Political culture

Political culture is the traditional orientation of the citizens of a nation toward politics, affecting their perceptions of political legitimacy.

Conceptions

In the early 1960s two Americans Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba outlined three pure types of political culture in Great Britain can combine to create civic culture. These three key features expressed by both men were composed in order to establish the link between the public and the government. The first of these features is Deference which looks at the respect, acknowledgment or inferiority of authority and superiors in society.

The second key feature is Consensus. Consensus represents the key link between government and public agreement and appeasement. The appeasement may not always be shared with the whole nation but as a whole people agree to sustain it, meaning it is a common agreement. There are various Examples of Consensus in British Political culture; How we are governed as a whole, agreement on the welfare state, an agreement to whom the powers governed by head of state go to.

The third features of British Political Culture is Homogeneity. Church attendance as a whole is decreasing. Nations within the British Isles such as Scotland and Wales desire independence to become its own state.

As political philosophy

The term political culture was brought into political science to promote the American political system. The concept was used by Gabriel Almond in late 50s, and outlined in The Civic Culture (1963, Almond & Verba), but was soon opposed by two European political scientists, Gerhard Lehmbruch and Arend Lijphart. Lehmbruch analysed politics in Switzerland and Austria and Lijphart analysed politics in Netherlands. Both argued that there are political systems that are more stable than the one in the USA.

As shared paradigms

According to William Stewart, all political behavior can be explained as participating in one or more of eight political cultures. They are Anarchism, Oligarchy, Tory corporatism, Fascism, Classical liberalism, Radical liberalism, Democratic socialism, and Leninist socialism. Societies that exemplify each of these cultures have existed historically.

Ideological perspectives

Anarchism

Main article: Anarchism

An anarchist political culture only exists in small societies in which there are no strangers. Every person has face to face accountability, and will have to continue to live together. The paradigms about society and the role of the individual are shared strongly among all of its members. In such a society institutions of government are not necessary. Family contacts and their constant reinforcement through personal contact hold the single-culture society together.^{[citation needed]}

Tory corporatism

Main article: Tory corporatism

A tory corporatist political culture presumes that responsibility to the group is more important than individual needs and desires. Tradition is the justification of the tory culture. The immediate family connections form its basis. The corporatist culture takes cooperation as far more important than competition.

Oligarchy

Main article: Oligarchy

Oligarchy is a political culture in which elite, ruling class families maintain a monopoly over the legislative, judicial and executive branches of government, thereby removing the decision making process from the population at large.

Classical liberalism

Main article: Classical liberalism

The classical liberal political culture is not based on tradition as tory corporatism and oligarchy are. It is based in rationality. It takes the individual as the basic unit of society and is competitive rather than cooperative.

Radical liberalism

Main article: Radical liberalism

The radical liberal shares all of the same paradigms as the classical liberal, however it differs in that its hierarchical nature does not apply to its elections, and its competitive nature is more limited.

Democratic socialism

Main article: Democratic socialism

The democratic socialist political ideology is based on the belief that the government is ultimately responsible for progressing social and economic equality. Democratic Socialists tend to hold Skinnerian perspectives^{[citation needed]} towards human development and behavior and thus call for government programs to equalize development as much as possible in order to encourage equality and provide equal opportunity to all citizens. Attempts to be more egalitarian. Plato's Republic outlined an extreme form of Democratic Socialism.

Leninist socialism

Main article: Communism

Communists like other socialists take rationality as the justification for their culture. They believe that the rich lie and perpetuate paradigms which support their own interests. While they reject a social hierarchy, the government itself is rigidly hierarchical. Communists advocate that the social ownership of means of production is just what is necessary for technological progress not resulting in more unemployment but in easing of the burden of work for all.

Fascist corporatism

Main article: Fascist corporatism

While the tory corporatist culture is established and on-going, the fascist corporatist attempts to create such a culture by force. The tory takes tradition as the legitimate basis of society, while the fascist makes some form of appeal to rationality. The fascist attempts to recreate the conditions of tory corporatism as a response to Leninist socialism.

Types

Almond and Verba

According to their level and type of political participation and the nature of people's attitudes toward politics, Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba outlined three pure types of political culture:

• Parochial - Where citizens are only remotely aware of the presence of central government, and live their lives near enough regardless of the decisions taken by the state. Distant and unaware of political phenomena. He has neither knowledge or interest in politics. In general congruent with a traditional political structure.
• Subject - Where citizens are aware of central government, and are heavily subjected to its decisions with little scope for dissent. The individual is aware of politics, its actors and institutions. It is affectively oriented towards politics, yet he is on the "downward flow" side of the politics. In general congruent with a centralized authoritarian structure.
• Participant - Citizens are able to influence the government in various ways and they are affected by it. The individual is oriented toward the system as a whole, to both the political and administrative structures and processes (to both the input and output aspects). In general congruent with a democratic political structure.

These three 'pure' types of political culture can combine to create the 'civic culture', which mixes the best elements of each.

Lijphart

By Arend Lijphart, there are different classifications of political culture:

1. classification:

• Political culture of masses
• Political culture of the elite(s)

2. classification (of political culture of the elites):

• coalitional
• contradictive

Lijphart also classified structure of the society:

• homogeneous
• heterogeneous

Structure of society (right)	homogeneous	heterogeneous
Political culture of elites (down)
coalitional	depoliticalised democracy	consociative democracy
contradictive	centripetal democracy	centrifugal democracy

See also

• Political culture of the United States of America
• Political culture of Canada
• Political culture of Germany
• Political culture of the United Kingdom

Further reading

• Almond, Gabriel A., Verba, Sidney The Civic Culture. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1965.
• Aronoff, Myron J. “Political Culture,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes, eds., (Oxford: Elsevier, 2002), 11640.
• Axelrod, Robert. 1997. “The Dissemination of Culture: A Model with Local Convergence and Global

Polarization.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 41:203-26. nyfutdrysetasrdtufyguhigufydtsryaetrsdfguhiigufiyudtsyrtdufyguh

• Barzilai, Gad. Communities and Law: Politics and Cultures of Legal Identities. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003.
• Bednar, Jenna and Scott Page. 2007. “Can Game(s) Theory Explain Culture? The Emergence of Cultural

Behavior within Multiple Games” Rationality and Society 19(1):65-97.

• • Clark, William, Matt Golder, and Sona Golder. 2009. Principles of Comparative Government. CQ Press. Ch. 7
• Diamond, Larry (ed.) Political Culture and Democracy in Developing Countries.
• Greif, Avner. 1994. “Cultural Beliefs and the Organization of Society: A Historical and Theoretical Reflection on Collectivist and Individualist Societies.” The Journal of Political Economy 102(5): 912-950.
• Kertzer, David I. Politics and Symbols. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996.
• Kertzer, David I. Ritual, Politics, and Power. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988.
• Kubik, Jan. The Power of Symbols Against The Symbols of Power. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994.
• Inglehart, Ronald and Christian Welzel, Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy. New York:

Cambridge University Press, 2005. Ch. 2

• Laitin, David D. Hegemony and Culture. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1986.
• Igor Lukšič, Politična kultura. Ljubljana: The University of Ljubljana, 2006.
• Wilson, Richard W. "The Many Voices of Political Culture: Assessing Different Approaches," in World Politics 52 (January 2000), 246-73