Abstract

This paper discusses three research perspectives on political culture, civic culture and citizenship: the classic approach of Almond and Verba; contemporary analyses of citizenship referring to the book Civic Culture by Almond and Verba and oriented to the empirical description of social reality; and theoretical analyses of new relational sociology, oriented to the ontology and epistemology of social reality. The authors’ analysis leads to two conclusions. Firstly, it is necessary to combine these three approaches – relational social theory with empirical analyses departing from methodological individualism. This requires conducting an empirical analysis, where the basic ‘analytical units’ – of collection, interpretation and generalization of data – are not separate but combined by relations and networks within which people act. Secondly, Edmund Wnuk-Lipiński’s statements are the best starting point for conducting such a new research programme. What is decisive is his systematic, theoretical interest in contemporary agency theories and relationality of citizenship, combined with innovative application of quantitative methods.