TIME speaks with
Jennifer Lawless, whose research on young Americans' political ambition is
revealed in a new book
Political science professors Jennifer
Lawless and Richard Fox asked more than 4,000 high school and college students
if they would be interested in running for political office in America someday:
89% of them said “no.”
That finding is the crux of a new book
based on their original research, Running From Office. In it, the
authors argue that the dysfunction of Washington has turned the next generation
off politics in historic fashion. Unless behaviors change, American
University’s Lawless says, the country’s brightest stars are going to pursue
just about anything but one of the 500,000 elected offices America needs filled
each year.
Here is a lightly edited transcript of
TIME’s interview with Lawless, in which she explains who’s to blame, what’s to
be done and why she earnestly believes parents should be convincing their kids
to become politicians.
It’s an old, old thing to lament the
youth’s lack of interest in politics and a rancorous political climate. What is
happening here that is new?
There are two dynamics. The first is
that lamenting young people’s engagement has previously always stopped at their
interest or their participation. [Researchers have] never actually considered
whether they’re interested in running for office. The other is the young people
that we’ve surveyed, who are high school and college students now, have grown
up only amid the dysfunction that currently characterizes the political system.
They have known nothing else. And this is really the first generation where
that’s the case.
But is this a historic brand of
dysfunction?
We know that polarization is stronger
now than it’s been and it’s continued to increase. We know that
effectiveness—if we measure that in legislative productivity—has been lower in
the last several Congresses. And look at some of the high-profile examples of
dysfunction that we’re not accustomed to seeing. The government shutdown is the
most obvious one. Debates over raising the debt ceiling. The U.S. having its
credit rating decreased. The constant worry over the course of the last year
that there might be another government shutdown. That’s new to this generation.
We saw dysfunction but not at the same level in the 1980s and 1990s.
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