prize for the best article published in West European Politics during 2020 and the winner of the Peter John Prize for the best article published in Journal of Public Policy during 2023. His most recent book 'Explaining Local Policy Agendas' came out at Palgrave Macmillan in 2022 and was awarded the Danish Local Government Award for the best research on Danish Municipalities in 2021-2023.
Issy Waite stood as the Labour party candidate against Kemi Badenoch in North-West Essex as a 21-year-old student whilst completing her 3rd year at Sussex University (International Relations and Law Studies). She reduced Badenoch’s majority from 28,000 to 2,600, coming a close second in a Tory heartland seat. She is currently the National Secretary of Labour Students and works at Labour aligned Progressive Britain. Issy will provide hands-on experience of young party members of the British Labour Party, their policy disappointments and ideological radicalization.