Political culture in southern Brazil: young people’s perspectives on democracy

Abstract

Considering the representation of youth in the Brazilian population, it is important to comprehend young people perceptions regarding democratic values and the political system. Thus, we seek to identify the characteristics of the political culture of youngsters in Southern Brazil. For that purpose, we analyzed different factors such as the type of school attended (public or private), quality of education and average family income. Our hypothesis is that young people have been increasingly linking democracy to subjective and post-material aspects, with different emphasis depending on their socialization. The data used was obtained from a survey of 2,035 people between 13 and 24 years old in Florianópolis (SC) and Curitiba (PR) in 2016 and Porto Alegre (RS) in 2015 — the three capitals of Southern Brazil.