Given the prevailing conditions in many societies, marked by the sustained increase of social unrest such as social inequality, political corruption, and the disregard for the democratic system (Crocker, 2016), it becomes imperative to expedite the development of public policies that take into account not only distributive justice matters -usually personalized goods and services- in their strategies, but also, to the same extent, methods that encourage active citizenship and inclusion in communities. This is predicated on the premise that social justice encompasses more than just the availability of resources. It requires, for its genuine effectiveness, activities that enhance the interrelationship and social recognition of communities and the individuals they comprise (Honneth, 2010; Taylor, 2009).

The structural role of education in addressing democratic challenges such as social polarization, digital disinformation and youth political disengagement has been a topic of discussion in Europe and America. Initiatives such as the European Education Area and the EU Youth Strategy 2019-2027 propose that higher education institutions should also promote civic practices through competences based on the development of critical thinking and active participation as central elements in sustaining pluralistic democracies (European Commission, 2020, 2022; García Álvarez, 2023; Schulz et al., 2025). Some research from the last 10 years confirms that European universities have incorporated curricula oriented towards civic competences that include political attitudes such as respect, tolerance, interculturality and deliberative participation, showing greater civic self-efficacy and socio-political commitment in their students (Barrett & Zani, 2015; Slavkova et al., 2025). Unlike Europe, Latin America has revived citizenship, culture and local identity as fundamental generic competencies, aligning itself with debates on the public function of democratic education and universities. This public function has emphasized social responsibility, social needs, commitment to human rights and youth participation in university politics, with the aim of addressing regional challenges for the citizens of the present and the future (Beneitone et al., 2007).

In this regard, Chilean universities and university students have historically been key players in denouncing abuses and demanding improvements in citizens' quality of life. Their commitment and participation, during a time of profound crisis in democratic representation and weak political institutional affiliation that characterizes Latin America nowadays, remain relevant (Antía & Vairo, 2023). This is evidenced by the several mobilizations that have taken place in the country over the past decade, reflecting a deep public unrest with the development and outcomes of neoliberalism, four decades after its implementation (Morales, 2020).

While this political and citizenship role – as well as its historical variations – is the result of numerous and complex contextual variables of a sociocultural nature -such as processes of individualization, neoliberalism, technological impact, identity crises, etc.- and of a sociopolitical kind (Garretón, 2011), it is also a consequence of how our societies develop discourses and social practices that foster them. Since the 1960s, this intentionality has been reflected in the development of the notion of education for citizenship, a fluid and polysemic concept which, in democratic societies, aims to help students become active, informed, and responsible citizens (De Coster & Sigalas, 2017).

This historical citizenship and political role of the university sector have been challenged in Chile by the expansive and systematic privatization of higher education provision. This process has led to the proliferation of institutions whose educational aims have been focused exclusively on the development of technical and professional competencies, guided by employability criteria derived from the labour market, thereby potentially limiting their commitment to citizenship education within the university context (Ball, 2012; Biesta, 2015; Rojas & Villalobos, 2018). This pragmatic orientation of professional training in Chile has contributed to the inhibition of the development of education for active citizenship (Cortina, 2017), grounded in political action and student participation.

On the other hand, international curriculum developments promoted in recent decades in the context of private higher education have provided a foothold for these concerns under the umbrella of the so-called competency-based training model, where citizenship is understood from the perspective of representative democracy and liberal citizenship (Crouch, 2004; Rawls, 1999). This model assumes citizenship to be a series of concepts, attitudes and competences required to be part of a democratic society (Schulz et al., 2025; Zambrano, 2018) that do not necessarily require active social participation, as historically understood by the approach of deliberative democracy and active citizenship (Cortina, 2017; Habermas, 1997; Mouffe, 2000).

Civic competencies are defined as a defined set of knowledge, competences, and behavioral dispositions that enable individuals to act ethically and responsibly in social and political contexts, based on social norms and professional roles (Hoskins & Crick, 2010; Ruiz & Chaux, 2005). They focus on dialogue, peaceful conflict resolution and decision-making for democratic coexistence, with virtues such as empathy, emotions, respect for identity, health, and improved quality of life (Russo, 2020; Torney-Purta et al., 2015; UNESCO, 2015).

In both cases, the attitudes towards politics and forms of citizenship participation appear to be shaped by these educational frameworks. In the first, an adaptive and normative disposition is cultivated, focused on fulfilling expected attitudes towards politics and behaviors that contribute to social harmony and coexistence (Hoskins & Crick, 2010). In the second, attitudes are fostered that engage individuals in critical, deliberative, and transformative political behavior, positioning citizenship as a space for contestation, collective construction, and the redefinition of the social order (Mouffe, 2013). Rather than a dichotomy, this reflects a tension that is highly relevant to professional education, as although the competency-based training model may serve to reinforce a liberal conception of citizenship, its hegemonic implementation could also limit the participatory or active dimension of citizenship, given that it does not require the active involvement of students in its application.

In practice, universities are tasked with reconciling two theoretical conceptions of citizenship. On one hand, they must consistently declare and promote technical and disciplinary training. On the other hand, they are required to incorporate spaces for student participation as part of the educational experience to meet the institutional demands of current educational policies (Carrasco, 2010; Muñoz & Durán, 2019). The relationship among attitudes towards politics, student participation, and citizenship competencies is subject to a strain that arises from the national cultural and political context on one hand, and the type of higher education institution on the other. Evidence regarding this relationship is limited and has mostly been explored in isolation; this will be further developed in the following theoretical section.

From a global perspective, this article is of particular interest for civic education within higher education institutions, as it addresses a cross-cutting phenomenon that, as we have seen, has recently been in demand in the international context: the development of civic competences, attitudes towards politics and student participation. In an international context marked by digital disinformation, the decline of traditional political engagement, and the rapid transformation of democratic institutions, understanding how student participation acts as a bridge between political attitudes and the development of citizenship competences allows us to identify educational spaces that transcend the local and engage with these types of global citizenship challenges.

To contextualize and address this issue, we will first present theoretical and empirical evidence that attempts to define and relate these variables within the context of private university education. Subsequently, these three variables will be operationalized along with the respective instruments used for their measurement, in order to present the findings and develop a discussion. Thus, this research contributes in an exploratory manner to clarifying the relationships between Attitudes towards Politics, Student Participation, and Citizenship Competencies among students attending massified and marketized universities in Chile (hereinafter referred to as Private Mass/Commercially Oriented by Fleet and Guzmán-Concha (2017). Therefore, the guiding question that led this research was: What are the relationships between attitudes towards politics, student participation, and citizenship competencies among students at universities in Chile?

We conducted quantitative research with a cross-sectional design and associative strategy, exploring the functional relationship between variables (Ato et al., 2013). We selected a non-probabilistic sample (α = .05; d = .80) made up of 489 individuals, meeting enough cases for the work with SEM (Hair et al., 2014). All participants at the time of answering the instruments were students of the so-called Private Mass/Commercially-oriented universities (Fleet & Guzmán-Concha, 2017), characterized by high levels of management and academicism, not explicitly encouraging student participation but rather a deep relationship between depoliticized knowledge. In turn, these institutions are characterized by high social expectations of student mobility.

The gender distribution was 35.2% male, 64.8% female, where 191 belonged to the first year, 65 to the second, 88 to the third, 97 to the fourth, and 40 to the fifth year (Table 1). The mean age of the participants was 21.10 years (SD = 3.47) at the time of answering the form.

In the first step, and after confirming the metric invariance of the measurements, we analyzed the assumptions of normality and homogeneity of variances for study variables. Subsequently, we conducted parametric analyses using the t-test, observing significant differences by gender in the emotion, empathy, democratic environments, and political optimism variables. No differences were found between the two groups in the remaining variables.

According to Table 3, univariate normality is observed based on the values of Asymmetry and Kurtosis for the general sample, except for variable democratic environments. Notwithstanding, Mardia’s index shows values lower than 70, thus indicating the possibility of proceeding with the following steps (Rodríguez-Ayán & Ruiz-Díaz, 2008).

In the second step, we correlated the variables with each other, ruling out potential multicollinearity as no value exceeded .85 (Table 4). It is observed that the variables Emotion, Empathy, and Democratic Environments – as citizenship competences – had moderate and significant correlations with each other; the same situation occurred between Active Participation in Student Organizations and Support for the Academic Program – as student participation. The variable Satisfaction with Democracy showed a low correlation with both Political Optimism (r = .234) and Political Involvement (r = .316), but since both were statistically significant (p ≤ .05), it was nonetheless included in the construct because: a) theoretically, it is related to attitudes towards politics such as trust, political involvement, and optimism, sharing a common attitudinal root toward the political regime and therefore should not be separated (Norris, 2012). In other words, feeling satisfied with the system leads to commitment and involvement, which are consistent with democracy (Almond & Verba, 1989); b) Satisfaction with democracy is a political attitude that integrates beliefs and evaluations about the system, guiding future political behaviors, and aligns with stable dimensions such as political efficacy and electoral participation (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980; Almond & Verba, 1989). For this reason, it has been a recurring dimension in other instruments used to assess attitudes toward politics (Álvarez-Ramírez, 2014), and therefore we have decided to include it in the analysis, interpreting it with caution based on the data presented herein.

Through this research, we analyzed the relationships between Attitudes toward Politics, Student Participation, and Citizenship Competencies in commercially-oriented private universities in Chile. We examined 4 hypotheses regarding the theoretical connections between attitudes towards politics (specifically satisfaction with democracy, political optimism, and political involvement), student participation (both institutional and career-support-related), and civic competencies (such as emotion, empathy, and democratic environments). One of these hypotheses proposed a possible indirect relationship between Attitudes toward Politics and Citizenship Competencies mediated by Student Participation.

The findings of this study allow us to state that attitudes toward politics are significantly associated with student participation (H1), positioning student engagement as a key factor in the development of citizenship competencies among university students (H2). Although the direct relationship between attitudes toward politics and citizenship competencies was neither satisfactory nor statistically significant (H3), a weak but significant mediating effect of student participation was observed (H4), suggesting an indirect -but minimal- influence of attitudes toward politics on the development of citizenship competencies. These findings raise important questions: Is student participation within universities a suitable space for political socialization and the development of citizenship competencies? What type of student participation should be promoted to enhance these competencies?

Additionally, the findings suggest that participation in political organizations outside the university may slightly reduce involvement in on-campus student activities, thus limiting opportunities for engagement in formal political spaces within these institutions. While this decrease might be explained by a potential dissociation between external political actions and internal citizenship commitments, it is also important to consider whether other forms of student participation – outside formal education – are more relevant. These are often referred to as ‘new forms of youth participation’ (Eliécer, 2008; Ganter & Zarzuri, 2020; Zarzuri, 2016). Overall, these findings confirm the expected association between this pattern of participation and the characteristics of Private Mass/Commercially Oriented universities, which tend to restrict and control political participation within their educational and social spaces, as reported by several national studies (Bellei et al., 2014; Fleet & Guzmán-Concha, 2017; Ganga & Mancilla, 2018; Labraña & Brunner, 2022; Zurita, 2022).

Nonetheless, we argue that active participation within the university context can function as a formative mechanism crucial to the development of citizenship competencies, particularly when it mediates the influence of the attitudes towards politics. In a complex context marked by political disaffection and disinterest among youth – a trend that has grown over the decades – (Labraña & Brunner, 2022; Zarzuri, 2016), attitudes towards politics become a key element in citizenship education. They contribute to the understanding of various forms of youth organization, including new expressions of student participation, and their articulation through emerging technological platforms (Norris, 2012). While attitudes towards politics are not directly associated with citizenship competencies, their influence becomes visible when channeled through concrete action within the university, highlighting the importance of higher education institutions as spaces for political socialization and citizen development.

Beyond Chile's borders, these results are of global interest because they open up and expand the discussion about the relationship between civic competencies and participation in universities, not only private but also public. On the one hand, the results indicated here are consistent with current trends in youth participation in formal spaces for participation. In both Europe and Latin America, this decline has been explained by the erosion of public trust in institutions and the discrediting of this age group, as its political representation is minority and of little interest, resulting in external youth participation committed to particular or unconventional interests (Ganter & Zarzuri, 2020; Goulard, 2016; Zerka, 2019). On the other hand, student participation in this type of private university acts as a bridge – albeit a weak one – between attitudes towards politics and the development of civic competencies, with political socialization being particularly important in this type of educational space due to the involvement and promotion of political self-concept (Slavkova et al., 2025).

This study has several limitations. First, the cross-sectional design and convenience sampling limit the ability to establish causal inferences and temporal ordering between variables, as well as the generalizability of the findings to broader populations (Fiedler et al., 2018). Future research should adopt longitudinal designs to track the evolution of these relationships and diversify the sample to include different types of students, universities, and their respective socioeconomic, political, and cultural characteristics following the classification from Fleet and Guzmán-Concha (2017). Based on these authors, we recommend including students from Private Elite or Private Mass/Public Oriented institutions. It also seems necessary to compare these with public universities – either Public Elite or Public Mass – to deepen the understanding of the role of institutional context. Accordingly, we urge future studies to employ new designs that can validate and expand upon the findings reported here based on these suggestions.

A second limitation is the reliance on self-reported data collected through online forms, which may have introduced social desirability bias, potentially weakening the observed associations between the latent variables. A third limitation concerns the explained variance of the selected variables. While the exploratory approach contributes meaningfully to the understanding of an underexplored phenomenon in Chile, additional variables – such as ideological orientation, religion convictions, region of residence, field of study, or new forms non-conventional of student participation – should be considered to improve explanatory power. Although this study focused on exploring relationships between variables, future research must delve deeper into these dynamics.

This research contributes directly to the field of social psychology by addressing student participation not only as a behavioral expression and of ‘the political’ (Mouffe, 2013), but also as an intermediate category related to education, which helps to explain how university students transition from attitudes towards politics to the development of citizenship competencies. This relevance becomes even more pronounced when considering recent studies that reveal youth dissatisfaction with traditional politics, alongside a decline in formal political participation and a shift toward alternative forms (Ganter & Zarzuri, 2020; Muñoz & Durán, 2019).

In conclusion, the findings of this research support our initial hypotheses, insofar as citizenship competencies are not directly explained by attitudes towards politics, although they may be related through student participation. This intermediate variable showed a weak but statistically significant association with both political attitudes and citizenship competencies, supporting the idea that student involvement in non-academic activities within the university can serve as a formative bridge between attitudinal dimensions and the development of competencies for citizenship.