YOUTH 2020 - The position of young people in Slovenia

182 If we look at the other side of participation in elections, i.e., passive use of the right to vote in the forms of candidacy for political office, we can see that this aspect of institutional policy is even more problematic than the turnout itself. Almost two-thirds of the respondents (59.9%) answered that they do not intend to run for political office in the future, and a fur- ther 32% said that such a thing is unlikely. This result indicates the seri- ous problems that institutional policy will face in the future, as it actual- ly implies that the pool of candidates for important political positions will be very impoverished. Low interest in political functions means that political parties will face major personnel challenges and the problem of a lack of high-quality staff. The percentage of those who answered that they will definitely run for political office in the future is not higher than the percentage of young people who are already members of political parties (around 2%) (see Deželan 2015). “I decided to do it and I went to the party’s founding congress, without any expectations, I basically didn’t know anyone. I became a founding member of the party. I wanted to see what this looked like, because I wasn’t very well acquainted with how parties work. But I said that I wanted to see if anyone was going to listen to use, give the young ones a shot. I was 20, 21 (years- old) at the time. /.../ And since some of us were there from the beginning, I got quite a high place on the list for municipality council, and I ended up being elected as councillor. At the time I think I was among the three young- est councillors in Slovenia. “ (Nejc, 27 years old, young politician) Low interest in taking on the responsibility of a political function indicates major challenges that institutional politics will have to face in the future, since this means that they will have a much smaller pool of candidates at their disposal.