The research interests of the Cevipol lie in the areas of internal and comparative political science and mainly focused on Europe at large, i.e. Western as well as Central and Eastern Europe.

Our fields of investigation can be divided in different research priorities which are interconnectted in various ways. These research priorities are the following:

Political parties and elections

Mainly focused on EU member states, the studies in this research priority are centered on electoral and political party actors such as elected representatives, party members and activists as well as voters. Their profiles, attitudes and behaviours are studied.
In the framework of this research priority, the members of the Cevipol also concentrate on the rules of the electoral and political game (the elctoral system), on the processes of ideological competition and on the agenda setting of political issues (political program and campaign analysis...)

Based on these studies, the Cevipol has helped set up many databases of electoral results in Europe but also of candidates standing for election in Belgium and on party members in Belgium.

Belgium

Belgian political life has been among the research priorities of the Cevipol for many years. The focus is particularly on actors (political parties, professional members of the political and socio-economic worlds, party members and activists, as well as voters), but also on the political system (institutional, political and electoral rules) and on the processes in play (elections, institutional reforms, local politics and public policies. All of these make the Cevipol an internationaly recognized center for the study of Belgian politics.

Central and Eastern Europe, Russia

Cevipol has long developped great expertise in the field of political life in Central and Eastern European countries. Our researchers concentrate particularly on social and political actors, on the social and political transformations since the end of the communist regimes and on communist inheritance.

More recently, the accession of many Central and Eastern European countries to the European Union has given new impetus. These accession processes, their dynamics and impact but also the obstacle they meet are at the heart of many studies of the Cevipol.

In addittion to the research on Central and Eastern European countries, the Cevipol has more recently developped a series of projects on Russia and countries of the former USSR, particularly the regions of the Caucaus.

These reseraches center on the following themes: ethnicity, identity, multinational states, North-Caucaus, Tchechnia, federalism, nationalities policies, political life and political parties in Russia, relations between Russia and its neighbours.

Several research projects and PhDs are underway on these themes. Also regular events such as research seminars and conferences are organized.

European Union

Many projects and studies of the Cevipol focus on the European Union, on its political regime and institutions, its principles of legitimacy and its means of legitimation. We also try to understand the interactions of the EU's political system with European societies and the use of symbolic ressources (identity, memory, religion) in the context of integration.

Quality of Democracy

The fifth research priority of the Cevipol is to address the issue of the quality of democracy. In recent years the focus of the literature on democracy and quality of democracy has changed, from the analysis of newly democratic regimes in Latin American countries and Southern Europe, and then in Central and Eastern Europe to the analysis of consolidated democracy. The idea of a democracy's crisis linked to the globalization and Europeanization processes highlighted the importance of analyzing even the state of the Western democracies. At Cevipol our goal is to combine research on the quality of democracy in both established and new democracies, and in particular to compare the situation in Western and Eastern Europe.

The purpose of this research priority is to bring together scholars working in different fields of political science involved in the study of democracy throughout different approaches. The aim is not only to debate the research agenda, but above all to propose new research strategies and methods to analyze the state of democracy in Europe.

Sports and politics

The sixth research priority of the Cevipol focuses on the relations between sports and politics, be it in terms of public policies regarding sports or of the many relations between the world of sports (clubs, players, federations, supporters) and politics as representation or identification and symbol.