| dc.description.abstract | Many countries around the world have successfully lowered their voting ages to 16 at either
the local, regional, and/or national level. These countries have applied differing methods for
their implementation process. Some have experienced a top-down process while others have
experienced a bottom-up process. In this thesis, I investigate why countries lower their voting
age – and why they don’t. I start with a literature review into enfranchisement reforms in
general, and youth enfranchisement in particular. Based on this, I formulate expectations about
the structural conditions for lower voting ages and outline possible actors and processes
accompanying the adoption of voting age reforms. In the empirical part of the thesis, I first
analyse the conditions most often associated with a lower minimum voting age through a time-
series cross-national analysis of 141 countries between 1960 and 2022. Here, I find that
majoritarian electoral systems, more elderly people in a country, a high degree of political
polarisation, liberal democracy, and high degrees of regional authority correlate with lower
minimum voting ages. I use these findings as a foundation to further explore the processes
involved in the adaption of a voting age reform drawing on the case of Norway, where lowering
the minimum voting age has been attempted, but rejected several times. Using six in-depth
interviews and process tracing, I investigate the actors and negotiations in the Norwegian
adaption process. I find that the Norwegian case exhibits both top-down and bottom-up
tendencies throughout the process. The discourse in the Norwegian case is academic in nature,
and primarily focuses on democratic participation and health on the pro-side, and normative
legal arguments on the side against lowering. Critical actors in the top position of the
responsible ministry were crucial for the trial elections held in Norway, by first pushing for
them and later allowing the project to continue. Youth parties and organisations were crucial
for both accelerating the trial election process, but also turning parties on the issue. I also find
that political actors sometimes acted outside of party lines. I conclude that the Norwegian
process failed implementation because of a lack of political will from political actors, and
subsequently the Norwegian public. | |
