HOW TO BUILD A YOUTH WING

THE ISSUE
When you start building a youth wing you gather together
because of a common political understanding and a shared
political vision you want to develop further and fight for.
Discussions about organisational set-up might not be on
top of the agenda – but you have to prioritize them and make
sure you get them there. The best way to facilitate an open
political debate and to secure democratic decisions is by taking
the time to set up clear structures and regulations answering:
Who within the youth wing is authorized to take what decisions
at each level? And who must authorise them to do so?
In your answer you define your internal structure and your
regulations. You describe all parts of your political work, including
the mandate of the Board and sub-committees, the
voting rules, rules for candidature, regularity of meetings,
powers of local committees and their relationship to the central
organisation.
The regulations enshrine democracy within your organisation.
They define the rights of individual members and secure
transparency in all your decisions. Once in place, they come
to define your organisational culture. They can be amended,
but cannot be revisited every other day. It requires the approval
of a congress to enact them, and it will take at least
one congress meeting to change them.
Once you have defined the legal statutes they have to be
followed at every point and they can only be changed in a
constitutional way. It is just like governing a democratic
country. It has to be based solely on the rule of law. If you
want to live in and build up a democratic country it is absolutely
key that you act democratically yourself, both within
the youth wing and in your interaction with others. And you
start with the rules and regulations.
HOW TO BUILD A YOUTH WING DANIsH INsTITUTe fOr pArTIes AND DemOcrAcY pAGe 11