Political Culture

About

The Political Culture group has initially aggregated research and faculty fellows from the Eastern European universities who have joined European Research Group on Political Attitudes and Mentalities (EPAM, since 2012) and European Political Culture Association (EPCA, since 2016) initiatives founded by Dr. Camelia Florela Voinea, Associate Professor at the University of Bucharest. They have succeeded to offer the framework for studies mainly addressing political culture issues, like political attitudes, political behaviour, citizenship in democratic societies, democracy and the former communist societies, but also welfare state, unemployment or Euroscepticism. Our EPAM Series of Conferences (ECPAM 2012-2015) and European Workshops on Political Culture (EWPC, 2016-2017) as well as our first research journal, European Quarterly of Political Attitudes and Mentalities, have represented the front arena for many young researchers and faculty, doctoral and post-doctoral fellows from Eastern European countries like Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Lithuania, Montenegro, North-Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Serbia, and Slovenia. Founded and promoted by the EPAM Research Community, the Eastern European Local & Regional Initiative (EELoReI) concept has provided the appropriate collaboration framework for the member fellows and universities to organize conferences and create political culture research groups allover Eastern Europe. It was ECPR to offer its open, innovative, rich in opportunities, efficient, and most welcoming framework so that in 2018 the group has been founded by Camelia Florela Voinea (Chair) as the ECPR Political Culture Research Network, bringing altogether researchers interested in both classic political culture theory and interdisciplinary political culture research. In 2020 the group changed its ECPR status from 'Research Network' to 'Standing Group'.

Aims & Objectives

The Standing Group of Political Culture aims to aggregate scholars and research fellows from European and international research areas who have previously developed and are interested to further develop an interdisciplinary approach to political culture issues covering cultural, social and political phenomena from collective perceptions and actions to public opinion, political attitudes and political ideologies. The interdisciplinary approach is meant to addresses both theoretical and methodological areas. One major interdisciplinary dimension is concerned with research methodologies based on the sciences and technologies of the artificial, which employ artificial life and artificial agents, artificial intelligence and machine learning, big-data and web-based technologies in order to test existing theory and/or develop new theory in political culture theory and methodology research. Another major interdisciplinary dimension concerns the employment of social simulation and artificial societies in the study of political culture of democratic participation, policy and governance, elite, political leadership and polity operation, and international relations.

Activities

A number of activities facilitate the exchange: annual meetings of the members of the research network with leaders of the research network, publication of a specific research journal and newsletter, an international conference series, a summer and a winter school of computational and simulation modelling methods.