Political culture

Political Culture

The pattern of shared values, moral, norms, beliefs and expectations about politics that are widely shared and enduring

How political culture scholars conduct research

Public opinion surveys

Tocqueville

“Democracy in America”, 1835-40, looked at the values and mores in young America, he admired the spirit of self reliance especially in western parts of America that were far from the central government, one of the founding scholars of political culture

Weber

“Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism”, 1905, looked at why Protestant countries were rapidly industrializing and modernizing while Catholic countries were lagging behind, this gap decreased around the 1930s

Almond and Verba

“Civic Culture”, 1963, wanted to look at the cultural reasons for why some states remained democratic and others fell to fascism, found a collection of values including involvement and awareness in politics, and social trust that made up civic culture, looked at US, UK, Germany, Italy, and Mexico

Nationalism

Pride in one’s country, can range from quiet patriotism to explicit xenophobia

Political subculture

A political culture that is different from the dominant one in key aspects, often held by a minority of people, ex. most Black Americans have a different view of policis than the dominant white culture

“Civic Culture”

1993 groundbreaking study on political culture, divided the the population into 3 groups based on political participation, participants, subjects, parochials

Participants

Positive feelings toward the government, knowledgeable about politics, votes regularly

Subjects

Less knowledgeable about politics, little pride in institutes, rarely votes (usually just general elections), law abiding

Parochials

Know practically nothing about politics beyond little local knowledge, alienated from their government, little confidence in their ability to enact change

Categories of attitudes towards politics

Society, authority, and the state, most attitudes fall between two extremes and these attitudes should be looked at as a continuum

Attitudes towards society

Consensual-conflictual, on one end people are highly cooperative with others, in the other they are more conflictual

Collectivist-individualist

Attitudes toward authority

Submissive-rebellious

Attitudes towards the state

Permissive-interventionist, on one end people want a very limited government that grants a lot of freedom, the other end wants government intervention in almost every aspect of life