Efficacy is a measure of people’s self-worth; their ability to be informed about their surroundings, be heard and make a difference (Bandura, 1977). In contemporary political literature efficacy has been split between ‘internal efficacy’; or the self-confidence in your ability to understand and participate in politics and ‘external efficacy’; which is related to your trust in the responsiveness of government to citizen’s demands (Niemi et al., 1991).
The requirement for internal efficacy is knowledge. This involves ensuring that local politics is viewed as interesting or relevant to their lives of young people and is not too complicated to understand or talk about. Concurrently, information on local politics needs to be highly visible and easy to access and disseminate. The New Zealand Electoral study on young non-voters revealed that many of the segments of New Zealand youth that didn’t vote were equated with medium-low levels of political knowledge, with the ‘Tentative Trier’ and ‘Politically Disinterested’ segments particularly suffering from this (Electoral Commission, 2008).
In contrast, trust in local government is the precondition for external efficacy (Lees-Marshment, 2009). The provision of information concerning local issues, the functioning of local government and how youth can get involved will not in itself equate to higher levels of political efficacy and thus motivation to engage with local politics. To ensure this young people must first trust in the authenticity of local governments call for greater engagement (Blais, 2000). Young people need to believe that their engagement will make a tangible difference and that their opinions matter before they will be willing to engage with local government. When efficacy is catered for young people will feel more motivated to engage with civic and political life, especially the institutional forms where the decline is at its most pronounced, with the opposite true when it is not catered for (Niemi et al., 1991).
In the US there is a noted decline in young people’s views on the effectiveness of their vote (Teixira, 1992), with a significant proportion feeling that ‘they don’t think their vote makes a difference’ and that ‘they do not have enough information’ on politics (Horrowit, 1999). In New Zealand, while 56% of young people view government as generally responsive to public opinion, a much smaller percentage view the average person as being able to influence politics or government; 31.8% and 24.4% respectively (Rose et al., 2005). When this is coupled with a reported low level of political knowledge amongst young New Zealanders (Hayward, 2006), especially in relation to local government, it is no wonder that engagement levels are low.
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