Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Preface
- 1 Yugoslav socialism: a critical introduction
- 2 The official ideology of self-management
- 3 Perceptions of society and politics
- 4 Political generations and political attitudes
- 5 The structure of political participation
- 6 Patterns of public interaction
- 7 Cultural parameters of Yugoslav society
- 8 Political and socialist development
- Appendix. Methodology and field work
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - The structure of political participation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 March 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Preface
- 1 Yugoslav socialism: a critical introduction
- 2 The official ideology of self-management
- 3 Perceptions of society and politics
- 4 Political generations and political attitudes
- 5 The structure of political participation
- 6 Patterns of public interaction
- 7 Cultural parameters of Yugoslav society
- 8 Political and socialist development
- Appendix. Methodology and field work
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The sense of impotence in influencing the essential questions which come up from time to time, to which the workers themselves admit, creates in general a sense of political impotence and the futility of self-managing involvement.
NIN, 9 May 1971The ideology of self-management insists that citizens participate directly in determining their collective affairs. To provide a forum for this sort of participation, the Yugoslav political leadership has created a sort of town meeting in each neighborhood for all citizens of voting age (eighteen years). At the voters' meeting (zbor birača), citizens are supposed to discuss their common problems, to take action on them whenever possible and, when direct action is not feasible, to refer their suggestions to higher, elective bodies, such as the Commune and Municipal assemblies. The problems to be considered form an agenda, which is drawn up by commune and city-wide officials; the meeting is chaired by the president of the ‘local community’ (mesna zajednica), elected by the voters.
The mesna zajednica's primary function is to satisfy the needs of its citizens and to regulate the services offered on the local level. ‘It is correct’, a text on communal politics says in this regard, ‘that the mesna zajednica orient itself in the first order to the resolution of those problems which are closest to the citizens, i.e. [those] which concern the basic questions of life and work of the working man, his family and household.’
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Beyond Marx and TitoTheory and Practice in Yugoslav Socialism, pp. 153 - 192Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1975