Predictors of Conventional, Protest, and Civic Participation among Slovenian Youth: A Test of the Civic Voluntarism Model

The purpose of the study was to compare the predictive power of three sets of determinants in Civic Voluntarism Model (CVM) on three dimensions of citizen participation. We analysed a representative sample of Slovenian Youth 2010 study (N = 1,257, M age = 22.5 years, 48.8 % female). Results indicated that 1) CVM explained the largest amount of variance in protest participation (25 %), followed by conventional participation (17 %), and civic participation (8 %); 2) political culture and social networks models were separately the strongest explanatory models, while resources model was the weakest; 3) political interest, female gender, postmaterialist values, more frequent church attendance and discussions of politics with parents all had a significant positive impact on two out of three citizen participation dimensions of Slovenian youth. Implications of the results are discussed in terms of the democratic theory and the future of democratic consolidation processes in post-communist countries.