YOUTH 2020 - The position of young people in Slovenia

184 Signing petitions is one of the most conventional forms of political participation, which is also widespread among today’s youth. There are as many as 43.6% of those who have already signed a petition, either online or in person. We can see that young people understand protest policy, due to the pop- ularity of demonstrations and protests among their demographic. More than half of them believe that they would or have already participated in non-violent demonstrations or protests. Compared to the other forms mentioned above, protests are also significantly more numerous, as more than 13% of young people report their experience of participating therein. Similarly, there is a high willingness to participate in the activi- ties of protest movements, either in person or online. Namely, as many as 48% of young people show such readiness, and more than 8% of them have already participated in these activities. An interesting form of protest activity is boycotting elections, which is not the result of apathy or other barriers to voter participation, but a form of protest against a political class running for vacant political offic- es. Boycotting elections is quite widespread among young people and more than a fifth of young people report that the elections are likely to be boycotted or have already been. In fact, 3.2% of those polled voted to boycott the elections. A much more popular form of boycott, which is a reflection of political disagreement and often an expression of a do-it-yourself identity policy, is boycotting products for political, ethical, or environmental reasons. This is additionally a matter of self-expressively buying (and not buying) cer- tain products for the same reasons. In both cases, about half of the re- spondents have already done or would probably do so, and it is surprising that there is a large increase in thosewho think so compared to 2010. Even the percentage of young people who have already done so (i.e., politically engaged) with their wallets), is still not negligible (11.1% and 13.5%).