Right to Vote at Age 18. 1 July 1971. From the USA to Italy

The widespread global trend to establish the minimum voting age at 18 has rarely attracted the attention of historians, who have only sporadically studied nation-by-nation cases. Yet, the right to vote is a central pillar of any democracy. The ‘shock of globalism’ in the 1970s, which is the subject of this volume, will be investigated in this chapter precisely from the perspective of lowering the voting age to 18 and will show how these reforms were an institutional response to societal rather than political changes.