Chapter 7: A Family Affair: A Systematic Review of Intergenerational Transmission Mechanisms of Political Values

This systematic literature review examines how political values are transmitted across generations within families, spanning 10 years of scholarly research. It centers explicitly on identifying the direct and indirect transmission mechanisms and how they facilitate the intergenerational transmission of political values. Using established criteria for selecting and analyzing selected studies, the researcher comprehensively reviewed literature from Google Scholar and Scopus by Elsevier. An initial search yielded 555 relevant articles, which were then filtered based on duplications, accessibility, relevance, and study quality. Removal of duplicates yielded articles for on-surface screening (n = 318) and found issues on inaccessibility (n = 4) and irrelevancy (n = 72). A further analysis was conducted on 242 articles and yielded 25 selections based on the content screening covering the scope and relevance, study design, population, publication date, and language used. A final selection of 20 articles that met the established criteria underwent analysis through qualitative textual coding and theming. The study found socialization mechanisms as key processes through which political values are transmitted. It also underlined the role of external factors, including societal norms and media, in influencing the transmissions. Three major themes were generated: (a) direct family socialization mechanisms, (b) indirect socialization mechanisms, and (c) external influences on family-based political socialization. While this study offers comprehensive insights into the transmission of political values within families, caution should be taken when interpreting the findings due to the limitations of the study design.