Political culture

Political culture describes how culture impacts politics. Every political system is embedded in a particular political culture.^[1] Political culture is what the people, the voters, the electorates believe and do based on their understanding of the political system in which they have found themselves. These may be regarded as being bad or good placed side by side with global best practices or norms.

Definition

Gabriel Almond defines it as "the particular pattern of orientations toward political actions in which every political system is embedded".^[1]

Lucian Pye's definition is that "Political culture is the set of attitudes, beliefs, and sentiments, which give order and meaning to a political process and which provide the underlying assumptions and rules that govern behavior in the political system".^[1]

María Eugenia Vázquez Semadeni defines political culture as "the set of discourses and symbolic practices by means of which both individuals and groups articulate their relationship to power, elaborate their political demands and put them at stake."^[2]

Analysis

The limits of a particular political culture are based on subjective identity.^[1] The most common form of such identity today is the national identity, and hence nation states set the typical limits of political cultures.^[1] The socio-cultural system, in turn, gives meaning to a political culture through shared symbols and rituals (such as a national independence day) which reflect common values.^[1] This may develop into a civil religion. The values themselves can be more hierarchical or egalitarian, and will set the limits to political participation, thereby creating a basis for legitimacy.^[1] They are transmitted through socialization, and shaped by shared historical experiences which form the collective or national memory.^[1] Intellectuals will continue to interpret the political culture through political discourse in the public sphere.^[1] Indeed, elite political culture is more consequential than mass-level.^[3]

Elements

Trust is a major factor in political culture, as its level determines the capacity of the state to function.^[3] Postmaterialism is the degree to which political culture is concerned with issues which are not of immediate physical or material concern, such as human rights and environmentalism.^[1] Religion has also an impact on political culture.^[3]

Classifications

Different typologies of political culture have been proposed.

Almond & Verba

Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba in The Civic Culture outlined three pure types of political culture based on level and type of political participation and the nature of people's attitudes toward politics:

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. They have neither knowledge nor interest in politics. This type of political culture is 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 it 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.

Almond and Verba wrote that these types of political culture can combine to create the civic culture, which mixes the best elements of each.

Elazar

Daniel J. Elazar identified three kinds of political culture:^[3]

Individualistic culture – In which politics is a marketplace between individuals seeking to maximize their self-interest, with minimal community involvement and opposition to the government, as well as a high degree of patronage. See also: Neopatrimonialism.
Moralistic culture – Whereby government is seen as important and as a way to improve peoples' lives.
Traditionalistic culture – One which seeks to preserve the status quo under which elites have all the power and citizen participation is not expected.

Huntington

Samuel P. Huntington classified political cultures according to civilizations on the basis of geography and history:^[3]

Western civilization
Japanese civilization
Islamic civilization
Hindu civilization
Slavic-Orthodox civilization
Latin American civilization
Chinese civilization
African civilization

Inglehart

Ronald Inglehart proposes that political culture can dictate political systems, and points out a correlation between Protestantism (or more generally societies with high Secular-Rational values and high Self Expression values on the Inglehart-Weltzel values map) and stable democratization.^[4] However, the recurrent post-elections clashes in largely protestant Sub-Saharan countries, such as Kenya or Uganda, shows that religious affiliations seem to poorly affect the political behaviour of populations.

National political cultures

Russia

Russia is a low-trust society, with even the highest trusted institutions of church and the military having more distrustful than trusting citizens, and with low participation in civil society.^[3]^[5] This means that Russia has a weak civic political culture. Furthermore, the authoritarian traditions of Russia mean that there is little support for democratic norms such as tolerance of dissent and pluralism.^[6] Russia has a history of authoritarian rulers from Ivan the Terrible to Joseph Stalin, who have engaged in massive repression of all potential political competitors, from the oprichnina to the Great Purge. The resulting political systems of Tsarist autocracy and Soviet communism had no space for independent institutions.^{[citation needed]}

United States

The political culture of the United States was heavily influenced by the background of its early immigrants, as it is a settler society. Samuel P. Huntington identified American politics as having a "Tudor" character, with elements of English political culture of that period, such as common law, strong courts, local self-rule, decentralized sovereignty across institutions, and reliance on popular militias instead of a standing army, having been imported by early settlers.^[7] Another source of political culture was the arrival of Scotch-Irish Americans, who came from a violent region of Britain, and brought with them a strong sense of individualism and support for the right to bear arms.^[8] These settlers provided the support for Jacksonian democracy, which was a revolution of its time against the established elites, and remnants of which can still be seen in modern American populism.^[8]

China

The political culture of China is tied closely to political socialization, as children are indoctrinated into the collectivist perspective of the Chinese Communist Party. This inculcation is theorized to explain the delayed growth of secularism in Chinese culture, especially during the Cultural Revolution.^[9] Chinese political culture perceives the relationship between government and individuals to be a hierarchy. Because of this, there is little pushback from individuals during policy and regulation change. The political culture also shows a trend against confrontationality, which decreases the quantity and frequency of social conflict.^[10] Both of these qualities stem from traditional Chinese values embedded during the age of Confucianism. When the Chinese Communist Party took power in 1948, Mao Zedong unsuccessfully attempted to remove these traits from the culture, instead opting for revolutionary values and priorities.^[11]

India

Due to India's colonization by the British Empire, the contemporary political culture has been influenced by western ideas that were not present before. These influences include democracy and parliamentary systems, two institutions that stood ideologically opposite of the caste system that dictated society before.^[12] Because of India's multicultural demography, the political culture varies by group and region. India's successful democratization lead to power being given to both the urbanized and well-educated class who focused on national appeal, as well as more traditional, rural, and lower class political actors.^[13] In the modern era, the class system of India has begun to break down, and members of lower classes are now entering higher political and economic positions. This is especially true for lower class women, who historically have been excluded from such activities.^[14]

References

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j Morlino, Leonardo (2017). Political science : a global perspective. Berg-Schlosser, Dirk., Badie, Bertrand. London, England. pp. 64–74. ISBN 978-1-5264-1303-1. OCLC 1124515503.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^ [Vázquez Semadeni, M. E. (2010). La formación de una cultura política republicana: El debate público sobre la masonería. México, 1821-1830. Serie Historia Moderna y Contemporánea/Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas; núm. 54. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México/El Colegio de Michoacán. ISBN 978-607-02-1694-7]
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Hague, Rod. (14 October 2017). Political science : a comparative introduction. Macmillan Education UK. pp. 200–214. ISBN 978-1-137-60123-0. OCLC 970345358.
^ Inglehart, Ronald (2 September 2013). "The Renaissance of Political Culture". American Political Science Review. 82 (4): 1203–1230. doi:10.2307/1961756. JSTOR 1961756. S2CID 145085629. Retrieved 9 April 2022.
^ Schmidt-Pfister, Diana (2008), "What Kind of Civil Society in Russia?", in White, Stephen (ed.), Media, Culture and Society in Putin's Russia, Studies in Central and Eastern Europe, Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 37–71, doi:10.1057/9780230583078_3, ISBN 978-0-230-58307-8
^ White, Stephen; Gitelman, Zvi Y.; Sakwa, Richard, eds. (2005). Developments in Russian politics 6. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-4039-3668-4. OCLC 57638942.
^ Huntington, Samuel P. (2006). Political order in changing societies. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-11620-5. OCLC 301491120.
^ ^a ^b Fukuyama, Francis. (30 September 2014). Political order and political decay : from the industrial revolution to the globalization of democracy. Continuation of: Fukuyama, Francis. (First ed.). New York. ISBN 978-0-374-22735-7. OCLC 869263734.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^ Wasserstrom, Jeffrey (1994). Popular Protest & Political Culture in Modern China. New York, New York: Westview Press. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-8133-2043-4.
^ Shi, Tianjian (2001). "Cultural Values and Political Trust: A Comparison of the People's Republic of China and Taiwan". Comparative Politics. 33 (4): 401–419. doi:10.2307/422441. ISSN 0010-4159. JSTOR 422441.
^ Solomon, Richard H. (1971). Mao's Revolution and the Chinese Political Culture. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-02250-8.
^ Chiriyankandath, James (March 1996). "Hindu nationalism and regional political culture in India: A study of Kerala". Nationalism and Ethnic Politics. 2 (1): 44–66. doi:10.1080/13537119608428458. ISSN 1353-7113.
^ Weiner, Myron (8 December 2015). "6. India: Two Political Cultures". Political Culture and Political Development. Princeton University Press. pp. 199–244. doi:10.1515/9781400875320-007. ISBN 978-1-4008-7532-0.
^ Ciotti, Manuela (February 2012). "Resurrecting Seva (Social Service): Dalit and Low-caste Women Party Activists as Producers and Consumers of Political Culture and Practice in Urban North India". The Journal of Asian Studies. 71 (1): 149–170. doi:10.1017/S002191181100297X. ISSN 1752-0401. S2CID 162611460.