The democratic potential of youth assemblies and political forums in the UK: a case study of the Scottish Youth Parliament

Young people are represented in a number of youth parliaments and assemblies in the UK, with these bodies also providing a valuable source of political experience. Stratos Patrikios and Mark Shephard have studied the Scottish Youth Parliament in detail to assess how representative the institution is. They found that it does broadly reflect the Scottish population, although there is evidence that the institution reproduces existing inequalities between social groups when it comes to the future activities of its members.