Civic-Political Engagement: Developmental Science Comes of Age Commentary on the Thematic Issue 'The Development of Civic Engagement: Results from Longitudinal Studies'

摘要

This special issue marks a major step in bringing developmental studies into correspondence with other disciplines that give civic and political engagement central importance. This term varies across disciplines and countries but is used here to designate behavior and understandings of individuals' relationships with society's civic institutions and political systems. Until the 1990s, questions of how individuals become civically engaged, form a political identity, or maintain an active political posture were addressed mainly with the conceptual tools of political science (e.g., political socialization), sociology (e.g., social movements), and education (e.g., civic education). There was some borrowing from developmental psychology (e.g., learning theory and later cognitive-moral development) but issues of formation, activism, identity, and the like were handled pretty much without input from developmental research or theory. This was not a shortcoming of these other disciplines but was due to developmental scientists' own lack of interest in the civic and political domains. Some investigators such as Judith Torney-Purta (Oppenheim & Torney, 1974) were exceptions, but in the main developmental researchers focused on harmonious family relationships, the interior coherence of cognition, moral reasoning, and personality characteristics that distinguished well-functioning from mal-adaptive youth. Developmental theory, then, was unprepared to handle public behavior that invited dispute, collective action involving coordinated organization, and voicing contentious ideas that met with competing interests - the basic stuff of civic and political life.