Every generation is shaped by the defining technologies of its time. The Silent Generation grew up with radio. Baby Boomers came of age with television and cinema. Millennials experienced the transition from the analogue to the digital world and the rise of the internet. Generation Z, meanwhile, has grown up in an environment defined by digital technology and social media. It is the first generation widely described as “digital natives”.
Yet the defining challenge facing Gen Z today is not technological. It is political. At its core, the challenge is one of democratic trust. For many young people, democracy increasingly feels less like a dialogue and more like a monologue: institutions speak, while citizens are expected to listen. Political decisions are made, policies are announced and consultations are conducted, but citizens often struggle to see how their participation translates into meaningful outcomes.
This is why Gen Z is demanding something more fundamental than simply better communication from democratic institutions. It is demanding a more open, participatory and responsive democracy.
A New Social Contract for the New Generation
Gen Z should have a meaningful role in shaping its own relationship with democracy.
At the heart of this new social contract should be a new culture of participation: greater consultation, more transparency, meaningful accountability and new forms of digital democracy that give citizens, especially younger citizens, genuine opportunities to participate in public decision-making.
If we are serious about closing the trust gap between younger generations and democratic institutions, we cannot simply ask young people to trust the system. We have to give them a meaningful stake in it. That requires action at three levels:
Level One: Local
A first step would be the establishment of Youth Councils in every municipality and region across the country. These should not be symbolic youth groups. They should be formal advisory bodies working alongside municipal and regional councils, with a clear mandate to contribute to local policymaking. Young people between the ages of 15 and 29 would therefore have a recognised role in shaping decisions that directly affect their communities.
This would not only give young people a voice. It would create an institutional channel through which that voice could translate into practical policy and tangible results. Democratic participation cannot begin and end at the ballot box. It must also exist where citizens experience government most directly: in their local communities.
Level Two: National
At the national level, addressing the democratic trust deficit requires new and structured mechanisms of public deliberation capable of narrowing the distance between citizens and institutions. Political parties, Parliament and public institutions all have a responsibility to open up democratic decision-making, bring younger generations into the process and create meaningful opportunities for public participation. They are the gatekeepers of democratic participation.
One practical step would be to further strengthen opengov.gr, the government platform through which draft legislation is published for public consultation before being submitted to Parliament. The platform should evolve beyond the model of citizens simply submitting comments on legislation. Its potential as a genuine digital deliberation and law-making tool should be developed, allowing citizens to contribute more effectively to the legislative process while ensuring that public input receives a meaningful institutional response. Digital democracy should not mean simply moving traditional consultation online. It should mean creating new ways for citizens to participate, deliberate and hold institutions accountable.
The timing is particularly significant given the forthcoming constitutional revision. This is a unique opportunity for institutional renewal, a chance to rethink and modernise the country’s democratic architecture in response to the realities of our time and the expectations of younger generations. A constitutional revision can become an opportunity to reconnect citizens with the institutions of democracy and to rethink how participation, accountability and representation work in the digital age.
Level Three: European
Greece’s assumption of the rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union in July 2027 offers another major opportunity: to place citizens, and particularly young citizens, at the centre of the European agenda. After all, everything begins with the citizen. And there can be no lasting democratic legitimacy without social cohesion.
Greece should seek to make citizen participation and especially youth participation a European priority. In other words, it should place the social dimension of Europe firmly at the heart of its agenda. Europe cannot be sustained solely through economic integration, institutional arrangements or technological progress. Its future also depends on whether European citizens feel that they have a meaningful voice in shaping the Europe in which they live. A stronger democratic Europe therefore requires more than institutions that function. It requires citizens who feel that those institutions belong to them.
Youth Participation as a Matter of Justice
Ultimately, the participation of younger generations in the governance of the country is not simply a political choice. It is a question of social justice. Those who have the largest part of their lives ahead of them should also have a meaningful voice in shaping the society in which they will live.
The so-called “generation of crisis” has experienced successive economic, social and public-health crises, accompanied by a growing distance from democratic institutions. Yet this generation now has an opportunity to turn that experience into something different: from crisis to solutions, from distrust to participation, and from frustration to democratic renewal.
Gen Z does not simply want to inherit the future. It wants a voice in shaping it. And perhaps that is where a new democratic social contract should begin: not by asking a new generation to place its trust in institutions, but by giving it a meaningful role in shaping them.
Thanos Georgountzos is a Lawyer and PhD Candidate at the School of Law of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He is the Founder and Executive Director of the think tank WeSolve.
