Intergenerational Inequality and Youth Political Divide in the Pandemic Crisis. Voting at 16 as a Constitutive-redistributive Policy: a Focus (and an Experiment) on the Mezzogiorno

The pandemic worsened youth inequality, including intergenerational political divides. As suggested, a possible middle-term solution is to extend the right to vote to 16 years. Not so experienced by democratic systems worldwide, during the pandemic the policy proposal fleetingly entered also the Italian agenda. Although disputed, the extension of voting rights to sixteens could work both as a redistributive and constitutive policy, as it modifies the universe and the quality of the "demos". The article tries to discuss the effects of this policy on the youth political divide, with reference to Italy. By first, it tries to evaluate the impact of the pandemic on the divide, then it assesses mainstream scholarship about the policy extending the vote to 16, including main exceptions and critics. Finally, it is fixed a frame about the policy and its drivers. The last part of the article, instead, is devoted to the Italian case study. It will be esteemed then analyzed the demand-side effect of the policy by using the results of a survey carried out during the last lockdown among 816 students. Findings show that support for the policy is greater among those young people who are more «peripheral» to the system ("outsiders"), desiring for individual social mobility and promotion, and for political empowerment.