concludes that the “persistence over time and place” of a “cross-sectional age pattern of
voting suggests that it results in some way from growing older, rather than reflecting
differences among successive cohorts (or “political generations”) at the time of entry into
the polity” (251).
Those employing a generational theory of participation stress the importance of
attachments to the political process citizens develop early in life (Sigel & Hoskin 1981;
Braungart & Braungart 1989; Delli Carpini & Keeter 1996; Craig & Bennett 1997).
In
other words, political generations are not born they are made; oft-cited U.S. examples
include those coming of age in the 1930s and 1960s. The “FDR” New Deal generation
was, as senior citizens, the heaviest-voting, and by far, most Democratic Party-leaning of
all age groups, with polls showing them largely supportive of “big” government
(Anderson 1979; Miller & Shanks 1996). The story is more mixed for the “protest”
generation of the 1960s; many post-World War II baby boomers were “liberal” on social
issues and “conservative” on economic issues as they approached middle age (Maddox &
Lilie 1984; Light 1988).
When conceptualized as a “political” generation, however,
evidence suggests that the most politically engaged young people in the 1960s remained
adult participants in political movements that had roots in their earlier youthful activism
(Whalen & Flacks 1989; Braungart & Braungart 1991).
Regarding the effects of life cycle and generational phenomena, Klecka’s (1973)
examination of Survey Research Center polls from 1952-1968 found support for both;
moreover, he determined that such effects are only two of a number of variables
3
Some scholars (Converse 1976; Jennings 1987; Wilensky 2002) criticize the notion of identifying people
by age-group as if they were a monolith with common insights, philosophies, and politics.
4
Our dislike of the “boomer” label does not preclude us from recognizing that it is almost universally
invoked to identify those born between 1946 and 1964. We would, by and large, follow Bennett and
Bennett (1990) who distinguish early boomers (1946-1954) and late boomers (1955-1964). The coming-of-
age experiences of the two groups were sufficiently different to warrant the distinction (i.e., males in the
former were subject to the military draft, the latter was not; political activism was more common among the
earlier group that in the later one).
3
Convention