Politics on Campus: Why do Students Join Campus Politics in Islamabad?

Abstract

Education has been an extensively researched area as an important resource of political participation across the globe. However, politics on campus has been an under-researched in South Asia including Pakistan. This study was set forth to explore the factors responsible for the involvement of students in politics at the campus. The present study was conducted under positivist epistemology in three randomly selected public sector universities in Islamabad city, Pakistan. A sample of 396 proportionately selected male students was drawn from the selected universities. A self-constructed questionnaire was employed in the survey to collect the data. Alpha reliability of the subscales was calculated and found appropriate to use. Factors including peer suggestion, ethnic affiliation, academic environment, political culture, political socialization, perceived status and power deficit were tested to find out their association. The Pearson correlational analysis confirmed the association of all the variables. It can be concluded that all the above seven variables are persuading students to join politics on campus and participate in political activities.