Ethical Notions of Youth Political Leaders

Abstract

In modern political science, there is a research deficit regarding the psychological attributes in youth political leaders, specifically, pertaining to the subjective moral regulators involved in their professional activities. This paper presents the findings of a survey on ethical views of young political leaders carried out by the method of in-depth interviews in the summer and autumn of 2021. The theoretical and methodological background of the research is based on the political and psychological approach that allowed us to explore the ethical ideas of individual and group political consciousness as a rational and cognitive component related to the subjective status of an individual. The findings reflect, first, the conceptual unity of the ethical perceptions of youth political leaders and Russian youth at large, suggesting that their belonging to the same political generation constitutes a key factor in shaping political ethics in youth leaders, which is, to a small extent, a mediating factor of their professional experience. Secondly, the respondents’ answers reflect a low level in the formation of a moral component of their political awareness, which is manifested in its non-systematic, eclectic and cognitive poverty resulting in the reduction of its regulative-­motivational and sense-­forming potential. We believe that the primary factor behind this state of ethical perceptions of youth leaders lies in the low quality of family and school education, which failed to problematize, articulate, and incorporate a moral criterion into the respondents’ world-view coordinates. The key consequence is that the respondents’ affirmation of vocational guidelines as guiding principles in the political activities of youth leaders contributes to their reduced understanding of politics, downgrading its moral aspect, and can result in the development of an infantile and consumerist approach to the opportunities of politics.