Sociology and Space, No. 9, 1965.
Original scientific paper
Assembly of Electors — a Form of Institutional Participation in Villages
Zdravko Mlinar
Abstract
This article is the third part of a larger author’s study (»Social Participation in a Local Community«), that was based upon a »case study« of the village Dolina (Socialistic Republic Slovenia), one of the three types of aglomerations where the Institut for Sociology and Philosophy in Ljubljana carries out the complex research work of the commune on microsociological level. The first and the second part of that study (»Informal Group Participation in the Village« and »Formal
Group Participation in the Village«) has been published in this Journal (No 5-6/64 and No 7-8/65). In the introductory part the author comments some general characteristics of the institutional participation. It is tied with various formalized acts, and rules, with more or less fixed agenda, minutes, leadership of the meeting, etc.
Time adaptation of it to every participant is very difficult, space location of it is usually connected with more then one premises, often far off the participant's flat, etc. Therefore the structural position of participants in institutional participation, at least when active participation is considered, is the most important for participants' mutual differentiation according to the intensity of participation. The content of institutional participation will be more in harmony with the
content of problems and interests of inhabitants of the local community or commune, as different structural categories of inhabitants with different interests are more evenly represented among its participants and as differencies in the intensity of participation among them are smaller. The author in this article considers only one of many forms of the institutional participation e. g. the assembly of electors as an immidiate institution of the communal selfmanagement. In the first chapter the author, on the base of the executed interview of all adult inhabitants of the village, presents the esential structural differencies of
the villagers in the participation at the assemblies of electors, such as number of participants, way of participation, membership of participants in various social organizations in the village, etc. In the second chapter the author analyses the responses of questionnaire
related to the reasons of participation at the assembly of electors. The motives are classified into two groups: 1. those related to the concrete needs of villagers such as personnal ones, local ones or communal ones, and 2. those related to the group and institutional influences underlying their participation at the assembly of electors regardless of their concrete needs. For instance 64% out of all the interviewed villagers answered that their participation had been motivated primarily
by their material interests to help to solve the existing problems of their
village, 32% because of interests to solve some of their personal problems and 4% because of interests to solve the problems of the whole commune. However, the author concludes, that electors are not motivated only by those reasons. There are many other »secondary« ones, such as selfinterest, loyality, influence of neighbours, friends or acquaintances, political reasons, expected behaviour — norms, and similar ones. Examples of such motivations are illustrated.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
118256
URI
Publication date:
24.9.1965.
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