Document Type : Research Paper
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Abstract
Political participation is one of the main indexes of political development. The general aim of this research was studying social and cultural factors of political participation. These factors are: economic condition, occupation, education, urbanization, mass media, powerlessness, and trust to government. Our general hypothesis was that the improvement of social conditions leads to enhancement of political participation, both formal and informal. The method of research was survey using questionnaire. The unit of analysis was family heads of four villages around thd city of Bushehr. Using random sampling, three villages namely Chah kootah, Abtavill and Talashki were chosen to represent three levels of high, average and low development. Then 250 questionnaires were administered proportional to the population of these villages. Toe results showed that there were considerable differences between formal and informal political participation. Informal participation increased as the level of education, urbanization and using mass media increased. But, formal participation was highly related to the level of confidence to government. These findings show that informal political participation is related to the indexes of development positively, which confirms modernization theories.
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