Elections for the Authorities, Elections for Citizens

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to study elections from the perspective of the motivation of society’s participation in them. The interests of professional political subjects and the people are differentiated.A comparative analysis of a number of models of democracy is carried out from the position of their correspondence to reality. The elite model of democracy is taken as a basis for further research. The author’s approach to democracy as one of the means of hybrid management of society as opposed to the division of states into democratic and nondemocratic is described.Elections to state authorities and elections to local self-government bodies are differentiated based on differences in the motivation of voters to participate in them.An electoral model is proposed that includes elections as an advisory mechanism (elections for the authorities) and elections as a mechanism of public representation and self-government (elections for citizens).

Keywords

• models of democracy
• elections
• local self-government
• electoral behavior
• electoral process