An Analysis of the Citizen's Awareness of their Rightsand Responsibilities and the Factors Affecting it in Khorramabad City

Citizenship is one of the most important ideas in the modern socio-political thought. It has gone through a complicated history in the course of its development. Citizenship reflects a set of expectations held by the members of a particular society toward institutions, the society, and each other with regards to rights and responsipilities. Citizenship is indicative of two important principles: First, the position that individuals gain based on their rights and responsipilities; second, the conditions that the society creates for granting these rights and responsibilities. The present paper is an attempt to describe the level of awareness of citizenship rights among the citizens of Khorramabad city and to analyze the factors affecting it based on the collected data. The survey research method was used and a sample of 382 citizens was selected from amoung the citizens of Khorramabad city. The results indicated that the level of awareness of the dimensions of citizenship rights was not the same among the citizens of Khorramabad city. The highest level of awareness was attributed to the civil dimension and the lowest level was attributed to the political one. This is indicative of the growth in the demand for legal freedom including freedom of speech and religion, and also for the prohibition of discrimination based on sex, language, and belief. The results also indicated a failure to provide appropriate opportunities for all people to participate in political affairs. Moreover, the results shows a significant relationship between age, sex, education, and occupation and the level of awareness of citizenship rights.