1 POLITICS AND MAFIA CULTURE: A RESEARCH ON CANDIDATES IN SICILY1

Summary. – Locus of control was studied in a group of 54 candidates (46 men and 8 women) running for three different types of elections that took place in Sicily in 2001, Amministrative, Regionali and Politiche. Semi-structured interviews have been used to make a qualitative analysis of the narrations collected; the Rotter’s Internal-External Locus of Control Scale was used to measure subjects ’ locus of control, in addition to a worksheet to record socio-demographic variables (e.g. religious creed, party, years of militancy). Analysis shows how subjects have an internal locus of control, according to the theories by which internals tend to exhibit more political behaviors than externals. A higher internal locus of control was found for candidates running for the Regionali. A hypothesis for these results has been referred to the electoral systems underlying the different political competitions, to the socio-cultural context of Sicily and to the mental attitude of Sicilians towards politics, characterized by dogmatism, close-mindedness and what we called mafioso feeling, ruled by values such as fidelity, attachment and dependence. Essentially two theoretical models inspired our study. The social cognition – that in political phenomenology takes the name of political cognition (Catellani, 1997) – is focused on cognitive processes, considering man as an active subject, selecting and processing information coming from the environment; the social dynamic explores individual and collective mental phenomena in terms of driving forces, defenses, conflicts, relationship, conscious and unconscious elements. 1 Trabajo recibido el 28/04/08 y aceptado el 18/05/0