Processes and mechanisms of political perception: research methodology in political science

The author chose the topic of the article due to the need for a more in- depth study of the research area “processes and mechanisms of political perception”, only recently included in the new passport of the specialty 5.5.2 “Political institutions, processes, technologies”. The research question can be posed as follows: are there specific political mechanisms and political processes of perception? The analysis of Russian and foreign publications made it possible to identify understudied areas in the problem field of political science on this topic. A unified “theory of political perception” has not yet been developed; there is a set of concepts that allow one to form an idea of the research direction. The most widespread direction is studying the “perception of the political”: images of political leaders, ideas, events. This study is based on the concept of “political perception”, and not “perception of the political”. A review of publications showed that in political science the concept of the “mechanism” of perception, in contrast to the concept of the “process” of perception, has not been adequately developed. In the context of the theoretical problem posed, the goal of the work was to analyze the mechanism of perception as a subject of political science. To implement it, an analysis of the complex of basic theoretical approaches and methodological techniques available in the arsenal of political science for studying the concept of “political perception” was first conducted, and then its comparative analysis with the concept of “perception of politics” was carried out. The concept of “mechanism of political perception” was proposed, describing the elements of its structure and the relationships between them. Practical recommendations on the use of the concept for developing technologies for managing political perception were given.

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