Political topology of Europe
Political topology of Europe

Summary/Abstract: The objective scope of the analysis performed in the text encompasses selected aspects of policy in its topological dimension. The space of policy is understood as both a theoretical construct (a policy field) and relations between the characteristics of political actors and their special kind of geographical co-existence. The following have been recognised as essential characteristics of policymaking: (1) electoral process and pluralism, (2) functioning of government, (3) political participation, (4) political culture and (5) civil liberties. These features can become an object of analysis in the assessment of democratic and authoritarian tendencies in selected countries. The text uses two statistical methods of multidimensional comparative analysis (Ward’s method and k-means method), apart from which use has been made of basic descriptive statistics and a comparative analysis of the values of the parameters of political characteristics. A selection of 40 European countries (EU-28 and 12 other countries) have been subjected to a statistical analysis according to the 2018 data. The main goal of the analysis is to connect facts and characteristics attributed to policy with a specific geographical area. In order to elaborate the objective scope of the research problem, the following research questions have been presented in the text: (1) Which of the characteristics of policy will determine the division of state entities according to a special type of clusters?, (2) Will political characteristics determine the division of particular state entities according to a special type of geographical division? The addressed research questions have been related to the hypotheses subjected to verification in the text.

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