Introduction to Political Culture Part 1

Political culture Culture, in its broadest sense, is the way of life of a people. Sociologists and anthropologists tend to distinguish
between 'culture' and 'nature', the former encompassing that which is passed on from one generation to the next by learning, rather than through biological inheritance. Political scientists, however, use the term in a narrower sense to refer to a people's psychological orientation, political culture being the 'pattern of orientations' to political objects such as parties, government, and the constitution, expressed in beliefs, symbols and values.

political culture emerged in the 1950s and 1960s as new techniques of behavioural analysis displaced more traditional, institutional approaches to the subject.

classic work in this respect was Almond and Verba's The Civic Culture (1963), which used opinion surveys to analyse political attitudes and democracy in five countries: the USA, the UK, West Germany, Italy and Mexico. This work was stimulated, in part, by a desire to explain the collapse of representative government in interwar Italy, Germany, and elsewhere, and the failure of democracy in many newly independent developing states after 1945.

interest in political culture faded in the 1970s and 1980s, the debate has been revitalized since the 1990s as a result of efforts in Eastern Europe to construct democracy out of the ashes of communism, and growing anxiety in mature democracies, such as the USA, about the apparent decline of social capital (see p. 200) and the advent of culture wars.

Culture war: A political battle over values and
lifestyles usually reflecting the tension between social conservatism (traditionalism) and social liberalism (progressivism).

Civic culture: A set of specific attitudes which are crucial to the success of modern democracies.

Debate about the nature of political culture has often focused on the idea of civic culture, usually associated with the writings of Almond and Verba (1963, 1980). Almond and Verba set out to identify the political culture that most effectively upheld democratic politics. They identified three general types of political culture: A participant political culture. This is one in which citizens pay close attention to politics, and regard popular participation as both desirable and effective.
A subject political culture. This is characterized by more passivity amongst citizens, and the recognition that they have only a very limited capacity to influence government.
A parochial political culture. This is marked by the absence of a sense of citizenship, with people identifying with their locality, rather than the nation, and having neither the desire nor the ability to participate in politics.

Although Almond and Verba accepted that a participant culture came closest to the democratic ideal, they argued that the 'civic culture' is a blend of all three, in that it reconciles the participation of citizens in the political process with the vital necessity for government to govern. Democratic stability, in their view, is underpinned by a political culture that is characterized by a blend of activity and passivity on the part of citizens, and a balance between obligation and performance on the part of government.

In their initial study (1963), Almond and Verba concluded that the UK came closest to a civic culture, exhibiting both participant and subject features. In other words, while the British thought that they could influence government, they were also willing to obey authority. The USA also scored highly, its relative weakness being that, as participant attitudes predominated over subject ones, Americans were not particularly law-abiding. The difficulty of building or rebuilding a civic culture was underlined by the examples of both West Germany and Italy. By the early 1960s, neither country appeared to have a strong participant culture; while the subject culture was dominant in Germany, parochial attitudes remained firmly entrenched in Italy. Almond and Verba's later study (1980) highlighted a number of shifts, notably declining national pride and confidence in the UK and the USA, which contrasted with a rise in civic propensities in Germany.

The civic-culture approach to the study of political attitudes and values has, however, been widely criticized. In the first place, its model of the psychological dispositions that make for a stable democracy is highly questionable. In particular, the emphasis on passivity and the recognition that deference to authority is healthy has been criticized by those who argue that political participation is the very stuff of democratic government.

a 'sleeping dogs' theory of democratic culture that implies that low participation indicates broad satisfaction with government, which politicians, in turn, will be anxious to maintain. On the other hand, when fewer than half of the adult population bothers to vote, as regularly occurs in the USA, this could simply reflect widespread alienation and ingrained disadvantage.

Second, the civic-culture thesis rests on the unproven assumption that political attitudes and values shape behaviour, and not the other way round. In short, a civic culture may be more a consequence of democracy than its cause. If this is the case, political culture may provide an index of the health of democracy, but it cannot be seen as a means of promoting stable democratic rule. Finally, Almond and Verba's approach tends to treat political culture as homogeneous; that is, as little more than a cipher for national culture or national character. In so doing, it pays little attention to political subcultures and tends to disguise fragmentation and social conflict. In contrast, radical approaches to political culture tend to highlight the significance of social divisions, such as those based on class, race and gender

A very different view of the role and nature of political culture has been developed within the Marxist tradition. Although Marx portrayed capitalism as a system of class exploitation and oppression operating through the ownership of the means of production, he also acknowledged the power of ideas, values and beliefs. As Marx and Engels put it in The German Ideology ([1846]1970), 'the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time the ruling intellectual force'. In Marx's view, ideas and culture are part of a 'superstructure' that is conditioned or determined by the economic 'base', the mode of production.

Hegemony Hegemony (from the Greek hegemonia, meaning 'leader') is, in its simplest sense, the ascendancy or domination of one element of a system over others. In Marxist theory, the term is used in a more specific sense. In the writings of Gramsci (see p. 198), hegemony refers to the ability of a dominant class to exercise power by winning the consent of those it subjugates, as an alternative to the use of coercion. As a non-coercive form of class rule, hegemony typically operates through the dissemination of bourgeois values and beliefs throughout society.

Bourgeois ideology: A Marxist term, denoting ideas and theories that serve the interests of the bourgeoisie by disguising the contradictions of capitalist society

These ideas have provided Marxism with two theories of culture. The first suggests that culture is essentially class-specific: as members of a class share the same experiences and have a common economic position and interests, they are likely to have broadly similar ideas, values and beliefs. In Marx's words, 'it is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness'. Proletarian culture and ideas can therefore be expected to differ markedly from bourgeois ones. The second theory of culture emphasizes the degree to which the ideas of the ruling class (what Marx referred to as 'ideology') pervade society and become the 'ruling ideas' of the age. In this view, political culture, or even civic culture, is thus nothing more than bourgeois ideology. What is important about this view is that it sees culture, values and beliefs as a form of power. From the Marxist perspective, the function of ideology is to reconcile subordinate classes to their exploitation and oppression by propagating myths, delusions and falsehoods (in Engels' words, 'false consciousness'). Later Marxists have understood this process in terms of bourgeois 'hegemony'.

Modern Marxists have been quick to acknowledge that, in no sense, do the 'ruling ideas' of the bourgeoisie monopolize intellectual and cultural life in a capitalist society, excluding all rival views. Rather, they accept that cultural, ideological and political competition does exist, but stress that this competition is unequal. Quite simply, ideas and values that uphold the capitalist order have an overwhelming advantage over ideas and values that question or challenge it. Such ideological hegemony may, in fact, be successful precisely because it operates behind the illusion of free speech, open competition and political pluralism - what Herbert Marcuse (see p. 41) termed 'repressive tolerance'

The most influential twentieth-century exponent of this view was Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci drew attention to the degree to which the class system is upheld not simply by unequal economic and political power, but also by bourgeois hegemony. This consists of the spiritual and cultural supremacy of the ruling class, brought about through the spread of bourgeois values and beliefs via 'civil society'; the mass media, the churches, youth movements, trade unions, and so forth. What makes this process so insidious is that it extends beyond formal learning and education into the very common sense of the age. The significance of Gramsci's analysis is that, in order for socialism to be achieved, a 'battle of ideas' has to be waged through which proletarian principles, values and theories displace, or at least challenge, bourgeois ideas.

The Marxist view of culture as ideological power rests on the distinction between subjective or felt interests (what people think they want) and objective or real interests (what people would want if they could make independent and informed choices). This draws attention to what Stephen Lukes (2004) called a 'radical view of power' (see p. 9): 'A exercises power over B when A affects B in a manner contrary to B's interests'. Such a view of political culture has, however, attracted considerable criticism. Some have argued that it is unwarrantedly patronizing to suggest that the values and beliefs of ordinary people have been foisted upon them by manipulation and indoctrination. The acceptance of capitalist values and beliefs by the working classes may, for instance, merely reflect their perception that capitalism works.

Conservative thinkers have long supported their own view of political culture in the form of tradition (see p. 81) and, in particular, 'traditional values'. These are values and beliefs that have supposedly been passed down from earlier generations and so constitute a kind of cultural bedrock. Conservative politicians regularly call for such values to be 'strengthened' or 'defended', believing that they are the key to social cohesion and political stability. In the UK in the 1980s, for example, Margaret Thatcher called for the resurrection of what she called 'Victorian values', while John Major's ill-starred 'Back to Basics' initiative attempted much the same in the 1990s. In the USA, Ronald Reagan embraced the notion of the 'frontier ideology', harking back to the conquest of the American West and the virtues of self-reliance, hard work and adventurousness that he believed it exemplified. Not uncommonly, such values are linked to the family, the church and the nation; that is, to long-established institutions that supposedly embody the virtues of continuity and endurance.

'Rationalism in Politics', Michael Oakeshott (1962) developed a further defence of continuity and tradition. Oakeshott argued that traditional values and established customs should be upheld and respected on account of their familiarity, which engenders a sense of reassurance, stability and security. This suggests that there is a general human disposition to favour tradition over innovation, the established over the new. To be a conservative, Oakeshott suggested, is 'to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbound, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the super abundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss'

The defence of traditional values and established beliefs has been one of the central themes of neoconservatism, advanced in the USA by social theorists such as Daniel Bell (1976) and Irving Kristol (1983), who have warned against the destruction of spiritual values brought about both by market pressures and by the spread of permissiveness. The problem with this position, however, is that it assumes there is an authoritative moral system upon which order and stability can be based. The simple fact is that, in modern multicultural and multi-religious societies, it is doubtful
whether any set of values can be regarded as authoritative. To define certain values as 'traditional', 'established' or 'majority' values may simply be an attempt to impose a particular moral system on the rest of society. Indeed, empirical evidence appears to support the view that political culture is becoming increasingly fragmented, and that modern societies are characterized by growing moral and cultural diversity.

The process of political and economic reconstruction in former communist states has stimulated renewed interest in the issue of political culture since the 1990s. This is because pervasive state control over a number of generations had evidently destroyed or suppressed the social connections and sense of civic responsibility that usually sustain democratic politics. In other words, there was a perceived need to rebuild civil society (see p. 6), in the sense of a realm of autonomous groups and associations, including businesses, interest groups, clubs, and so on. Indeed, such ideas can be traced back to Alexis de Tocqueville (see p. 271), who, in the nineteenth century, had explained the USA's egalitarian institutions and democratic practices by reference to the American's propensity for participation and civic association. No sooner had this revived concern with political culture arisen in relation to postcommunist states than it was being applied to perceived problems in mature democracies.

Robert Putnam, for example, argued 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. In Bowling Alone (2000), Putnam drew attention to the USA's declining 'social capital', and argued that other industrialized countries are likely to follow US trends. He highlighted the emergence of a 'post-civic' generation. This was demonstrated by a 25-50 per cent drop in the number of voluntary clubs and associations since 1965, and by sharp declines in attendance at public, town and school meetings, as well as in the membership of, and work done for, political parties. Putnam's view, which is influenced by communitarianism, explains declining social capital in a variety of ways. These include the spread of suburbanization and, therefore, of longer journeys to work; the rise of two-career families and their impact on the quantity and quality of parenting; and the tendency of television to privatize leisure time, misshape social perceptions and reduce achievement levels in children. From a contrasting social-democratic perspective, however, the decline of civic engagement is explained by the triumph of consumer capitalism and the spread of materialist and individualist values.

An alternative view of the social capital debate suggests not that there has been a decline of civic engagement or social connectedness, but that the forms these have taken have changed. According to Inglehart (1977, 1990), such shifts are linked to
the spread of affluence and to the growth, particularly amongst young people, of 'postmaterial' values. As new generations have grown up since the 1960s accustomed, in advanced industrial countries at least, to economic security and material well-being, 'traditional' ideas about subjects such as sex, marriage and personal conduct have been displaced by more 'liberal' or 'permissive' attitudes. At the same time, traditional political attitudes and allegiances have been weakened and sometimes replaced by growing interest in issues such as feminism, nuclear disarmament, animal rights and environmental protection. Thus party membership and electoral turnout may have declined but there has been a growth of interest in single-issue protest politics and campaigning groups. Post-Fordist (see p. 175) theorists argue that such cultural changes are irresistible, because they are linked to a wholesale shift in economic and political organization that is bringing about a decline in deference and a rise of individualism (see p. 179).

Social capital 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 promote civic engagement. In common with economic assets, social capital can decline or rise, usually through education and a stress on active citizenship. The alleged decline in social capital in modern society has been linked, variously, to the 'parenting deficit', the rise of individualism, and the increase in social and geographical mobility.

Communitarianism Communitarianism is the belief that the self or person is constituted through the community, in the sense that individuals are shaped by the communities to which they belong and thus owe them a debt of respect and consideration. Left-wing communitarians hold that community demands unrestricted freedom and social equality. Centrist communitarians hold that community is grounded in reciprocal rights and responsibilities. Right-wing communitarians hold that community requires respect for authority and established values.

An additional source of disquiet has focused on the tendency, particularly in mature democracies, towards political polarization. Consensus politics and a disposition to compromise have, thus, often been displaced by antagonism, even hatred. Although this development has been fuelled in many Western societies by a combination of stagnant and, sometimes, declining living standards and rising inequality, it reflects a general shift in the political focus of such societies from the economy to culture. Whereas the dominant tendency since the 1980s has been for economic choices to get narrower, boiling down to a choice between some version of market economics, cultural choices are typically starker and offer less scope for compromise. This is because they deal with who we are and how we define ourselves. 'Culture wars' are thus wars of identity. The phenomenon of political polarization around cultural issues was first evident in the USA during the Reagan presidency (1981-89), when the growing influence of the new Christian right within the Republican Party resulted in greater prominence being given to issues such as abortion, sex education in schools, homosexuality and women's rights. In response, the Democrats were increasingly associated with liberalized attitudes on family and lifestyle questions.

Culture wars have, nevertheless, gained their greatest impetus from the advance of globalization (see p. 161) and the various changes it has set in store. This has been particularly evident in the upsurge in populism (see p. 53) in the USA and across much of Europe that occurred in response to the Great Recession, which came in the wake of 2007-09 global crisis, and the onset of the European migration crisis in 2015 (see p. 412). In this light, it is sometimes argued that politics has come to be better understood less in terms of the essentially economic left/right divide, and
more in terms of the culturally based 'open/closed' divide (see p. 251). People with 'open' political attitudes generally favour globalization, are tolerant or welcoming of cultural diversity, sympathize with an inclusive view of national identity, and typically support liberal social norms and values. By contrast, people with 'closed' attitudes are suspicious of, or oppose, globalization, fear cultural diversity, are drawn to an exclusive view of national identity, and usually support conservative social norms and values. The strength of the open/closed divide was demonstrated by the 2016 Brexit referendum in the UK, and the deep and abiding antagonism (and sense of mutual incomprehension) that surfaced between so-called 'Remainers' and so-called 'Leavers'. In the analysis of Goodhart (2017), this was essentially a division between 'Anywheres' (roughly 20 to 25 per cent of the population) and 'Somewheres' (about half the population). While Anywheres are people who have portable 'achieved' identities based on educational and career success, making them comfortable and confident with new places and people, Somewheres are people who are more rooted in a geographical identity and who find the rapid changes of the modern world unsettling.

Postmaterialism Postmaterialism is a theory that explains the nature of political concerns and values in terms of levels of economic development. It is loosely based on Abraham Maslow's (1908-70) 'hierarchy of needs', which places esteem and self-actualization above material or economic needs. Postmaterialism assumes that conditions of material scarcity breed egoistical and acquisitive values, meaning that politics is dominated by economic issues. However, in conditions of widespread prosperity, individuals
express more interest in 'postmaterial' or 'quality of life' issues, typically concerned with morality, political justice and personal fulfilment.

the media have become increasingly powerful political actors and, in some respects, more deeply enmeshed in the political process. At least two developments are particularly noteworthy. First, the impact of the so-called 'primary' agents of political socialization, such as the family and social class, has declined. Whereas once people acquired, in late childhood and adolescence in particular, a framework of political sympathies and leanings that adult experience tended to modify or deepen, but seldom radically transformed, this has been weakened in modern society by greater social and geographical mobility, and by the spread of individualist and consumerist values. This, in turn, widens the scope for the media's political influence, as they are the principal mechanism through which information about issues and policies, and therefore political choices, is presented to the public. Second, the development of a mass television audience from the 1950s onwards, and more recently the proliferation of channels and media output associated with digital media, has massively increased the media's penetration of people's everyday lives. It has been estimated that by 2021 some 1.68 billion households worldwide will have access to television, while half the world's population had gained access to the internet by 2018. These trends, moreover, are most pronounced in the developing world, where, in the case of the internet, access doubled (to 42 per cent) between 2010 and 2017. This means that the public now relies on the media more heavily than ever before. Nevertheless, the relationship between the media and politics continues to be surrounded by debate and disagreement. These debates focus, not least, on the nature of the political biases that operate within the traditional or mass media (see p. 204), and the extent to which the way that political processes have come to be shaped or framed by the media has changed due to the shift in usage from traditional media to digital media, and especially social media.