Local Elections as a Sphere for Forming Citizens’ Political Identity

Abstract

The specifi city of local elections supports the idea that there is signifi cantly more chance of developing political identity at the local level. Given the social specifi city of local elections, we propose three hypotheses with the aim of ascertaining whether (i) the greater signifi cance of these elections, (ii) the specifi city of their political programmes and/or (iii) the proximity of voters to candidates lead to a stronger sense of individual political identity. These hypotheses are verifi ed from a comparative perspective by reference to local elections in Poland and Slovenia.