Conceptualising and Operationalising Political Culture. A Review of Selected Proposals in the Polish Literature on the Subject

The aim of this chapter is to present certain challenges connected with the act of conceptualizing and operationalising political culture, and to trace how these challenges were addressed by selected Polish political scientists. When doing empirical research on political culture, one needs to decide what should be measured and observed, and how to interpret the results. The conducted analysis aims to reconstruct the ways in which political culture was conceptualised in Polish scientific literature in reference to the classic approach suggested by G. Almond and S. Verba, along with establishing the units of observation, units of analysis and the research techniques. The structure of the chapter is as follows. The first part deals with fundamental methodological issues and presents research questions. The second part analyses selected works of Polish political scientists: Marek Sobolewski, Witold Zakrzewski, Grzegorz Nowacki, Jan Garlicki, and Zbigniew Blok, explaining the rationale for their selection. The summary provides the wider context of political culture research, including the possibilities of interdisciplinary cooperation.