A Study of the Relationship between Subjective Social Exclusion and Political Participation of the Third Generation Youth of the Islamic Revolution

The present research is an attempt to study the relationship between subjective social exclusion and political participation among the third generation youth of the Islamic Revolution of Iran. Hence, three rival theoretical approaches were picked up, i.e. mobilization (social exclusion with positive correlation with political participation = increasing impact); withdrawal (social exclusion with negative correlation with political participation = decreasing impact) and the lack of impact. In a combination of these three theoretical approaches, a theoretical model was developed. This model was tested by relying on the data collected from a sample constituted of 400 students of Razi University. The sample was selected by employing multiple stratified method.
The findings show that the students with higher subjective social exclusion had higher political participation. Nevertheless, the revers of this relationship was not significant, i.e. the reduction of social exclusion would not reduce the political participation. Overall, the findings of the research provided some empirical evidence to sustain the hypothesis of the theoretical model of mobilization based on positive relations between social exclusion and political participation, while it had refutational connotation for the theoretical model of withdrawal. The regression results indicate that subjective social exclusion overall counts for twenty percent of the variations in political participation of the population.