Социологическая наука и социальная практика (Dec 2015)
Typological Structure of Countries Based on Characteristics of The Political Culture of the Population
Abstract
The paper covers an appraisal of a logical and combinatory approach to discover the topological structure of a country by the characteristics of the political culture of its population. This approach is useful for analysis of a small amount of data and uses means of qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) over fuzzy sets. The empirical basis is the primary data by the European sociological research (ESS project), from three waves (2008, 2010, 2012). Secondary conceptualization of collected data provides the basis for switching from individual to group changes in political culture of a country. A type system forming characteristics is introduced, based on theoretical typology of political subcultures by F. Heunks and F. Hikspoors. Such characteristics include: political activity, interest, and trust in political figures and institutions. A switch is taking place from type forming characteristics to empirical indicators and, later, to classification features (as indexes). Countries are broken down according to each of the waves. By comparing discovered typological structures, it is determined if the structures are stable enough, illustrating the cognitive ability of the logical-and-combinatory approach as a sociological instrument.
