Meaningful youth involvement in politics cannot be imposed by law, Norway’s prime
minister said this week — it must grow from a country’s own culture. He was
answering a young journalist who had just spent time among Norway’s youth boards
and youth party leaders, and who found the contrast with the United States stark.

“In New York City, where I’m from — but the country as a whole — there aren’t
opportunities for young people to meaningfully get involved like there are here,”
the interviewer said, before asking what advice Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre
would give to young people, and to the leaders who want to hear them.

Støre called it “a big question, and an important question” — and warned there is
no switch to flip.

“It has to be what I call homegrown. It has to respond to something which is
genuine in society.”

A generation of children’s rights

The prime minister traced Norway’s model to a decades-long focus on the rights of
children — the right, as he put it, “to be heard, to be seen, to be listened to.”
From that foundation came youth boards, youth participation in municipalities, and
the right of young people to speak before local council meetings. Their voices
carry no veto, he noted, but they are heard.

Children matter to the debate, Støre argued, not only because they are vulnerable
but because they have the longest stake in its outcome.

“They will live with the consequences of politics. We really should take their
concerns seriously.”

He also voiced pride in Norway’s youth party organizations — his own, and those of
his rivals. Young leaders across the spectrum, he said, form “a kind of community
amongst themselves” that defends its place in the country’s democratic life. Norway
is “not perfect,” Støre acknowledged, but if other countries can draw inspiration
from it, “it’s good.”

Not a decree, but a conversation

The way forward, he stressed, runs through local action rather than national
command — advice that lands pointedly in New York, where Mayor Zohran Mamdani leads
a city the interviewer said offers young people far fewer such openings. Don’t wait
for a vote, Støre suggested; go to your mayor, go to your municipality, and propose
it.

“You cannot just decide this will happen from tomorrow. Responsive politicians will
see the value in it.”