Reflections on the study of generations in politics

Abstract

Political scientists often use the lens of generations when studying how the political views of citizens develop and how the polity as a whole evolves. This essay provides an overview of the topic: distinguishing work on lineage generations from that on political generations while also addressing their intersection; describing the Age-Period-Cohort (APC) framework used to study political generations and illustrating the difficulty of distinguishing cohort from age and period effects; and reflecting on the difficulty of explaining generational differences. The essay closes with a discussion of the many ways in which America's youngest citizens are politically different from their elders.