The paper aims to reveal the impact of current political contexts on non-electoral participation by presenting four dissimilar European cases (Austria, Belgium, Hungary and Switzerland). We explore how different political opportunity structures affect the gap between young peoples' and adults' non-electoral participation. By challenging the political opportunity structure paradigm, we suppose that age is a key factor behind non-electoral participation and by comparing non-electoral participation to electoral participation we expect that non-electoral participation increases the likelihood of electoral participation, especially among young people.

The paper analyses seven datasets (2002 - 2014/2015) of the European Social Survey (ESS) in order to elaborate a comparative perspective on non-electoral forms of political participation. We found that compulsory voting is the most effective in reducing the gap between adults and young peoples' participation. Instead of age affect, the paper revealed four socio-cultural effects explaining non-electoral participation regardless of the differences in electoral systems.