Local elections as a sphere for forming citizens' political identity

Abstract

The specificity of local elections supports the idea that there is significantly more chance of developing political identity at the local level. Given the social specificity of local elections, we propose three hypotheses with the aim of ascertaining whether (i) the greater significance of these elections, (ii) the specificity 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 verified from a comparative perspective by reference to local elections in Poland and Slovenia.