Dr Ben Clements, Associate Professor of Politics at the School of History, Politics and International Relations, University of Leicester, has conducted research on the role of religion in British politics and society, public opinion on foreign and defense policy in post-war Britain, and public opinion in Britain on environmental issues.
Over the past two years, he has turned his attention to something a bit different – a virtually unknown collection of historical surveys by the Institute of Communications and Research (ICR) of Greece.
Roper Center holds approximately 100 of ICR’s surveys of residents of Athens conducted from 1958-1966, covering topics from opinions of Greek leaders, political parties, the Common Market, NATO, the United States, Russia, and the state of the economy; media behavior; travel; social attitudes; religious beliefs; household amenities; and the most important problem facing the country. Clements and his collaborator Dr Kyriaki Nanou, Associate Professor in European Politics at Durham University, converted the data into modern dataset formats and have focused their analysis on attitudes about Georgios Papandreou, the Centre Union party, and political and electoral change in 1963-64.
“There was some fascinating data on the views of the public in Athens towards issue importance, elections, parties and political leaders, so I think we have some really interesting insights to add to the scholarly literature,” said Clements. “We couldn't find any other published scholarly research on Greek politics which used actual micro-level survey data for the period prior to the military junta seizing power in 1967.”
A paper resulting from this research will be submitted to a scholarly journal.
