ЕЛЕКТОРАЛЬНА ПОЛІТОЛОГІЯ: ВІД ПОЯВИ ДО АВТОНОМІЗАЦІЇ

The article considers the development of electoral political science as a new direction of Ukrainian political science. It is noted that in connection with the democratization of post-Soviet political regimes, there is an objective need to conduct electoral research,which should explain the peculiarities of voter behavior and the prospects for the use of electoral technologies. The origins of electoral research in American political science(P. Lazarsfeld, B. Berelson, G. Goda, E. Katz) and their perspectives in the context of possible autonomy in Ukrainian political science are shown. The contribution of specific foreign and domestic scientists to the development of electoral political science is highlighted. It is concluded that in Ukraine electoral political science as a scientific discourse emerged in the last decade of the twentieth century almost «from scratch» and is now formed as an autonomous branch of domestic political science.