Between promise and practice: a scoping review of the democratic outcomes of youth participation in local governance

Youth participation in governance is widely endorsed by international institutions and scholars alike, yet its democratic outcomes remain poorly understood. This article presents a scoping review of 48 empirical studies on youth participation in local governance across 24 countries, using a structured framework to analyse individual, community, and government-level outcomes. The analysis identifies a range of rationales behind youth participation, including normative (e.g., upholding rights), instrumental (e.g., policy improvement), and substantive (e.g., competence development, civic participation, and empowerment) rationales, which often overlap within individual studies. Most studies report both positive and negative outcomes, underscoring how the design of participatory processes shapes both experiences and impacts. Rather than treating participation as an inherently democratic good, the article advocates for a closer examination of institutional design logics, gatekeeping dynamics, and the conditional nature of positive outcomes. In doing so, it contributes to the literature on democratic innovation and public governance and opens new directions for theory-building and comparative research.