Original scientific paper
Desirable Characteristics of Politicians. What do Croatian Voters Want?
Josip BURUŠIĆ
Abstract
The paper deals with research of the importance of certain
characteristics that Croatian voters are requiring of politicians
filling the highest positions in the Republic of Croatia. The results
presented are based on data collected through research of public
opinion carried out by the Institute of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar,
which included a representative sample of the Croatian adult
population (N=1248) on the eve of the 2003 Parliamentary Elections (Lamza Posavec et al., 2003). The citizens ranked
honesty first, then the level of education and patriotism, while
characteristics such as compliance, attractive physical
appearance and gender affiliation are ranked as the least
important ones. According to the research, three broader
dimensions could be discerned from the basic characteristics,
those reflecting the public appearance of politicians, their
representation of traditional and political values and their
qualities as private persons. All the comparisons and testings
indicated that different social and political groups require equally
of the politician to have explicit personal qualities, while they
differ amongst themselves in the importance they give to public
appearance and the degree of representation of traditional and
political values in political life.
Keywords
voters; desirable characteristics; party preferences; self-representation
Hrčak ID:
18922
URI
Publication date:
30.4.2007.
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