On Sunday, I managed to catch a few minutes of an interview with Authors Morely Winograd and Michael Hais. They were on Book TV on Cspan2 promoting their book “Millennial Makeover”.  Their premise is that the millennial generation is poised to politically realign the country during this next election and will hold sway over the political process for the next 40 years.  Their evidence of this? History!  As it has happened in the past, so will it happen in the future.

But who exactly are the Millennials?  According to the authors, the Millennial Generation technically is anyone who was born between 1982 and 2003.  What makes them so powerful is that they are now the largest generation with at least a million larger than the previous ‘largest generation’ the baby boomers and twice as many as the Gen ‘X’ers.  More importantly, according to the authors, they are a civic minded group based partly on their make up.  They are the most ethnically diverse generation, more than 40 pecent are African American, Latino, and Asian.  20% have at least one immigrant parent, and more than half are women.  As a result  they are socially tolerant, and unwilling to let injustice and unfair practices stand.  The subtitle of their book is “Myspace, Youtube, and the Future of American Politics”, indicates that the millennials are also using the new tools of the internet to connect and engage.

Winograd and Hais suggest that the last time a large generation was civically engaged was the ‘Greatest’ or ‘G.I.’ generation, who had lived through the depression, WW2 and the rise of communism.  And last time they elected FDR, a democrat who helped to create a whole host of social programs.  His idealism (and theirs) caused a great political re-alingment that dominated politics for the next 30+years.  Both the authors expect the election of 2008 to usher in another re-alignment that is equally civically engaged, if not more so.  This does bode well for Obama, who has campaigned on a platform of change, but the authors don’t rule out McCain, who has the character of service and sacrifice going for him, they reminds us again that this new generation is very similar to and respectful of the ‘Greatest’ generation and the sacrifices and service that generation performed during WW2.

They also suggest that as the power of this generation grows, they will shift the focus of the media and society as well.  This really isn’t a stretch when you consider that the media and society tend to reflect who ever is in charge.

Their interview was fascinating, and fortunately BooKTV has it available online.  They also have a website Millenial Makeover , and there are several videos and mp3’s that showcase the authors during various interviews. These two make some compelling arguments and are well worth a listen.

Their may be more to the story as to why these Millennials are so engaged.  It might be better understood in light of the research presented by Casey A. Klofstad, in his article titled “Talk Leads to Recruitment” published in Politcal Research Quarterly in June of 2007.  Klofstad indicates that civic engagement can be based on peer influences, in other words, some of these Millennials may be politically active because their peers are politically active, and have engaged them in the political discussions. Klofstad suggests these discussions lead to recruitment.

Klofstad acknowledges the challenge in studying the affects of discussions on behavior since it can be hard to quantify.  He created a research tool called the C-SNIP, which stands for Collegiate Social Network Interaction Project, so that he can collect the data in a way that allows quantifiable analysis.  For example, how do you infer that a behavior was caused by peer interaction.  His solution, surveying participants on their civic engagement before and after meeting a new peer group.  C-SNIP was designed to collect data in this way.  Klofstad’s specific solution was to survey high school students just as they entered a college dormitory at the beginning their freshman year.  They were surveyed again at the end of the year.  This method can assess if they were or were not affected by their new peer group, their dorm mates.   Since the students are assigned randomly to their dormitories, the problem of selection bias was mitigated.

Klofstad’s results indicate that yes indeed, discussions among peers can lead to recruitment and action.  This might explain why these Millennials are so engaged, in part because their peers are and that the Milliennals on the whole are engaged in discussions every day.  Their widepread use of the internet, one of the defining aspects of the Millennials, supports this kind of discussion quite well.  Klofstad was encouraged by his findings but cautioned that further study was necessary since his research group was relatively small and homogenous.

So while Winograd and Hais suggest that the interent plays a big part in the civic engagement of this new generation, Klofstad helps to explain why.