Objectives

This research explored the intersection of youth participation in collective decision-making and its manipulation by adults. We explored this intersection in the context of youth participation in a conflict between youth organizations. The research field comprises Israeli youth organizations, whose ideology is grounded in a comprehensive ethos of youth leadership and participation (see Cohen, 2015). Such youth organizations are part of the Israeli non-formal education system, managed by the Ministry of Education.

Children’s and Youths’ Participation Rights

Children’s rights to participate in decision-making in issues that concern them have a cross-cutting role in implementing the entire UNCRC (Hanson & Lundy, 2017; UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, 2009). They apply to decisions concerning individual children, such as placing a student in special education, and decisions having collective implications made by a group of children (see UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, 2009). This study addresses youth participation in collective decision-making. Only few studies have addressed which practices do not comprise participation in such a context (Author, 2021a; Hart, 1992; Lundy, 2018).

Hart’s Participation Ladder

Hart’s seminal typology of children’s participation - The Participation Ladder – classified eight participation rungs. The Hart model’s three lower levels allude to nonparticipatory practices: (f) tokenism, (g) decoration, and (h) manipulation. Tokenism describes instances in which children are ostensibly given a voice but actually have little or no discretion regarding the subject, how it is presented, and little or no opportunity to formulate their own opinions (Hart, 1992). Recently, Lundy (2018) asserted that for some children, tokenistic participation could become a positive learning experience that may assist children in claiming recognition in other ways.

Decoration refers, for example, to occasions when children are given T-shirts related to some cause, and may sing or dance at an event in such dress, but have little understanding of the cause and have no say in organizing the event (Hart, 1992).

Manipulation is the lowest rung of the participation ladder. Hart defined manipulation as instances where “children have no understanding of the issues and hence do not understand their actions,” with adults using children’s participation to achieve their own ends (p. 9). His examples include pre-school children carrying political placards concerning the impact of social policies or adults who collect children’s drawings of an ideal playground, and, in some “hidden manner,” synthesize the ideas to present “the children’s design for a playground” (p. 9). Hart’s examples were limited to young children, and he did not further develop the dynamics of the intersection of participation and manipulation.

The concept of manipulation has been explored in various fields of study, such as marketing, physics, computer science, medicine, and therapy, and it carries diverse meanings (see Sorlin, 2017; Van Dijk, 2006). The interrelations of children’s participation and manipulation have been addressed only in the context of children who participate in individual decisions that concern them as part of their parents’ divorce proceedings or domestic abuse (e.g., Bernet et al., 2015; Clemente & Padilla-Racero, 2015; Morrison et al., 2020). The current study focuses on manipulation embedded in a social-organizational context. The closest framework that may facilitate analyzing the intersection of manipulation and youth participation in collective decision making is Van Dijk's (2006) triangulated approach to manipulation, focusing on political manipulation between groups and their members. Van Dijk’s definition of manipulation is based on three characteristics: Socially, manipulation is defined as illegitimate domination confirming social inequality; Cognitively, manipulation involves interference with processes of understanding, thus facilitating the formation of biased mental models that influence beliefs and ideologies; Discursively, manipulation involves the usual forms and formats of ideological discourse.

In 2018, Organization 1 (hereinafter, O1) sought to split from Organization 2 (hereinafter, O2), which had provided it with an organizational umbrella. As the conflict unfolded, we decided to design a study to explore the youth's participation in it, aiming to examine the dynamics of youth collective participation in strategic decision-making. The focus on the intersection of participation and manipulation emerged from the data. The study was based on qualitative methodologies. We conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews with 21 adolescents, aged 15–18 (12 girls, nine boys), who had a leading role in O1 in local branches or the national organizational structure and with seven adults (three women, four men) who were involved in the conflict. Four of the adults worked in the conflicting organizations, and the other three had leading roles in municipal decision-making processes regarding O1. We recruited participants through personal contacts and snowball sampling. The interviews were conducted during 2019-–2020. Most interviews were conducted after the crisis was over and the decisions finalized. All seven adults and 12 of the 21 adolescents participated in personal interviews, and the remaining nine adolescents participated in focus groups comprising 2–3 participants each. Most participants (N = 19) were interviewed in their homes, workplaces, or local youth clubs. The remaining participants were interviewed online during the local Covid-19 lockdowns (N = 9). The interview protocol included questions relating to the youths’ role in organizational decision-making processes before and during the conflict and the interviewees’ perceptions of the youths’ participation. The interviews ranged from 30 to 120 minutes, averaging 59 minutes. The research procedures were approved by our university’s IRB. The interviews were recorded and transcribed. To ensure reliability, each author reviewed the transcriptions independently and recorded suggestions for categories. The first set of themes classified the youths according to their organizational involvement. It also included categories relating to the youths’ and adults’ perceptions regarding youth participation. At this stage, the analysis revealed practices of manipulation by adults in the process. We turned to Hart’s writing on manipulation and then conducted an extensive “theoretical sampling” to achieve a deeper understanding of the concept of manipulation (Charmaz, 2008, pp. 166–167). This process led us to Van Dijk’s (2006) triangulated approach to manipulation. Based on this theoretical framework, we designed another coding scheme that incorporated the manipulation’s social, cognitive, and discursive aspects.

The findings showed that the manipulation of youth participation emerged in an organizational environment that did not offer the youths spaces for participation in strategic decisions. The findings also showed that the youths received only partial, one-sided, and incoherent information about the decision-making process. The influence of the cognitive control intensified due to the participating youths’ deep emotional engagement in the organization and in the crisis. The youths used strong sentiments, like “shattered dreams” and “knife in the back,” to demonstrate this emotional engagement and described the impact of the conflict on their lives. The last facet of manipulation involved discursive tactics, introduced by the adults, characterized by black-and-white descriptions of the conflicting organizations and repeated messages which some youths termed “brainwashing.” The consequence of these multiple facets of manipulation was intense youth participation, which manifested in their investing much time and effort in influencing the adult decision-makers, in organized demonstrations, and bursting into sites where the decisions were made. Such intense participation characterizes the highest rungs of Hart's Participation Ladder. However, our study indicates a thin boundary between youth leadership and manipulation. Tokenism and decoration cannot be confused with the highest levels in Hart’s ladder. However, manipulation is much more difficult to discern, as it may entail children's commitment to a specific goal and manifests in participatory practices reflecting this commitment. Children's deep engagement may blur the distinction between high-level participation and manipulation. Thus, the intersection of participation and manipulation is particularly germane to organizational spaces having a strong youth participation ethos, such as youth organizations or democratic (open) schools. This ethos may facilitate high-level participatory practices, but it may also be fertile ground for fostering manipulated participation due to the dominant role of youth activism in the organization’s ideology.

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