YPP Network Description

The MacArthur Research Network on Youth and Participatory Politics (YPP) formed out of recognition that youth are critical to the future of democracy and that the digital age is introducing technological changes that are impacting how youth develop into informed, engaged, and effective actors.

Toward Participatory Democracy
Original cover for Port Huron Statement
by Danielle Allen
April 12, 2012
For most people, political equality today means formal political rights, such as the right to vote. This is a regrettably limited view. The right to vote is not an end but a means. It is, in fact, only one means, if a critical one, by which to enable each “individual to share in those social decisions determining the quality and direction of his life,” as the Port Huron Statement describes the end of politics.