The civic culture in ageing societies

The chapter begins with a discussion of the position of older people in the culture wars more generally. It goes on to identify two key findings of the literature – that gender and generation gaps exist in political participation. Later, I use Brexit – the democratic referendum used to justify the removal of the UK from EU membership in 2016 – as a vignette to explore these issues further. I conclude that the future of liberal democracy rests on the capacity of democratic societies to convince younger cohorts to vote for progressive and socially liberal political parties. The challenge is in ensuring that progressive parties appear on the ballot paper at all.