The ideology of self-management insists that citizens participate directly in determining their collective affairs. To provide a forum for this sort of participation, the Yugoslav political leadership has created a sort of town meeting in each neighborhood for all citizens of voting age (eighteen years). At the voters' meeting (zbor birača), citizens are supposed to discuss their common problems, to take action on them whenever possible and, when direct action is not feasible, to refer their suggestions to higher, elective bodies, such as the Commune and Municipal assemblies. The problems to be considered form an agenda, which is drawn up by commune and city-wide officials; the meeting is chaired by the president of the ‘local community’ (mesna zajednica), elected by the voters.

The mesna zajednica's primary function is to satisfy the needs of its citizens and to regulate the services offered on the local level. ‘It is correct’, a text on communal politics says in this regard, ‘that the mesna zajednica orient itself in the first order to the resolution of those problems which are closest to the citizens, i.e. [those] which concern the basic questions of life and work of the working man, his family and household.’