YOUTH 2020 - The position of young people in Slovenia

172 Political participation has become subject to individual identities and experiences; furthermore, it is important to emphasise that in modern protest politics the actors, targets, and repertoires of political action have all changed. Popular participation in the joint management of a political entity de- pends to some extent on the individual, but at the same time the impor- tance of the political structure in which they participate must not be for- gotten. Thus, the final participation is influenced by a number of individual and structural factors, from the political culture of citizens and political elites, the inclusiveness of the political system, political knowledge of the individual, his socio-economic abilities, personal expe- rience, gender, ethnicity and national belonging, etc. Our study exam- ined the respondents’ participation through a range of different forms of political activity that are available to young people. 4.2  CRUCIAL FACTORS OF POLITICAL PARTICIPATION In general, there is a theoretical and empirical lack of coherence in the causal mechanisms associated with political participation. A multitude of empirical studies on various factors influencing political participa- tion reveal the problem of speculation regarding citizens’ political be- haviour (Macedo et al., 2005). Various valid and relevant empirical re- sults, on the other hand, reveal that certain factors have different effects on different groups in different contexts (see Smets and Van Ham, 2013). With this in mind, certain robust variables (“usual suspects”) repeated- ly prove to be important for political participation. Actor-centred expla- nations of political participation — which is also true of our study — emphasize the level of the actor and their consequent level of political effectiveness, which applies to both individuals and groups (Axford and Rosamond, 1997: 102).