The aim of this article is to investigate patterns and drivers of political participation of young people in Finland by using data from the Ostrobothnian Youth survey, a web-based survey conducted in 2010–11 among 1674 ninth-graders in the West-Finnish region of Ostrobothnia. Using the ‘resource model’ of civic voluntarism as a theoretical framework, the article addresses two research questions: (i) what forms of political participation do ninth-graders principally participate in, and (ii) what are the main drivers of this participation? The results show higher levels of extracurricular political participation in comparison to representational and non-representational political participation. The foremost explanations of political participation were to be found in demographic variables, such as gender and language, but also in psychosocial and political resources. The findings thus offer support for the ‘resource model’, but also suggest that the association between resources and political participation is conditioned by the type of participation.
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