Original scientific paper
POLITICIANS AND PROBLEMS: SPLIT’S LEADING POLITICIANS ON THE CITY’S PRESSING PROBLEMS
Dražen Lalić
; Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Using a miscellany of multi-disciplinary theoretical approaches (primarily sociological definitions of social and urban problems and the political science theory of the urban regime) as his starting point, the author analyses the attitude of Split’s leading politicians to the more recent problems of that city. His analysis is based on the findings of the research conducted in February and March of 2002 using the method of structured intreview on the sample of twenty prominent local politicians. The results of the research show that the leading Split officials consider the social conditions prevailing in that city to be unfavourable and encumbered with a plethora of hardships, the most prominent among them being rampant unemployment, decay of city’s industry, traffic isolation, socially disadvantaged citizens and urban devastation. The interviewed politicians mostly think that those and other problems are to a large extent caused by the state of the Croatian society or, better to say, by the key factors of social context (conversion of ownership, economic and general social crisis, Patriotic war…) of the independent Croatia. An analysis of the interviews shows how pronounced political tensions and divisions in Split are, and how they obstruct finding the solutions for the city’s problems. The opinions and attitudes of the leading politicians in Split reveal, on the one hand, a considerable propensity towards an elitist, even (tendentionally) authoritarian approach to the resolution of these problems, and on the other an insufficient willingness for solving the city’s problems by means of cooperating with other social actors.
Keywords
problems of the city; urban crisis; local politics; politicians; urban regime; urban sociology; Split; Croatia
Hrčak ID:
23678
URI
Publication date:
5.3.2003.
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