Measuring the current political Participation levels of university students Of Pakistan and assessing the impact of Student unions on nurturing political Leadership in Pakistan

Abstract

In the 70 years since independence, Pakistan has experienced substantial political turbulence. Over the years, this has been consistently reflected in the political participation of the country’s young populace. This study intends to measure the current political awareness and participation levels among university students of Pakistan. It tests the activism of students in the political scenario to gauge the tier at which they stand on, with respect to the ‘hierarchy of political participation’ model by Milbrath (1981). Our research study also tries to address the question if student unions serve as nurturing grounds for political leadership of Pakistan or not. Two research instruments, surveys and interviews, under the quantitative and qualitative; and exploratory and explanatory were used to address the aforementioned questions and had been instrumental in further testing our hypotheses. Students from 2 major universities, National University of Science and Technology and Quaid-E-Azam University, in Islamabad filled a total of 302 survey questionnaires. Moreover, a total of 22 interviews were conducted from whereby our respondents were academic experts, politicians having previously been a part of student unions, and politicians who have not been a part of student unions at all. Observable variables incorporated in the study include education, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, gender etc. The results show that the current level of student participation is low; whereby, student unions indeed serve as nurturing grounds for political leadership. The study further recommends various policy options for increasing the political participation levels among university students in Pakistan and reviving student unions.