ABSTRACT
For almost half a century, large-scale survey research has played an increasingly prominent role in political science. Its origins date back to landmark studies of political culture that were often groundbreaking in their cross-regional and multi-disciplinary research designs, ultimately spawning a virtual subfield in comparative politics. Since then, numerous studies have attempted to track and understand political culture in a variety of contexts, building on advances in available methodologies and contributing to an important accumulation of knowledge regarding the beliefs and forms of political participation of the average citizen. Today, significant resources are now being devoted to conducting regional public opinion polls annually, including the Eurobarometer, the Latinobarometro and, most recently, the Afrobarometer, in order to accumulate an unprecedented amount of data addressing many of the same issues raised over 40 years ago by the original pioneering studies.
