John Wall: Exploring Children´s Suffrage
Reviewed by Prof. Dr. Manfred Liebel, Dipl. Soz.-Päd. Philip Meade, 2025-07-25
John Wall: Exploring Children´s Suffrage. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Ageless Voting. Springer (Berlin) 2022. ISBN 978-3-031-14543-8. 128,39 EUR.
There is a detailed German review for this work. Read here
Topic
The question of whether children should be allowed to vote has been debated in Germany, Austria and Switzerland for around three decades, and in some countries, such as the United States, since the 1970s. In Germany, the youth-led group KinderRÄchTsZÄnker first campaigned for children’s voting rights in the early 1990s. Similar demands had been made in the 1980s by adults who called themselves ‘anti-pedagogues’.
Young people around the world are granted the right to vote between the ages of 16 and 21, with most countries setting the minimum age at 18 (see: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/voting-rights-by-country). In Germany, for example, people can only vote in national elections once they reach this age. In some federal states, children are already allowed to participate in state and local elections from the age of 16. While the national government in office until May 2025 had announced its intention to lower the voting age to 16 generally, the new government by the CDU/CSU and SPD no longer mentions this. In Austria, the voting age was lowered to 16 at all political levels back in 2007. In Switzerland, the National Council (national parliament) voted on 16 March 2022 in favour of a legislative initiative to lower the general voting age from 18 to 16. However, this regulation would only take effect if a corresponding constitutional amendment were passed by the National Council and the Council of States (parliament of the cantons) and approved in a referendum. In all the countries mentioned, except for European elections, only persons who are citizens of the country are allowed to vote in elections.
Universal suffrage is a fundamental element of any society or state system that considers itself democratic. For years, children’s rights organizations and youth associations have been campaigning to allow young people to vote at an earlier age. They have proposed various options, ranging from lowering the voting age to 16 or 14, for example, to allowing children to vote from the moment they express their wish to do so. Some also propose that parents or guardians exercise the right to vote on behalf of their children until they reach a certain age, e.g. 18 (‘parental voting’ or ‘family voting’), or until their children express their wish to vote themselves (‘voting rights from birth’). All these proposals are worth discussing, as they could help to increase the political weight of younger generations or counterbalance the dominance of the older population, which is growing in many societies, especially those that are more economically privileged, due to rising life expectancy and low birth rates.
Since young people under the age of 18 or 16 do not yet have universal suffrage, they are sometimes offered special voting procedures in which they can express their political preferences in parallel with the ‘real’ elections. In Germany, these are known as U18 elections, which are held approximately one to two weeks before federal and European elections. The first U18 election took place in 1996 in Berlin’s central district. In 2005, a nationwide U18 election was held for the first time. On the election in February 2025, 166,443 children and young people cast their votes. The U18 election is coordinated by the German Children’s Fund. It is co-organized by the National Youth Council, the federal youth councils, several youth associations and the Berlin U18 network. It is a kind of ‘pre-citizenship’ program, which primarily serves to educate the younger generation about politics and spark their interest in political issues.
At the international level, several youth-led organizations such as We Want to Vote and the National Youth Rights Association in the United States have been actively campaigning for decades for full voting rights regardless of age. They are joined by adult-led organizations such as Amnesty International in the United Kingdom, the Children’s Voice Association and the Freechild Institute in the United States, and the Foundation for the Rights of Future Generations and the Generations Foundation in Germany. Some of these organizations have been working together since 2020 in a global network called the Children’s Voting Colloquium (https://www.childrenvoting.org); it comprises around 100 activists and academics and aims to abolish the minimum age for voting worldwide. Young people who have been denied the right to vote are also involved in this network.
Editor and background
John Wall, the editor of the volume reviewed here, is one of the founders of this network. He published the book Give Children the Vote: Democratising Democracy in 2021 (see: https://www.socialnet.de/rezensionen/29109.php); he aims to use this later collection of essays to underpin the debate on children’s voting rights with scientific arguments from other authors. Wall is also the inspirator behind and proponent of a scientific concept he calls childism. He understands it as a critical term analogous to concepts such as feminism or postcolonialism, which, like the term adultism (see: https://www.socialnet.de/rezensionen/30384.php) more commonly used in Germany, aims to deconstruct the dominance of adults from the perspective of young people and expose their subjectivity. Wall hopes that this will increase awareness in social practice and scientific research of the significance of age categories in social life. He is not only concerned with equality communication between adults and children, but also with changing unequal power structures and rethinking the relationship between age groups in society. From the perspective of childism, it is not just a question of whether current democratic structures can be extended to children, but also of inspiring new, more far-reaching democratic structures. To this end, Wall founded the Childism Institute at Rutgers University in New Jersey, where he is a professor of philosophy, ethics and childhood studies. Since the beginning of the new millennium, he has published numerous writings on the subject, which, like the present book, are currently only available in English.
Contents and structure
The contributions to this anthology challenge the still widespread assumption that the right to vote should be restricted to adults. They do so by means of a critical and interdisciplinary academic discussion of the significance and possibilities of children’s voting rights. To this end, the authors contribute their expertise to four central questions that run through the entire volume: What intellectual, historical and other assumptions underlie the exclusion of children from the right to vote? Is children’s right to vote compatible with democratic ideals? What impact would children’s right to vote likely have on children, adults, societies and democracies? And what might such a right look like in practice and how could it be achieved? These and other questions invite readers to think about children’s right to vote in a multidimensional way that goes beyond the usual historical and scientific norms.
In the introduction to the volume, editor John Wall emphasizes that the book is about voting rights for all children, starting from birth. He points out that there is already extensive literature on lowering the voting age to 16. Instead, the new volume is about ‘what it might mean to eliminate voting ages altogether. It puts into question the very notion of using age as a barrier’ (p. 3). According to Wall, this ‘requires a different and more profound critique of democratic life’, and challenges ‘the very notion of the adult as the proper marker of enfranchisement’ (p. 3). He also recalls that a similarly profound rethinking took place ‘when voting rights were extended to other groups like the poor, minorities, and women. The question then was not whether such groups are sufficiently like wealthy White men. The question, rather, was whether democratic norms themselves needed to be rethought’ (p. 3). It should be added that this rethinking now also applies to people with intellectual disabilities. In this volume, the authors do not ask whether children are like adults or not, but whether and how children as children can be included in democratic suffrage.
In the introduction, the editor also provides an overview of the discussion that has been ongoing in English since the 1970s, and to some extent also in French and German. He concludes that the debate on children’s voting rights has gained momentum over the last ten years. He draws two conclusions from his reading of the specialist literature.
‘First, the preponderance of scholarship on the issue – though far from all of it – is now found in the fields of political philosophy and law. Other disciplines like economics, history, sociology, and childhood studies are also making contributions, though not as many. And second, public discourse on the question has grown significantly. Arguments for all children’s rights to vote are now made with a somewhat surprising frequency in newspapers, magazines, white papers, Ted Talks, and blogs. And numerous organizations worldwide have either taken up the cause of universal children’s suffrage or been created specifically to advance it. None of this is to say that children’s voting has entered the scholarly or media mainstream. Far from it. But the issue has lately gained quite a bit more traction and in a more integrated fashion’ (p. 10).
The volume is divided into three parts. Part I, ‘Theoretical Frameworks,’ examines the fundamental questions of the debate on children’s voting rights, addressing issues such as competence, advantages and disadvantages, justice, and the nature of democracy. Part II, ‘Historical Contexts,’ highlights various influences from the past on children’s voting rights, such as other voting rights movements, decolonization processes, power relations and changing political realities. Part III, ‘Practical Considerations,’ broadens the discussion on children’s voting rights to areas such as economics, law, and medicine, examining issues such as economic consequences, legal challenges, consent, and implementation.
Part I begins with an article by US political scientist Michael Cummings: ‘Silence is Poison: Explaining and Curing Adult “Apathy”’. In it, he emphasizes the ‘toxic effects’ of ignoring children’s voices and criticizes ‘institutional adultism’; He argues that children’s suffrage could counteract a ‘systemic dysfunction’ based on disregarding citizens during the most formative years of their lives, thereby also halting the authoritarian tendencies in today’s democracies (Trump & Co.). This is followed by a contribution from New Zealand philosopher Nicholas Munn: ‘How Low Can You Go? The Capacity to Vote Among Young Citizens’. In it, he dismantles the widespread assumption that children do not have the necessary skills and explains why no one would be disadvantaged if the right to vote were granted to all people who wish to exercise it, regardless of their age. The last chapter in this section is by the editor, John Wall. In his contribution, ‘The Case for Children’s Voting,’ he argues that universal suffrage without age restrictions would lead to stronger democracies that are more responsive to people’s needs and thus better able to form just and inclusive societies.
Part II begins with an article by British historian David Runciman entitled ‘The Enfranchisement of Women vs. the Enfranchisement of Children.’ In it, he takes a historical look at how women’s and children’s suffrage, although different in many ways, raise similar questions of discrimination, paternalism, participation and democratic inclusion. This is followed by a contribution from Indian anthropologist and sociologist Anandini Dar: ‘De-Colonising Children’s Suffrage: Engagements with Dr. B R Ambedkar’s Ideas on Democracy.’ In it, she argues that Dalit activist and political thinker Ambedkar provides resources from India’s history of democratic liberation for theorizing and decolonizing children’s suffrage today. Part II concludes with a contribution by Swedish childhood researchers Bengt Sandin and Jonathan Josefsson: ‘The Reform that Never Happened: A History of Children’s Suffrage Restrictions.’ In it, they examine the reasons why the voting age was not lowered in Sweden during an otherwise child-rights-friendly phase in the 20th century due to a combination of institutional, political and policy obstacles.
Part III begins with a contribution by Italian economists Luigi Campiglio and Lorenza Alexandra Lorenzetti: ‘Generational Economics.’ In it, they argue why an additional parental vote for each child would help governments and societies combat poverty, better support families, and promote long-term economic prosperity. This is followed by a contribution from Canadian legal scholar Cheryl Milne: ‘Legality of Age Restrictions on Voting: A Canadian Perspective.’ In it, she examines efforts in her country to lower and abolish the voting age and explores ways in which the complex legal issues involved could be resolved. The final article is by British neonatologist Neena Modi: ‘A View from Paediatric Medicine: Competence, Best Interests, and Operational Pragmatism.’ In it, she shows how parents could gradually involve their children in exercising their right to vote, just as paediatricians have learned to involve children in decisions about medical treatment.
Discussion
This anthology provides a good overview of the international debate on voting rights for and by children, continuing existing lines of thought and developing new ones. It is noteworthy that the authors do not settle for lowering the voting age, but argue for voting rights without age restrictions. They do not see children’s right to vote as a merciful concession (as expressed, for example, in the talk of ‘voting rights for children’ or in the ‘lowering’ of the voting age to a predetermined age), but as a genuine right that belongs to all children just as it does to adults. All authors of the volume assume that children’s suffrage is a meaningful way to make societies more democratic, counteract ‘adultist’ structures and behaviours, and enable children to influence political decisions. The usual arguments against children’s suffrage are taken seriously, but also critically reflected upon. It is particularly interesting that the volume examines children’s voting rights from different academic disciplines. The volume does not offer a uniform solution, but it does show how an interdisciplinary approach can contribute to possible solutions. Furthermore, the contributions show that academics contribute a great deal to growing public activism, but also that they have learned and can continue to learn from it.
The contributions in this volume give the impression that the authors do not see voting rights as the only democratic value. They are aware that other democratic rights, such as the right to organize, protest, speak freely, use mass media and have access to information, are just as important and sometimes even more effective. They are also aware that the actual effectiveness of the right to vote varies greatly depending on the country or political system. The editor of the volume points out that, according to the Democracy Index of the Economist Intelligence Unit (2021), only 6.4 per cent of the world’s population lives in a ‘full democracy’ with free and fair elections and responsive governance. A further 39.3 per cent live in a ‘flawed democracy’ with systemic democratic deficits, and 17.2 per cent in a ‘hybrid regime’ that is partly authoritarian. In most of the world’s democracies, voting has little influence on otherwise flawed and corrupt political systems. Nevertheless, the right to vote is central to democratic life and is arguably the most fundamental democratic right. As David Runciman impressively demonstrates in his article, throughout history it has not been wealthy men but mainly minorities and women who have fought for this right, sometimes even being murdered for it. Now young people are increasingly demanding this right for themselves.
The book is a good example of how rewarding and creative it can be to rethink democracy from the perspective of children. Given the authoritarian tendencies in many countries, it would be easy to view the entire democratic project with cynicism. It is entirely possible that it cannot withstand the destructive forces of neoliberal capitalism, corruption, authoritarianism and globalization that are besetting it in our time. Perhaps it will also prove ineffective in the face of the existential threat posed by the climate emergency. However, the question of children’s right to vote shows that democracies have so far failed to realize their full potential and could therefore also contribute to intergenerational justice. Until now, they have essentially been nothing more than ‘adultocracies’ in which adults have had the power to decide on the lives of ‘minors’ and future generations as they see fit. The contributions in this volume make it clear that it is worthwhile to at least examine what truly universal suffrage could mean if the last major hurdle, the minimum age, were removed.
We found the contribution by Anandini Dar particularly inspiring. She takes up the ideas of the Indian political philosopher and activist Bhimrao Ramji Ambedgar, who saw his struggle for universal suffrage as a way to liberate India from British colonial rule. In his decolonial conception of suffrage, he was not only concerned with equal rights in the liberal sense, but also with creating conditions that would enable socially disadvantaged and marginalized ‘minorities’ to exercise their democratic rights in the first place and achieve adequate political representation. By applying this idea to the age group of children, the author creates a concrete vision of how children’s suffrage would have to be designed to contribute to their liberation from a colonial situation, which is also referred to in literature as the ‘decolonization of childhoods.’
According to this concept, political participation cannot be limited to the right to vote, either for adults or for children. Since the 1990s, inspired by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, many countries have established children’s and youth parliaments, children’s councils or similar forms of participation for young people. If these institutions for child participation serve only as a symbolic substitute for the right to vote, they channel children’s interests and energies into paths predetermined by adults and thus do not really contribute to counteracting adultism in society. However, if they are part of political processes aimed at bringing about change in society or even emerge from protest movements by young people themselves, they can help to give these processes and movements a more stable structure and thus increase their effectiveness. In general, it can be assumed that even if children were given the right to vote, greater effects would only be expected if this were accompanied by self-organized political movements. Children’s right to vote should therefore always be considered in conjunction with other forms of political participation.
This is the only way to overcome an inherent restriction of the right to vote, which consists of limiting political issues to parliamentary institutions. If democracy is taken seriously, it cannot be content with creating new norms and laws but must also change the reality of everyday life. In other words, society would have to democratize in all areas, in the economy as well as in social and educational institutions. For young people, this would mean, for example, gaining significant influence over teaching content and learning methods at school and obtaining legally binding options for acting against violations of their own rights. Such an extension of democracy into everyday life would go beyond the framework of a liberal democratic form of government that sees itself as representative. The right to vote for children could help to make such a perspective more visible.
If children were granted the right to vote, it could be assumed that their interest in informing themselves would grow, as would their ability to make independent political judgements. Political parties and candidates seeking election would be encouraged to make themselves understood to young people, and it would be reasonable to expect that the political information and options offered would be more responsive to the interests and expectations of young people. The recent protest movements in various parts of the world have made it clear that young people today are among the most politically engaged sections of the population.
One open question that is raised in some of the essays in this collection but not addressed in detail concerns the opportunities for children to represent themselves in democratic institutions, thereby assuming shared responsibility and participating directly in decision-making processes. This would require new considerations and regulations regarding ‘passive voting rights’, i.e., the extent to which and in what way children can not only vote but also be elected and take on certain functions in the political system. Such regulations would have to be linked to a restructuring of political institutions in such a way that young people are not forced to pursue politics as a career, and practical forms would have to be created that are attractive to children and can be pursued within the time available to them.
One possible form would be to differentiate parliamentary institutions according to age and establish children’s and youth chambers alongside adult parliaments. Unlike the children’s and youth parliaments that have been common up to now, however, the powers of these chambers would have to go beyond symbolic functions, have decision-making power and the necessary resources at their disposal. This could manifest itself, among other things, in a right of veto. Like the requirement in Germany for the Bundesrat to approve laws that affect the interests of the federal states and municipalities, the approval of children’s and youth chambers could be mandatory for laws that directly affect the interests of young people and future generations. In the event of a dispute, a mediation committee composed of equal numbers of young and older members could decide which laws require the approval of the children’s and youth chambers. Such a practice could begin at the local level and gradually be extended to the federal states and ultimately to the national level. In this regard, a great deal of creative ingenuity is still required, drawing not least on the ideas of young people themselves.
It should also be borne in mind that children’s right to vote would have a power-balancing function, counteracting the structural disregard for children in contemporary societies by strengthening their social status and bargaining position. However, it is not enough to simply change the right to vote. Real conditions must also be created in young people’s lives so that this right can be perceived as meaningful for their own lives. In this sense, it is also necessary to expand the principle of evolving capacities, which is central to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to include not only the subjective capacities of young people, but also the creation of the material conditions necessary for them to be able to exercise these capacities. These, like the experience of acting itself, influence the extent and way young people’s subjective abilities develop in the first place. The ability to recognize one’s own interests and to exercise the right to vote in accordance with them can only develop to the extent that young people have experience of acting and become aware of their personal responsibility and shared responsibility for others. Such a pragmatic perspective is underpinned by vivid examples in the article by Neena Modi from the perspective of paediatric medicine, but it also falls prey to contradictions because it adheres to the linear idea of ‘maturity’ growing with age. This perspective neither takes sufficient account of the historical, social and cultural contexts in which childhoods are embedded, nor does it question the standardization of the supposedly fully developed adults that children are expected to become.
There are still many unanswered questions about what universal suffrage without age restrictions might mean, whether it is justified, and how it could be implemented. This collection of essays presents various arguments and proposals. One of the proposals, which is particularly strongly advocated in the article by Luigi Campiglio and Lorenza Alexandra Lorenzetti, amounts to giving parents an additional vote for their minor children (known as a proxy right). We consider such a perspective, which has already been proposed several times in Germany, to be problematic, primarily because it does not sufficiently consider the unequal power and often conflicting interests of adults and children, especially within the family. It seems more plausible to us to distinguish between the right to vote and the actual casting of votes (as in the article by Nicholas Munn) and to leave it up to young people to decide when they want to exercise their right to vote. To avoid distortions in voter turnout statistics (since very young children do not yet want to vote), it could be stipulated that all children who wish to exercise their right to vote by a certain age (e.g. 14) are entered in a voter register and thus acquire the right to vote. Upon reaching this age, they would automatically be registered as eligible to vote.
One tough nut to crack is how to make sure kids can vote without any age limits. Most people still find this hard to imagine and it raises fears. This is illustrated very clearly in the article by Bengt Sandin and Jonathan Josefsson, which uses Sweden as an example. Although this country developed a vibrant culture of children’s rights in the 1990s, it has never succeeded in securing voting rights for children. The authors see a seemingly paradoxical reason for this in the fact that the debate remained fixated on the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which omits children’s right to vote. In a different vein, the article by Cheryl Milne on Canada provides a concrete impression of the legal barriers that have so far prevented children from voting in that country, despite various efforts. However, her point that legal means can only achieve progress in small steps should not lead us to settle for demands to lower the voting age, as has been the case in Germany to date. The history of the struggle for voting rights shows that even ideas and demands that seem utopian can expand the imagination and pave the way for more far-reaching solutions. In the meantime, the issue has gained momentum of its own, which is unlikely to disappear anytime soon.
Conclusion
The anthology edited by John Wall presents strong arguments for why children should be granted universal suffrage without setting a minimum age. It does not shy away from the difficulties that still stand in the way of achieving this goal. The volume allows readers to gain an overview of the various proposals for children’s suffrage, weigh them up against each other and form their own opinion.
Review by
Prof. Dr. Manfred Liebel
Prof. a.D. für Soziologie an der Technischen Universität Berlin, Unabhängiger Kindheits- und Kinderrechtsforscher
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Dipl. Soz.-Päd. Philip Meade
Dipl. Soz.-Päd., Master of Arts Childhood Studies and Children’s Rights (MACR) an der Fachhochschule Potsdam, Fachbereich Sozial- und Bildungswissenschaften
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