New Elites in Old States

This study of contemporary political culture examines belief systems among youth elites in five countries that share not only roughly comparable economies, social structures, and cultural environments, but also the same political tradition: Canada, the United States, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. Based on a survey of over 3,000 senior undergraduates conducted between 1980 and 1987, it focuses on attitudes towards government, feminism, minority rights, and equality in an effort to determine whether there are significant differences in the political cultures of the five Anglo-American democracies. The youth elites studied here are part of a generation that now wields substantial economic power and that has succeeded in fundamentally altering and expanding the political agendas of all the advanced industrial democracies. Nevitte and Gibbins argue that the attitudinal structures of these youth elites have far-reaching consequences.