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The relational approach to the study of political phenomena has known over time an increased popularity. The Standing Group on Political Networks is aimed at pushing forward the application of network perspectives and tools to enhance our understanding of a broad range of political dynamics characterizing contemporary societies - from social movements to individual political behaviors to the use of ICTs as a tool for democratic participation. It welcomes scholars and young researchers from different disciplines and fields sharing passion and interest for networks. Updates on the Standing Group activities are available on Twitter.

The Standing Group on Political Parties is one of the ECPR’s oldest Standing Groups. It seeks to facilitate communication among scholars studying this centrally important democratic institution and to inform the wider community of its members’ scholarly work.

The Political Psychology Standing Group brings together colleagues interested in addressing the psychological aspects of politics and facilitates communication among scholars across disciplinary, geographic and political boundaries.

The Standing Group on Political Representation addresses issues of political representation broadly conceived, from different theoretical perspectives and involving different disciplines. A more systematic effort in bringing together scholars in the field of political representation is much needed in order to overcome the fragmentation that currently characterises the study of this topic. The Standing Group therefore brings together a mix of scholars who share similar research interests in a variety of sub-disciplinary areas (for instance, democratic theory, European integration theory, EU politics, parliaments, parties, civil society organisations, political sociology) to take each others' insights into consideration.

The ECPR Standing Group on Political Sociology provides a forum for researchers applying sociological approaches to study political dimensions of social life. It aims at building an active network of sociologically inclined political and social scientists interested in political topics, such as how broad social processes influence political actors, institutions, policies, and debate, and how in turn politics affects everyday social life at local, national, and transnational levels.

The Standing Group on Political Theory brings together scholars with substantive research interests in political theory.  It aims to support research in all branches of political theory, including work on conceptual, historical, methodological and normative topics. It also aims to promote interactions across sub-disciplinary and methodological boundaries within political theory, and to facilitate interdisciplinary engagement between political theorists and scholars working in cognate disciplines.

The Standing Group on Political Violence provides a collaborative network and infrastructure for international junior and senior scholars working on aspects of non-state and state political violence, including riots, guerrilla warfare, insurgency, terrorism, rebellion and civil wars. It particularly encourages comparative research and approaches that seek to understand political violence in terms of the wider political and geopolitical context in which actors are located. The group is methodologically plural and welcomes scholars whatever their theoretical, normative or methodological orientations, also beyond the field of political science. Within the Standing Group on Political Violence, an ongoing exchange of ideas, research and discussion of current issues in the discipline is taking place.

The focus of the Standing Group on Politics and Technology lies in the systematic relations of different levels of government (e.g. regional, national and European) with technological change and innovation. The research within the Standing Group has clearly indicated a European path of how governments can both support and initiate technology development and innovation. Governmental activities, as well as their causes and effects, vary throughout European countries according to institutions, history and culture, even more in comparison to North America and to new industrialising countries like Singapore or Taiwan. Research on these topics requires an interdisciplinary, comparative approach with political science as an important contribution.

The Politics and the Arts Standing Group is committed to the interdisciplinary study of art as a form of political discourse. The conjuction 'politics and the arts' has continuously attracted interest within political theory and international politics, cultural studies and art research. Politics and the Arts is an established field of research within the social sciences. The Group regularly organises conferences and panels at major international events where we seek to engage discussions among scholars, researchers, artists and cultural practitioners on questions pertaining to political interpretations of art and artistic activity. Our research projects have focused around the issues of terror and art, violence and non-violence, visual and other artistic representations of international conflicts, questions of politicising the literature and poetic form and narrative practices, and critique of media representations.

Long established research on presidentialism in the Americas and more recent scholarship on semi-presidential and parliamentary systems in Europe and elsewhere address a range of institutional factors related to both directly and indirectly elected presidents, e.g. inter-institutional conflict and policy coordination, cabinet formation and coalition building, president-party relations, electoral system factors, and presidential powers. The ECPR Standing Group on Presidential Politics facilitates networking of scholars in this field of research and strives to integrate comparative and case study approaches to advance knowledge on the role and importance of presidents in contemporary political systems.

The European Consortium for Political Research Standing Group on Public Opinion and Voting Behaviour in a Comparative Perspective was established in 2008 to facilitate communication and co-ordination among scholars working in the fields of comparative election research, elections to the European parliament and political attitudes and value orientations.

Policy process research represents an important part of the study of public policy emphasizing dynamics and context of policy-making (knowledge of the policy process), which has gained increasing attention and importance throughout the last years. Its rapid development prompts the need for institutionalized exchange and joint research to increase knowledge of the policy process, and to provide insights into the stages of the policy cycle and beyond. Answering this need, the Standing Group on Public Policy devotes its interest to the further development of policy process research at all stages of the policy cycle. In doing so, it will place particular emphasis on essential elements of the policy process, including actors, institutions and their interrelated dynamics, following from e.g. external events or cognitive mechanisms. It embraces the genesis, advancement, application, and cross-fertilisation of policy process frameworks, thereby being open to established and emerging perspectives alike. The intellectual reflection will thereby touch upon the know frameworks, such as the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework (IAD), the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF), the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF), and the Programmatic Action Framework (PAF). However, it will be far from limited to these perspectives and explicitly welcome related perspectives, such as polycentric governance, policy learning, and social identities.

The Standing Group's current Steering Committee is composed of Karin Ingold (University of Bern), Johanna Hornung (University of Lausanne), Johanna Kuenzler (University of Speyer), and Vilém Novotny (Charles University Prague).