Democracies all over the world are currently facing a variety of challenges. The rise of right-wing populist actors, particularly in Europe, and the associated erosion of democratic electorates or the establishment of autocratic systems, such as in Russia or China, reveal a glaring problem: the required diffuse support for democratic systems, as analysed by Easton (1975), is not as strong as assumed. In view of the strengthening of authoritarian regimes, e.g. through the election of Donald Trump, even Francis Fukuyama (2019) had to acknowledge that the triumph of liberal democracy is not a law of nature.

In order to ensure the stability of democracies and to strengthen the acceptance of democratic values and human rights worldwide, democracies must address the question of how they manage to anchor democratic beliefs among their citizens. Friedrich Ebert's guiding principle "Democracy needs democrats" seems more relevant than ever. The central key to achieving this lies in the political education of children and young people. Research on political socialization has long focused primarily on adolescence and young adulthood as the formative phase for the development of political attitudes and identity (Abendschön, 2022). Even if political socialization can be understood as a lifelong process (Rippl, 2015), current research suggests that the foundation for the internalization of political and democratic beliefs and values is laid in childhood (Abendschön, 2010). While there are large-scale studies on the political attitudes of young people, such as the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study 2022 (Abs et al., 2024), there are still significant research gaps with regard to political socialization processes in childhood (Becher & Gläser, 2019). For example, it is still "open and controversial which orientations and skills are socialized at what time and in what way." (Abendschön, 2022, p. 644)

Three major research gaps will be addressed and further closed during this symposium. The first paper, entitled "Democratic values as basic values of children. An analysis of the correlation for children in primary school." sheds light on the connection between basic values according to Schwartz's model and democratic values in children in elementary school. Particularly in adulthood, interesting results were found on the relationship between political values and the basic values of individuals (Schwartz et al., 2014). However, democratic values and beliefs were not considered, nor was this relationship investigated for children. The creation of synergies between the research areas of basic values and democratic values in childhood seems particularly promising, also for the design of political education programs in childhood.

The second article entitled "Politics is only for men! - The impact of gender role attitudes on children's political interest, political knowledge, and political efficacy", focuses on possible influences of gender role attitudes on the political socialization of children at the beginning of lower secondary school. A large number of studies have repeatedly confirmed differences between girls and boys in terms of their political attitudes. Against this background, the study asks whether and how gender roles have an influence on children's political interest, knowledge and self-efficacy.

The third article entitled "Implementing a short-term human rights education program in Greek primary schools to promote adjustment" links the empirical analysis of political socialization processes in childhood with practical implementation. An intervention on human rights values in childhood was carried out and empirically monitored in Greek elementary schools. This not only strengthened the children's political knowledge of democratic and human rights values, but also improved their emotional feelings and social behaviour. The results illustrate that human rights education not only has a positive effect on children's values, but also on their social perception and behaviour within the school.

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