Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Politics of Adolescence and Democracy

Project Information

IP-PAD

Grant agreement ID: 101072992

DOI

10.3030/101072992

EC signature date 14 July 2022

Start date 1 March 2023

End date 28 February 2027

Funded under

• Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 2 567 325,60

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - IP-PAD (Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Politics of Adolescence and Democracy)

Reporting period: 2023-03-01 to 2025-02-28

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

IP-PAD (Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Politics of Adolescence & Democracy) addresses a timely and pressing societal question: how the developing cognition and brain of young adolescents influences how they process political information and their political behaviour. Across Europe, trust in democratic institutions is under pressure. Political polarization, disinformation, and declining voter turnout are eroding democratic resilience. At the same time, youth disengagement from politics is rising, and satisfaction with democracy is particularly low among younger generations.
These developments point to a structural challenge: if today’s adolescents become tomorrow’s disengaged citizens, the long-term health of liberal democracies is at risk. Yet despite their importance, we still know relatively little about how adolescents — especially those aged 11 to 21 — form political opinions and develop democratic commitments.
IP-PAD responds to this challenge by combining insights from political science, psychology, and neuroscience. It brings together traditionally separate literatures on political engagement and adolescent development, and seeks to understand how cognitive, emotional, and social processes shape political learning during adolescence. The project aims to establish an interdisciplinary knowledge base and train a new generation of researchers equipped to study political development across disciplinary boundaries.
IP-PAD’s scientific objectives are complemented by societal goals: building an evidence base to support youth democratic engagement and informing interventions and policy. With its unique data collection efforts, innovative methods, and strong academic-practitioner links, IP-PAD is well positioned to shape future research, policy, and practice around youth and democracy in Europe.

For more information on IP-PAD project, please consult our website www.ippad.eu.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

In the first 18 months, IP-PAD has made good progress toward its objectives. A major milestone is the successful implementation of Wave 1 of the cross-national panel survey, covering more than 5,000 adolescents across five European countries. The study combines political, cognitive, affective, and social variables in a single design. Preparations for Wave 2 are underway, with fieldwork expected to take place in May 2025.
In parallel, Doctoral Candidates (DCs) have conducted surveys, experiments, laboratory-based studies aligned with their particular research focus. For example, their studies investigate how adolescents process political information, how ideological attitudes are shaped by psychological traits, and how emotions affect political reasoning. Preliminary results suggest for example that traits like impulse control and emotion regulation predict openness to democratic norms, and that affective polarization already emerges in early adolescence.
Several validated instruments have been developed — including new measures of political interest and affective polarization — and are currently applied across multiple settings. Studies are pre-registered, reproducible, and already resulting in pre-prints and peer-reviewed publications. DCs work in interdisciplinary teams, linking political science, developmental psychology, and neuroscience in their research questions, methods, and interpretations.
Across the board, the project exemplifies how social sciences can be integrated with life sciences to produce new insights into the emotional, cognitive and social dimensions of democratic development.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

IP-PAD is breaking new ground in at least three ways. First, it builds a unique multi-country three-wave panel dataset covering a wide age range (11–21) and a broad set of variables. This enables within-subject and cross-national comparisons and allows us to track developmental trajectories in political engagement and trust — a first in the field.
Second, the project introduces psychological and neuroscientific constructs into the study of political development, showing that traits such as emotion regulation, social risk-taking, and cognitive control systematically relate to political attitudes. This interdisciplinary integration yields more complete models of political learning and identity formation.
Third, the project brings a new identity-based perspective to political interest, showing that engagement is not only a matter of knowledge or exposure, but also of self-definition. This opens up new avenues for intervention and communication strategies.
To fully realise its potential, the project requires:
• Continued longitudinal data collection (Waves 2 and 3);
• Deeper policy engagement to translate findings into practice;
• Sustained interdisciplinary collaboration beyond the project’s formal timeline.

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