The method and rules of elections of village heads and village council-members, which are conducted at meetings of village residents, are one of the last examples of direct democracy. Even though this form of democracy has been studied and described previously, the electoral rivalry within rural communities is marginalized; therefore, it is little known. The paper tries to define the features of electoral competition and analyze rivalry at this level of government. It has been based on a case study of one commune and three research methods have been used: direct observation, document analysis and personal interviews. Additionally, the paper presents sociological and demographic studies on some of the newly elected village heads and their councils.
Europe has no language which would be its symbol of identity, which would emotionally integrate its citizens. According to the official stance of the European Union the linguistic symbol of its identity is its multilingualism, which is confirmed by the fact that it has 23 official languages. The official multilingualism causes some problems connected with translation and interpretation. (For simultaneous translation from all 23 to all other 23 official languages theoretically as many as 506 interpreters are needed). There are techniques reducing this number, but at the expense of time and quality of interpretation). For pragmatic reasons EU institutions increasingly use English alone in their internal activity and in their contacts with member states and other institutions, thus de facto promoting English as the contact language of the EU. English, however, is not a specifically European lingua franca. The role of English as lingua franca in Europe is growing, but as English is the global lingua franca and the spread of English is a sign of globalisation, English cannot at the same time unite Europe and separate it from the rest of the world. Even more so that there is political opposition to the growing role of English in Europe. Therefore the link between language and identity in Europe consists not in possessing a single language (or languages) as its symbol of identity and centre of loyalty and as an instrument of internal communication and external separation. It consists in the fact that the use of English and other contact languages and the mechanism of interpretation and translation in the EU enable circulation of information and ideas which eventually may contribute to the creation (strengthening?) of the sense of European identity.
The paper deals with the issue of filling seats without voting in elections to councils in municipalities with up to 20,000 inhabitants. In comparison to the local elections held in 2014, the number of such cases increased by 77% in the 2018 elections. It appears that the applicable election law, in particular Article 418 § 1 (the division of municipalities into single-seat constituencies), Article 434 § 1 and 2 (the election organisation rules applicable when the number of candidates equals the number of available seats), and Article 478 § 2 (the procedure for proposing candidates for the position of municipal leader or town mayor) of the Electoral Code, combined with the conditions determining local electoral competition, may facilitate the occurrence of the phenomenon of non-competitive elections that results, among other things, in low voter turnout.
