The 2016 election may be remembered as another defining generational moment for Millennial-age Americans reared in an era of imploding trust in the government and its political leaders, amplified negative campaigning, and ever-increasing divisiveness and polarization across party, region, cable news, and social media. Despite turning out with youthful optimism for the 40-something presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008, and with renewed vigor for the previously obscure 70-something Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primaries, young Americans were arguably the most disillusioned demographic with the inevitable 2016 presidential nominees and electoral process. While research and commentary since the new millennium have extensively explored and debated the political characteristics of the emerging generation, including its civic potential and challenges, it is worth asking a bigger question: what if Millennials have been so turned off by American politics that representative democracy as we have come to know it faces an existential crisis in the not so distant future?

In Running from Office, Jennifer Lawless and Richard Fox reflect upon the dismal prospects for future Millennial political engagement, with a good amount of blame directed at decades of bad public behavior by this generation’s elected elders. The authors argue that “Washington’s dreadful performance over the past two decades has taken a toll on the young Americans who have come to know politics through this spectacle. They see politics as pointless and unpleasant. They see political leaders as corrupt and selfish. They have no interest in entering the political arena. Ever.” (p. 4). As a consequence, the authors note that “the mean-spirited, broken system that has come to characterize American politics turns young people off to the idea of running for office” (p. 5).

In a prologue to the 2017 paperback edition, Lawless and Fox add: “It’s clear that each party’s presidential candidate in 2016 has done nothing to quell young people’s tendency to look at the nation’s political leaders and come away feeling deeply disappointed” (p. xii). The authors do not present new survey data to back assumptions about the impact of the Clinton and Trump candidacies on younger voters. Still, they are confident that little has changed for the better—and likely worsened—in the developing political minds of young Americans since 2013, when the authors conducted an extensive and original national survey of more than 4,000 high school and college students, illuminated by more than 100 in-depth interviews. Whether they sufficiently capture Millennials mental state related to the 2016 election remains to be seen, but the authors’ rich synthesis of data provides for a compelling explanation for why young Americans opt out of politics.

Lawless and Fox approach a growing generational problem with a central argument that “political ambition tends to form early in life,” which is particularly alarming since their survey finds “most would never consider running for office” at any level (p. 21). Through no real fault of their own, “young people have grown up in an era, in which negative information about our political leaders is everywhere” (p. 135). If such a state of heightened polarization, cable and social media driven conflict, and divisive demographics serves to motivate some older adults in how they vote or whether they run for elected office, the authors show that mediated rancor has turned off a generation of younger Americans across races, income levels, regions, and ideologies.

The political discontent, disgust, and disengagement of many younger Americans are captured in interviews throughout the book, personalizing the survey findings and authors’ arguments. A young woman entering college explains, “Based on what I’ve seen and what I’ve heard, I would never want to be in politics” (p. 2). Other students conclude that elected officials are “only out for themselves” (p. 113) and that “politicians are just liars” (p. 114).

Whereas previous generations may have been inspired by elected officials, political leaders, or their own families at an impressionable young age to consider seeking public office, the authors’ concern is that the opposite is increasingly likely to be true—and this precedes the 2016 election and the early Trump presidency. As for generational differences, the authors do acknowledge that they “cannot directly compare the political ambition of young people today with that of previous generations” (p. 23). And herein lies an important unknown as this generation grows older. While Lawless and Fox find that “only 11 percent of the young people we surveyed were willing to consider running for office in the future” (p. 141), there may be a small yet sufficient foundation of politically ambitious youth to keep representative democracy functioning.

If the negative tailspin of American political life is to be reversed, an otherwise concerned and engaged younger generation will need to see the broader social purpose as well as direct community impact of elected office. As Lawless and Fox find, “Young Americans are committed to improving their communities and the world, which means that the potential for political leadership is in place” (p. 140).

The authors’ findings are an important and timely contribution on generational political dynamics building on scholarly works such as Jennings and Niemi’s Generations and Politics (1981) and Milner’s The Internet Generation (2010). Lawless and Fox’s book could also benefit by referencing works such as Zukin et al.’s A New Engagement? Political Participation, Civic Life and the Changing American Citizen (2006). Zukin et al.’s own extensive national survey data demonstrates how a younger generation of “DotNets” are actively involved in different and less traditional forms of political participation.

The authors provide some creative ideas and updated approaches designed to spur civic connections, political interest, and thus political ambition, including an AmeriCorps style “You Lead” national initiative. However, the strength of Running from Office is not in its skeletal recommendations in the final chapter. It is rather in the wealth of survey data analysis found in Chapters 1–5 that provide a comprehensive understanding of the ongoing generational damage caused by decades of media-driven negativity and partisan polarization in American politics that threatens to erode our representative future.

Shauna Shames’ Out of the Running is significantly influenced by Lawless and Fox’s scholarship on political ambition, particularly when it comes to what she argues is the rational calculation made by Millennial women and people of color to not seek elected office. Based on her own surveys conducted between 2011 and 2014 of over 700 law- and policy-school graduate students across three campuses, Shames examines a population sample that we would expect to be far more motivated to run for elected office than the high school and college students examined in Running from Office. Instead, Shames’ data adds another layer of damaging evidence of the civic toll that the corrosive state of American politics has wrought on Millennial political ambitions.

With over 50 interviewees supplementing her survey findings, Shames concludes: “We are not inspiring a diverse young cadre to think that politics is worth the costs” (p. 17). Many of those surveyed and interviewed share negative feelings about the political process (pp. 52–53). They are also dissuaded by increased partisan polarization (pp. 56–58) and invasion of personal privacy by an “intrusive media” scrutiny on candidates. For Shames, this contributes to “candidate deterrence” for Millennials, particularly damaging in the U.S. electoral system where she argues “individualized political ambition and self-recruitment is vital” (p. 32).

As for the prospect of mirroring a much more diverse Millennial generation in what remains a decidedly less than representative government with respect to gender and race, Shames is particularly concerned that female students of color are most likely to see the highest costs and fewest benefits to running for elected office. She finds “an anticipation of discrimination” as an additional cost of running for women (p. 124). With no survey data beyond 2014, one can only extrapolate that the 2016 presidential campaign likely strengthened such a political calculation for otherwise ambitious young women.

Similar to Lawless and Fox, Shames also finds some cause for optimism and opportunity within her survey data and interviews. She points out that “these graduate students wanted to do good things for the world but were highly ambivalent about their ability to do good through electoral politics” (p. 106). Nevertheless, they are “on the whole an extremely public and civic minded bunch” (p. 165). Although “only 15% or less were considering elected office” (p. 5), Shames finds that these students could imagine running for local office (p. 81), presumably because they perceive the benefit of having a community impact on issues of personal concern outweighing the lower cost of running for something like the school board or city council.

Shames provides revealing data about this Millennial group, while also building upon an understanding of rational calculation and political ambition referenced in books such as Fowler and McClure’s Political Ambition: Who Decides to Run for Congress (1989) and Kazee’s Who Runs for Congress: Ambition, Context and Candidate Emergence (1994). Shames’ description of Millennial characteristics relies on sources such as Harvard’s IOP (Institute of Politics) and Pew, but could be strengthened with reference to books such as Dalton’s The Good Citizen: How a Younger Generation Is Reshaping American Politics (2008) with its wealth of survey evidence and broader definition of emerging “engaged citizenship” and political action.

Shames argues that generational moments like the 2008 “Obama effect” show Millennial ambition is “malleable” and can be “activated” (p. 69), which could explain the surge behind the 2016 Sanders campaign. Her suggestions for activating youthful ambition, such as “rehabilitate the notion of politics as public service” (p. 170), are only thinly summarized in a brief concluding chapter. Like Running from Office, Shames’ book’s strength is in its data analysis and arguments drawn from a unique Millennial sample, surveys and in-depth interviews. While the elite graduate student population examined in Out of the Running is admittedly confined, Shames’ findings offer particularly detailed individual voices that also serve to uniquely capture new generational challenges facing American representative democracy.