Democratic consensus and the young: a cross national comparison of Britain and America

In previous decades research has suggested that the young, especially those in higher education, were increasingly cynical , distrustful and disenchanted with the democratic process in Britain and America. The aim of this paper is to see how far this is still the case by assessing democratic attitudes amongst college students in a sample from Britain and America, using scales developed by McClosky (1964). The paper concludes that the responses from the American and British sample were fairly similar across a number of scales on the rules of the game, free speech and equality. On all these both groups of students displayed relatively high support for democratic attitudes. The main contrast was found on feelings of trust and efficacy, with the British sample showing much lower feelings that government was honest and responsive to their needs. The paper concludes with some suggestions about how these responses can be explained.