POLITICAL CULTURE AND DEMOCRACY DEVELOPMENT IN LOEI PROVINCE

Abstract

The objectives of the research article were to: 1) study the level of political culture, 2) study the process of political cultural enhancement, and           3) recommend the guidance on political cultural development and democratic development in Loei province. The research was conducted by the mixed method research. The quantitative data were collected from the population of 499,481 persons and 400 samples. The instrument of the research was the questionnaire. The descriptive statistics used for data analysis comprised of frequency, percentage and mean. The qualitative data were analyzed through documents, the in-depth interview of eighteen experts, and focus group discussion of nine purposively selected experts of politics and democracy. The data were analyzed through the content analysis and summarized. The findings of the research were as follows: 1) The political culture and democratic development in Loei province were found to be overall at a high level (  = 38.7); separately considered, all the aspects were found to be at a high level. 2) The process of political cultural enhancement in Loei province consisted of 2.1) trust in democracy, 2.2) commitment in importance and dignity of people, 2.3) respect of democratic rules, 2.4) participation in political activities, 2.5) recognition of civil duties, 2.6) optimism and trust in fellow humans 2.7) recognition of rational and constructive criticism, and 2.8) absence of dictatorship-mindedness and fairness loving. 3) The guidance on development of political culture comprised of                3.1) enhancement of democratic culture in families, 3.2) enhancement of democratic culture in schools, 3.3) enhancement of democratic culture in local communities; the guidance on democratic development in Loei province consisted of 1) participation in the political observation group,                                           2) representativeness of political groups or parties, 3) political movement,                    4) political voluntariness 5) political communication 6) political consciousness, and 7) voting.