THE LINK BETWEEN SOCIAL CAPITAL AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION AND ITS IMPACT ON IRANIAN YOUTH

Iran has in recent years been affected by the spread of modernity, solidarity and traditional social ties while, with the weakening of social capital, the type of political participation engaged in by citizens has changed whereby they tend towards conventional political participation and sometimes non-conventional political participation and protest. This article aims to test the effect of social capital on conventional and unconventional political participation among Iranian youth (n=1379) by dividing social capital into three categories: cognitive, relational and structural. The results indicate the cognitive and structural dimensions exert a significant effect on the rise in conventional political participation among the population. The results also reveal that the structural dimension is the only component with a significant and positive effect on unconventional political participation, while the relational dimension had no significant effect on any dimension of political participation.