9 Political Culture

Pampa Mukherjee

Introduction

Under the influence of behavioural studies1, the social scientists started using concepts across disciplines for better understanding of society, polity and economy. For instance, the idea of market is a key concept in the study of economics or management studies but the same concept is used in the subject of political science in the formulation of a rational-choice model. This model helps in analysing voting behaviour of the individuals. In the same vein, the concepts like class and community that are used in the study of sociology, power and legitimacy in political science, personality or behaviour in psychology are being used across the disciplines of social sciences to comprehend the existing complexities in societies. Similarly, the concept of culture is being used by political scientists to draw the insights and theory on people’s beahviour. (Pye: 1991). The political system of any country is shaped by its environment (social and psychological); and that environment helps in determining people’s ideals and patterns of behaviour that developed over the period of time and influence the political life of a state, region or nation. The concept of political culture is thus extremely useful in understanding, analyzing and comparing politics in general and behaviour of individuals towards polity in particular.

The culture that is vital for the study of politics provides the context for political understandings and the language of political discussions because people are united with each other due to shared common language and symbols. It may be mentioned here that the same culture can also divide people, by highlighting differences in their experiences and interests. Consequently, political culture is responsible in shaping the terms of debate for the competing interests in society. That is the reason in recent years political culture has become the very substance of political conflicts. In the cotemporary times the cultural wars have become important phenomena to understand current scenario of politics in a nation. These cultural wars spurts over sexual preferences, gay marriage, abortion rights, etc. All this have became the part of political activism that has also acquired central stage in politics in the past two decades. Yet these explicitly culture-centric political conflicts are only the most visible, and explicitly manipulated, manifestations of the deep and broad cultural context that always shapes politics.2

What is Culture?

In broad terms culture is a way of life of a people within a society. It comprises attitudes, values, and acquaintances that is not only shared by people within a society but also is transmitted from one generation to the next. The culture can be learned easily by individuals due to human nature

2 For further details kindly refer http://texaspolitics.laits.utexas.edu/10_1_1.html

i.e. innate. This learned culture can be different in nature when compare it with one society to another. There is an important aspect of any culture that they are reluctant to change the norms of their culture. In other words they resist new changes with whom they are not familiar and find it difficult to adjust with them. The reason for this is difficult to change the cognitive faculty of any individual, because values that an individual acquires or learns while growing up, becomes and an ends in itself over the time. Therefore, the abandonment of values and ideals that an individual inherited would generate deep sense of insecurity and anxiety not only to them but to society also. Whenever any society faces transitions in their culture, society, economy etc. it is to be said that culture has got changed or may be transformed. It may be noted here it is not easy for individuals to accept changes in the culture that they are accustomed to or are socialised to a particular pattern of culture. The desired or rightful changes take place only through the transmission of new values by intergenerational population (Inglehart: 1990).

Every country is having its own distinct culture vis-à-vis political norms that shape its citizens perceptions about the way of life and politics. Therefore it is to be believed that the working of political institutions of any country is a partial reflection of attitudes, norms and expectations of its citizens. Therefore, in order to make sense of patterns and of events that is occurring in a country or in order to understand the politics, one needs to start with the analysis of people behavior, their attitudes with respect to politics, political objects and their role within the political system.

What is Political Culture?

During World War II (1939-1945), the nations of the world were either becoming authoritarian or democratic. In that period social scientist were interested to explore the possible explanations that why some nations had turned to authoritarianism while others have became supports of the democratic institutions in the world. In the times of world wars the anthropologists like Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict developed “culture and personality” approach. This approach asserted that members of different societies develop different modal personalities, which in turn can explain support for different kinds of political programs and institutions. In a somewhat different vein, the German exile philosopher Theodor Adorno and colleagues undertook a massive study during the war time and came up with their work The Authoritarian Personality (1950), continuing earlier research by critical theorists into the structure of authority in families, which they believed had led Germans to support authoritarian politics and social prejudice. In a similar vein, Harold Laswell described a set of personality traits shared by “democrats,” including an “open ego,” a combination of value-orientations, and generalized trust.3

These scholars showed that cultural norms of any given society can be responsible for bringing change and also in the formulation of political culture. Heywood (2007) has rightly put forward that political culture is merely a reflection of people’s psychological orientations and a general ‘pattern of orientations’ towards political objects. Generally, political culture is misunderstood with public opinion. It may be important to note here that the political culture is not similar to the concept of public opinion because it is fashioned out of long-term values rather than simply people’s reactions to specific issues and problems.

How Political Culture is different from Public Opinion?

Political culture is a sum total of individual’s beliefs and values towards polity and the political system. For instance what is people’s perception about democracy? What do they expect from the government? What do people think about the notion of welfare state? etc. On the other hand public opinion is a cluster of an individual’s opinions as well as of reactions towards any particular issue or event that occurred in any nation state. It may be important to mention here that political culture can influence the public opinion and if that public opinion continues for a long period of time, later on that will turn into political culture.

Defining of Political Culture

The term political has been defined by number of political theorists and comparativists. Roy Macridis (1955) for instance, defines political culture as, “the commonly shared goals and commonly accepted rules.” The most comprehensive understanding of political culture is reflected from Lucian Pye and Almond’s work on political culture. Lucian Pye in his seminal work “ Politics, Personality and Nation Building(1962) states that political Culture is a set of attitudes, beliefs and sentiments that give order and meaning to political process and that provides the underlying assumptions and rules that govern the behaviour in political system.

3 International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 2nd Edition  According to Almond and Powell (1966) Political Culture is the pattern of individual attitudes and orientations towards politics among the members of a political system. It may provide with a valuable conceptual tool by means of which one can bridge the ‘micro-macro’ gap in political theory.

Samuel Beer (1974) defined it as “components of the culture and values, beliefs and emotional attitudes about how a government ought to be conducted and what it should do”.

Andrew Heywood (2007) Political culture is a psychological orientations of peoples in relation to political objects (political parties, government and the constitution etc), expressed in their political attitudes, beliefs, symbols and values. It differs from public opinion in that it is fashioned out of long-term values rather than reactions to specific policies, problems or personalities. Now question arises that how do people acquire their political attitudes and values? People acquire their political attitudes and values through a process of political socialisation. This may be seen either as a process of indoctrination that takes place throughout a person’s life, or as the transmission of values from one generation to the next, largely accomplished during childhood. The major agents of political socialization are the family, education, religion, the mass media and the government.

In a nut shell, political culture is a set of beliefs, values, emotions and perceptions of the people about politics, political system and political objects of a country. It can help the students of comparative politics to comprehend and analyse the success or failures of any political system in the countries of world. For instance it can answer the question like why democracy or democratic institutions are successful in a few countries but is an utter failure in the other countries? It may be important to note here that political culture cannot answer about everything that occurs in the realm of politics. The reason is, despite of same values and culture people behave differently when they encounter with different types of problems or opportunities. In this regard it is also true that cultural norms typically change slowly and reflect enduring patterns of political action. In this sense political culture is a critical element in understanding politics across countries or across time. It helps to understand how politics unfolds itself.

Aspects of Political Cultures

How do groups of citizens behave or participate in a nation? How cultural norms shape citizens political views? etc. The answer is the nation’s political culture shapes citizen’s perceptions that encompasses their orientations towards the nation’s political system, its policy making process and policy outcomes (see, Table 1.2).

Table 1.2

Aspects of Political Culture	Examples
System	Pride in Nation
	National Identity
	Legitimacy of Government
Process	Role of Citizens
	Perceptions of Political Rights
Policy	Role of Government
	Government policy priorities
Source: Almond, et.al. p.46, 2009.

The perception of the citizens involves their values and organisations which comprises the political system and is involved under the system level. It is important to explore people’s orientations, their commitment towards their system, the polity, the nation and national identity. For instance in advanced industrial societies one can find that there national pride is at highest level. In a survey of World Values in 2000-2002, the data set shows the high level of national pride in advance nations like United States and Poland.

This sense of national pride and the national identity helps in bringing legitimacy to the system under which citizens are governed. It all is possible due to shared ideals and values of a nation’s citizens. This element of legitimacy is very important for the successful functioning of polity or the political system. In traditional societies, the ruler or the monarch’s legitimate authority to rule usually depends upon people’s response to his powers. In modern advanced democratic societies legitimacy lies in the constitution of the country. The ultimate authority lies with the people, they through the process of elections chose their representative to govern and by obeying the laws they provide legitimacy to the power of the head of state. In some countries the sovereign still draws their legitimate authority from the culture, traditions and ideology that exist in the nation.

The advance nation countries like England are best example for this.

It is important to note that the element of legitimacy is very crucial as it highlights the relationship between citizens and institutions that exists in the nation. If the existing system or its institution can’t be able enough to discharge its functions properly towards its people, the people can revolt, they can replace the system. Therefore, people always have some general ideas or expectations like how they should be governed, what should be the nature of society? What should be the role of public institutions? etc. All this includes under the second aspect of political culture that is the process level. The government tries to meet up the expectations of people by making policies for their betterment. Policies are also made for the economic and political development of a nation which carries its implications on the life of people. Hence, the policy level deals with citizens expectations from the government in terms of policy making. The policy of any country is influenced by the role of government in policy making. Here, political culture includes expectations of people and, government’s engagement in terms of policy as well as for economy. Should government or private forces guide economy? Should government interfere in society? These are the specific policy demands by the citizens in the advanced industrial societies. Some policy goals can be in terms of material values or of welfare measures and all these vary across nations because of difference in nation’s cultural traditions. For example, people in developing countries will emphasizes on the role of government in providing basic services like health, education, food, shelter, safe drinking water, employment etc. On the contrary, in advance industrial societies, where all the basic needs have been taken care by the government, people there are more concerned with the quality of life issues like protection of environment, arts, gays and lesbians rights etc. (Almond et.al. 2009).

Nature of Political Culture: Civic Culture

As mentioned earlier that the political scientist developed their interest in the study of political culture during 1950s and 1960s under the influence of behavioural studies and were trying to analyse the systems with the new techniques of behavioural analysis that were empirical in its nature. Here, Almond and Verba’s used opinion surveys to analyse political behaviour and political attitudes of individuals about democracy in five countries, namely the USA, the UK, West Germany, Italy and Mexico. This is presented in their classic work ‘The Civic Culture (1963). Almond and Verba’s attempted to understand and explain the fall down of representative government in interwar Italy, Germany and elsewhere in the world. They wanted to identify an effective political culture that could uphold democratic norms and culture (Heywood: 2007). Therefore, they identified and classified the political culture into three general types:

I.    Parochial Political Culture

In a parochial political culture citizens do not identify themselves with the state. That shows that there is an absence of a sense of citizenship. Therefore people do not have any idea or knowledge about political system; hence they do not participate in politics. They identify themselves with their locality rather than the region or state. Such type of political culture can be found in tribal societies where tribe head is all in all and tribe people follow him without questioning his authority

II.   Subject Political Culture

In this type of political culture people act passively. Such kind of political culture can be seen in the colonial states where citizens cannot involve themselves in politics because they think that they have no capacity to influence government. But once when they acquire political consciousness they do fight for their rights and liberation and could overthrow the colonial regime.

III.Participant Political Culture

In this type of political culture citizens actively participate in political activities to ensure their desired outcome. They are capable in doing so because of high level of political consciousness. The citizens are fully aware of their rights and duties and also their role in decision-making process. For instance such type of political culture is popular or could be found advance countries like the UK and the USA.

Almond and Verba (1963) acknowledged that a participant political culture has come closer to the democratic ideals. The participation of citizens in the political process is the prime necessity for the government to govern on people. Here, they both argued that the civic culture is intermingling of all three political cultures that they have identified after their research. They argued that political culture in advance democratic societies is a blend of citizen’s active participation or non- participation in polity. The civic culture emphasises on the input process by individuals in the polity, i.e. the participation in political activities that are concerned with their lives. It is important to note that in the civic culture one can generally witnesses the prevalence of political activities, highly exposure to political communications, of political discussion, of concern with political affairs etc. In the civic culture people are not only oriented to political input they are oriented positively to the input structures and the input process. In other words, the political culture and structure are congruence. It may mention here that in civic political culture we cannot odd out or miss the parochial and subject orientations because they are congruent with the participant orientations. This all leads to maintenance of balance in a political culture where one can find active participation of people in political activity which shows the level of rationality in the people and also making balance of parochial values. Almond and Verba concluded that the UK is the best possible example of the civic culture as it exhibits both participant and subject features of political culture. In the case of USA participant attitudes predominated over subject ones. The difficulty of building or rebuilding s civic culture was underlined by the examples of both West Germany and Italy. A decade and a half after the collapse of fascism, neither country appeared to have a strong participant culture; while the subject culture was dominant in Germany, Parochial attitudes remained firmly entrenched in Italy (Heywood: 2007).

Secularisation of Political Culture

Political culture is dynamic in nature where change takes place with the passage of time. The process through which awareness or consciousness about polity is spread among people is termed as secularisation of political culture. As a result of this political consciousness people become capable to check or evaluate their own political system and polity with logic and rationality. It implies people’s departure from parochial values. According to Almond and Powell (1963):

Secularisation is the process whereby men become increasingly rational, analytical and experienced in their political action. Secular (political) culture is one in which traditional orientation and attitudes give way to more dynamic decision-making processes involving gathering of information, the evaluation of information, the laying out of alternative course of action, the selection of course from among these possible courses and the means whereby tests whether or not a given course of action is producing the consequences which were intended.

It may be mentioned here that secular political culture is a distinctive feature of advance industrial countries like the UK, USA, Canada, Switzerland, France etc.

Consensual or Conflictual Political Cultures

As mentioned earlier that political culture is a feature of every nation in the world and the values and beliefs towards polity may also vary not only among the nations but also within the nations. It may be important to mention here that Almond and Verba’s approach tends to treat political culture as a homogenous entity. The reason may be that they emphasised or analysed on the basis of national identity, national culture or national character. In doing so they missed or overshadowed the political sub-culture that prevails within the boundaries of a nation and tends to disguise social fragmentations that are based on class, race or gender. Therefore, political culture can be consensual or conflictual over the issues of public policy, political arrangements, government etc. In consensual political culture, citizens tend to agree on the appropriate means of making political decisions; agree over the solutions to tackle on the major problems that society faces. In conflictual political culture, citizens are sharply divided both in terms of legitimacy and regime and also on deriving on a decision.

When a nation got divided in political attitudes, then a distinctive sub-political culture would develop over the period of time. Citizens may have sharp differences on the issues like boundaries of a nation, the nature of state, etc. Consequently these affected people formulate parties to assert and create their identity. For instance Robert Putnam (1993) argues that variations in the quality of local government in different regions of Italy were determined by the presence or absence of traditions of civic engagement, reflected in differing levels of voter turnout, newspaper readership, and membership of choral societies and football clubs. Putnam

actually using Italy shows that how political culture directly enhances and impact on the stability of political system where there is such culture (Heywood:209:2007).

Putnam in his research focused on the diversity of nation and culture. He showed how a country varies in political cultures and how it influences the performance of regional government. 1970, Italy already has regional government, all similar in structure and political power but 20 new regional governments varied in their performance. According to him it was because of political culture. The successful regions have positive political culture. Traditions and trust exists there that’s why they are progressive and also called it social capital4. Northern Italy was performing well as compared to southern Italy. Why? Because it has long history of feudal rule, foreign invasion, authoritarian state etc. were the reasons of its poor performance.

Trends in Political Culture

As mentioned earlier that it a dynamic concept and changes can happen with the passage of time. For instance the personal experiences of an individual or the agents of political socialisation largely play their role in shaping their attitudes, beliefs and also brings changes in the society. History of any nation can throw the light on the trends that brought about the changes in the culture of the nation. In contemporary times one can also identify social trends that are responsible for bringing change in the existing culture. For instance, in trends like modernity, secularism, post-materialism, fundamentalism and democratisation, and marketization can be easily identified in the advance industrial societies. All such trends are reflection of developments in the society of a nation. The North America, Western Europe, and Japan have developed the characteristics of a post-industrial society because the socio-economic modernization has appeared there. The young people who grew up in economically prosperous countries are now less concerned with material well being and personal security than the generation of their parents. The young people are emphasizing on post-material values like social equality, environmental protection, cultural pluralism and self expression. It has spawned new citizen groups such as the environmental movement, the women’s movements and other public

4 The concept of social capital was developed in the 1970s to highlight the social and cultural factors that underpin wealth creation. The term has since been used to refer to social connectiveness as represented by networks, norms and trust that promotes civic engagement. Social capital is thus a precondition for successful communities and good governance. See Heywood, 2007 p. 210.

interest associations. Such kinds of changes in the values have also impacted on the policy agendas industrial democracies. In the advance industrial societies citizens are asking the government to restore the environment, expand their social and political liberties and emphsaises on the policies that can ensure social equality in the society. The political leaders in such advance societies are now struggling to balance these new types of policy demands against the continuing policy needs of the past.

Democratization

Ironically, when democratic values are started to take root around world, the citizens of many western democracies have become skeptical about the model of democracy, their politicians and political institutions. For instance, in 1964, three quarters of Americans had trust on the government; and today only a third of the citizens believe so. This malaise is also spreading to other developed nations in Western Europe and Japan. In other words, people’s support for democratic norms has not waned yet; in fact, democratic norms and values have strengthened over time as democracy has developed in the west. The people are only critical or skeptical towards the democratic institutions and their functions. The citizens of advance industrial societies are expecting democracy to fulfill its ideals and are critical of politicians and political parties when they fall short of democratic ideals. All this cynicism is a strain for the politicians of advance industrial societies, which is somehow good too as it emphasises on democracy to improve and adapt new ideals, which will ultimately strengthen the democracy and democratic norms.

Marketisation

Under the wave of globalisation, the cultural trend that came up on the world stage is a shift toward marketization. There is acceptance of free markets and private profit incentives among the citizens of advance societies. They are in opposition of economy that is managed and controlled by the government. For instance, in the 1980s a movement appeared in the United States and many western European nations where economies had experienced serious problems of inefficiency and economic stagnation. That time Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan in the United States rode to power on waves of public support for reducing the scale of government (Almond et.al 2007).

Post- Materialism

As discussed earlier that political culture is not a static, it keeps on changing over the time. The only one thing is required for this change is mass participation of people at a large scale to bring about the change. During 1940s-1970s most of western countries experienced tremendous growth of industries and economy. Interestingly this time frame is relatively witnessed peace in the world. This environment enabled a particular segment to grow up who had not experienced any world wars etc. in addition to that; newly emerged welfare states in the west were committed for the social security of the citizens from hunger, poverty etc. by ensuring employment or other aids. This combo of social security and peace led towards to a silent revolution among the young generation that took place particularly in the western political cultures. The old generation cherished old values, religion, order and security and sexual morality whereas the young generation is concerned with the issues of quality of life. The young people in the west are particular about their life-style, sexual choices, environment etc. In other words, they de-emphasised the traditional political issues like religion. They put emphasis on the expression of self, hence are attracted towards single issue groups whether it is feminists groups, LGBT, World Peace, PETA, World peace etc. Such kind of impact is quite visible in the Western Europe and in the United States of America.

Summing Up

Politics, to a great extent takes place in the minds of individual’s and is shaped with the individual’s ideas, values and their perception as well as assumptions towards the organisation, functioning and expectations from political system. The concept of political culture is very relevant to comprehend the contemporary society’s vis-à-vis the world. The post-cold war era has witnessed the upsurge of ethnic and national differences among the nations as well as within the nations. This testifies that relevance to cultural components to be taken into account to make sense of such upsurges and political realities. In addition to this the top most agenda for political scientists to understand the ‘transition of nations from their traditional models of governance to democratic model of governance’. Moreover to understand the process of modernisation culture is very important variable.

References and Essential Readings:

• Almond and others (2004), ed., Comparative Politics Today, Pearson Education Black, C.E., ed., Comparative Modernization: A Reader, Free Press
• Connell, James O. “The Concept of Modernization”, in C.E. Black’s, ed., Comparative Modernization: A Reader, Free Press
• Dahrendorf, Ralf (1992), “Democracy and Modernity: Notes on the European Experience”, in S.N. Eisenstadt’s, ed., Democracy and Modernity, Leiden University, the Netherlands Deutsch, Karl W. “Social Mobilization and Political Development”, The American Political Science Review, Sepetember 1961, vol.LV, no.3
• Einhorn, Eric S. (2005), “Liberalism and Social Democracy in Western Europe”, in Howard J. Wiarda’s ed., Comparative Politics: Critical Concepts in Political Science, London and New York: Routledge
• Giddens, Anthony (1990), The Consequences of Modernity, Cambridge: Polity Press
• Huntington, Samuel “The Change to Change: Modernization, Development and Politics”, inC.E. Black’s, ed., Comparative Modernization: A Reader, Free Press
• Kreutzmann, Hermann “From Modernization Theory Towards the Clash of Civilizations: Directions and Paradigm Shifts in Samuel Huntington’s analysis and prognosis of Global Development”, GeoJournal, 1998, vol.46, no.4Pye, Lucian (1966), Aspects of Political Development, Little Brown
• Sarangi, Asha (2009), ed., Language Politics in India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press
• Wiarda, Howard J. (2005), ed., Comparative Politics: Concepts in Political Science, London
• and New York: Routledge