Political Socialization

Abstract

I use three waves of survey data conducted on three different cohorts of Japanese young people in order to understand how political attitudes develop. Two major conclusions emerge. First, most people do not develop attachments to parties early in life. Only politicized parents play an important role in their children's political development, suggesting a social learning model best describes the development of political values. Second, despite transformations in politics; the party system; and educational reform during the past twenty years, young people in 2009 strongly resemble those who came of age twenty years earlier.