Large youth cohorts historically coincide with protest, extremism, and revolution

Evidence

First, young people are the protagonists of protest, instability, reform, and revolution. Historically, the existence of large cohorts of young people has tended to coincide with such movements. “The Protestant Reformation,” it has been said, “is an example of one of the outstanding youth movements in history.” Demographic growth, Jack Goldstone has persuasively argued, was a central factor in the two waves of revolution that occurred in Eurasia in the mid-seventeenth and late eighteenth centuries. A notable expansion of the proportion of youth in Western countries coincided with the “Age of the Democratic Revolution” in the last decades of the eighteenth century. In the nineteenth century successful industrialization and emigration reduced the political impact of young populations in European societies. The proportions of youth rose again in the 1920s, however, providing recruits to fascist and other extremist movements. Four decades later the post-World War II baby boom generation made its mark politically in the demonstrations and protests of the 1960s. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 321

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to demographic bulge theory underlying the Arab Spring, and to Jack Goldstone’s revolution research. — connects to: The 1940-45 cohort uniquely combined engagement with tolerance and bred civil rights — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 1270; The youth political knowledge gap is a recent, cohort-driven development — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 95
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 321