Abstract

A systematic analysis of the concept of political generation as a tool to highlight continuities and ruptures in social and political history is proposed starting from Ortega y Gasset's and Mannheim's seminal contributions. In order to operationalize the political generation concept, three types of factors which influence generational identities must be taken into account: age, cohort, and period effects. Some contemporary approaches referring to these dimensions are critically assessed, in view of a comparative analysis of the impact of different political generations on the political culture of today's Europe. In conclusion, macrosocial processes - such as new forms of political communication and mass unemployment - on the persistent cycle of political disaffection of the younger generations of Europeans are indicated as elements which affect a particularly problematic new political generation.