Political Ideologies and their Influence on the Political Behavior of the University Students in Albania

Dublin Core

Title

Political Ideologies and their Influence on the Political Behavior of the University Students in Albania

Author

OZCAN, Salih
SALIHU, Arber

Abstract

This research paper analyzes the effect of political ideology on political and voting behavior. It is obvious that political believes and ideologies have an impact on voting behavior, however the extension of its effects is open to discussion. This study is based mainly on primary sources and the target group of the study is university students in Albania. The quantitative method is employed in this research in the form of survey questionnaire conducted by the students of higher education (universities) in Albania. The main aim of the study is to find out how much political ideology has influence in political and voting behavior. In this survey students are given an option to identify themselves in a given spectrum of 'extreme left' to 'extreme right'. In addition, the students are also asked for their affiliation with political ideologies seeing themselves as socialist, social democrat, liberal, nationalist etc. In a country where political party identification is quite evident and this identification is closely linked with the political party leaders, political ideology can be considered as a major influence in voting behavior. According to the data accumulated by the survey, almost half of the total respondent students consider themselves as socialist or social democrats which make combination of the two bigger than liberals, thus showing an obvious inclination towards leftist politics. This might be interpreted as an indicator of the broad influence of the Socialist Party led left wing coalition in power. Keywords: Political ideology, Voting, Albania, University students, Political behavior.

Keywords

Article
PeerReviewed

Identifier

ISSN 2303-4564

Publisher

International Burch University

Date

2014-04-24

Extent

2469

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