The Role of Civic Education in Political Recruitment: the Case of Parties at Saint-Petersburg Municipal Elections 2019

This paper examines the impact of party projects that complete civic education tasks on political recruitment for the municipal elections in Saint Petersburg in 2019. The problem was considered through the prism of structural functionalism and the theory of political culture of G. Almond and S.Verba. As a result of research, we have learned that in the case of some parties, we can only state the absence of this influence. However, for several parties, civic education played the following role. On the one hand, such projects can serve as a kind of advertisement for the parties that organize them: developing citizens' knowledge of the political system, encouraging them to participate and attracting already prepared candidates to nominate from these parties. On the other hand, developing citizens' knowledge can help parties "filter out" candidates: some of them refuse to participate in elections after learning more about their potential rights and responsibilities.