Political Rationality: Uncovering political reasoning among young Danish and Norwegian citizens. Exploring the relationship between identity, forms of rationality and emotions

The very idea about democracies is public participation in elections, decision-making and/or public engagement. The democratic participation distributes power among ordinary people and serve to legitimize decisions in public affairs and is a vital characteristic of a political culture.”The term ’political culture’ refers to the specifically political orientations – attitudes toward the political system and its various parts, and attitudes toward the role of the self in the system” (Almond & Verba, 1963:12). A political culture is among several aspects characterized by the forms and level of participation and particularly how individuals regard themselves as active political citizens. Participation, either voter turnout or other forms of public involvement is regarded as a barometer of the quality of democracy in a country and serve to characterize the political culture in a democracy (Diamond & Morlino, 2005). The political culture of the two countries Norway and Denmark is the context of the present study of how young people reason about their political involvement.