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Over the last decade, a youth revolt has swept through Asia. Massive, regime-rocking protests have grabbed global attention as students and other young people have confronted security forces on the streets, taking great risks to condemn authoritarian rule, promote democracy, and to push forward new agendas of personal freedom and gender equality. Behind the scenes, young people have experimented with novel and diverse modes of political and social activism, often using new tools of online communication and cultural expression, forging new kinds of coalitions, and exploring nonconfrontational and subterranean networking.

Youth Activism in Asia focuses equally on the episodes of spectacular protest and on varieties of less visible engagement, examining the diversity, origins, and impact of contemporary youth activism in Asia. With fifteen case studies, the volume highlights shared patterns among demands, tactical repertoires, and activist networks, and examines what differentiates protest movements across countries and over time. Drawing on original fieldwork and, in many cases, their own experience, the authors address Brunei, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Timor-Leste, and transnational activism. Conceiving of “activism” broadly as any action intended to bring about social and political change, the volume makes theoretical contributions to our understanding of the relationship between protest and democratic backsliding, engagement with new communication technologies, and this generation’s distinctive intersectional politics. Youth Activism in Asia showcases the creativity, energy, boldness, and diversity of a new generation of Asian political activists.

Youth in the Movements documents the history of the rise of American high school and youth activism in the United States since the Second World War. Spaces within high schools and the adults at them provided support or inspiration – both negative and positive – for youth engaged in protest, organizing, and activism. Through rich research of archival sources and oral histories, contributors reveal new perspectives on American high school and youth activism. Viewed through the eyes of high school-aged youth around the United States – in familiar locations such as Boston, New York City, and Detroit, as well as less familiar locales in the historiography, such as Salt Lake City and the Navajo Reservation – we extend our understanding of high school and how it has been experienced by youth activists in the post-World War II period. 

Officeholders in contemporary parliaments and cabinets are more likely than not to be male, wealthy, middle-aged or older, and from the dominant ethnicity, whereas young adults have an insufficient presence in political office. Young adults—those aged 35 years or under—comprise a mere ten percent of all parliamentarians globally, and three percent of all cabinet members. Compared to their presence in the world’s population, this age group faces an underrepresentation of one to three in parliament and one to ten in cabinet. In this book, Stockemer and Sundström provide a holistic account of youths’ marginalization in legislatures, cabinets, and candidacies for office through a comparative lens. They argue that youths’ underrepresentation in political office constitutes a democratic deficit and provide ample evidence for why they think that youth must be present in politics at much higher rates. They further embed this book within what they label a vicious cycle of political alienation, which involves the declining political sophistication of the young, their waning electoral participation, and their insufficient of representation in office. Empirically, the authors combine a global focus with in-depth studies, discussing the country-level, party-level, and individual-level factors that bar young adults’ entry to positions of political power. This is the first comprehensive book on youth representation and it has relevance for those broadly interested in issues of representation, democracy, inequality, and comparative politics.