The meaning and power of young people’s political abstentionism

The aim of this work, which is part of the sociology of elections and participation, is to take stock of the electoral phenomenon of abstentionism among social actors, namely young Cameroonians aged between 20 and 35, from 2006 to 2018. Indeed, since the advent of the third wave of democratization, the issue of political abstentionism among young people has been the subject of a myriad of interpretations immersed in an analytical bath. The reason for this is that thinkers sometimes give a sociological explanation of the phenomenon, sometimes a psycho-social one, and sometimes a rational one. As a result, this work apprehends political behavior as the result of strategies, behaviors and practices constructed within the framework of an interaction inscribed in an objective and subjective dialectic by various actors ranging from young people to political and social institutions.