The Political Socialization of Youth as a Function of State Policy

This article is dedicated to the analysis of the political socialization of youth within the public policy system. The author proposes an explanatory model that integrates classical theories of political socialization and contemporary Russian approaches to understanding the public policy and public administration where the state’s domestic policy system is considered as a means of transmitting and designing the value-normative foundations of political socialization as well as an activity aimed at creating favorable conditions for the political socialization of an individual. It is concluded that the key areas of domestic public policy does not only define the content of political socialization but also shape its context, within which political reality is interpreted, yet the complexity and coherence of these influences determine the degree of stability, integrity, and internal consistency of the emerging political ideas of young people. The state implements the function of political socialization through a complementary set of educational, youth, cultural, socio-economic, and information policies, each of which has its own institutions, instruments, and technologies, but is actualized in a single value-normative field and forms the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral components of the political picture of the world of the younger generation.