Political Culture refers to the attitude, values and beliefs of people about political phenomena.
Introduction
Under the behavioral approach the interest in political culture started to emerge in the 1950s and 1960s. The concept of Political Culture shares its roots from Sociology and Anthropology. The idea first emerged in Australia and was proposed by Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba in 1956 in comparative politics influenced by Talcott Parson. According to Gabriel Almond, “Political Culture is a set of attitudes, Cognitions, Values, standards and feelings towards the Political system, its various roles and role incumbents”.
In this article, we’ll explore the definition of Political cultures, its types and criticism
Table of Contents
Concept of Political Culture
The political culture approach remains one of the very important approaches to understand politics in general and comparative politics in particular.
Culture in its broadest sense is a way of life of people. Sociologists and anthropologists tend to distinguish between culture and nature, the former encompassing that which is passed on from one generation to 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 is the pattern of orientations to political objects such as parties, government and the constitution expressed in beliefs, symbols and values.
Political cultural approach has been very popular for conducting comparative studies and making empirical analysis of transitional societies. Scholars have liked to investigate political behavior and processes of the political system in the context of their political cultures. In other words how people view the country’s politics can be explored through political culture.
In general political culture refers to a set of shared views and normative judgments held by a population regarding its political system therefore it is often seen as the foundation of all political activity or at least as a factor determining the nature, characteristics and levels of political activity. This approach doesn’t refer to the attitudes to specific actors such as the current president or Prime Minister; rather it denotes how people view the political system as a whole including the belief in its legitimacy. Study of political culture is important to understand the political life of a country.
Further, Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba in their famous work “the civic culture” (1963) compared political attitudes and democracy in 5 countries – USA, UK, West Germany, Italy and Mexico. This work was stimulated by the desire to explain collapse of representative governments in interwar Italy, Germany and elsewhere and failure of democracy in many newly independent developing states after 1945.
Although by 1970’s and 1980s interests in political culture faded, debate has been revitalized since 1990’s as a result of efforts in Eastern Europe to construct democracy out of ashes of communism, growing anxiety in mature democracies about apparent decline of social capital and advent of cultural wars.
Almond and Verba have identified 5 important dimensions of political culture,
- A sense of national identity
- Attitude towards one’s self as a participant in political life
- Attitude Towards one’s fellow citizens
- Attitude and expectations regarding governmental output and performance
- Attitude towards knowledge about the political process of decision making
Political culture is unique to a given country or a group of people. As per Lucyian Pye, political culture involves attributes including attitudes, feelings, sentiments, beliefs and values which concern the nature of politics that give form and substance to political processes.
Classification of Political Culture
Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba in their book “The civic culture” identified three general types of political culture.
Parochial Political Culture
This is marked by an absence of a sense of citizenship with people identifying with their locality rather than nation and having neither the desire nor the ability to participate in politics. This type of culture is compatible with a traditional political structure. This type of orientation is found in a passive society where there is hardly any specialization of roles and therefore people are indifferent towards governmental authority. Thus in this type of political culture people have low awareness, expectation and participation
This culture is seen in remote tribes of a country. People do not matter both at input and output levels.
Subjective Political Culture
This is characterized by more passivity amongst citizens and the recognition that they have only a very limited capacity to influence government in this political culture. Citizens see themselves not as participants in the political process but as recipients of the government, in other words citizens under this political culture have passive orientation towards the political system and conceive themselves as having little significance on political process.
In this type of political culture citizens are aware of the central government and are heavily subjected to its decisions with little scope for dissent. The individual is aware of politics, its actors and institutions. Citizens have orientations towards the output aspect of the system. People know about decision making mechanisms. There is awareness but no confidence to air political views. Therefore there is absence of participatory norms. It is compatible with centralized authoritarian structure. In this political culture people have a higher level of awareness and expectation but low participation.
For example, this type of political culture can be seen in the people living under authoritarian regimes or dictatorships like North Korea. People matter only at output level.
Participant Political Culture
This is one in which citizens pay close attention to politics and regard popular participation as both desirable and effective. People have both the desires and the ability to participate in politics. People have both knowledge and interest in politics.
In this political culture citizens believe that they can contribute to the system and can be influenced by it and hence they respond positively to all political objects and have an active orientation to political activities.
Here, citizens can influence the government in various ways and they are affected by it. The individual is oriented towards the system towards all four components of politics that is input, output, political system and self role. This encourages more and more participation and participation is the highest value. There is an ability to hold a positive orientation towards the political system.
In this model people have a high level of awareness, expectation and participation. Political culture of Switzerland can be said to be a participant. People matter or are influential both at input as well as output level. It is associated with democratic political structure.
Concept of Elite Political Culture
According to Almond and Verba, elite political culture plays a significant role in shaping the broader political culture of a society. The elites, including political leaders, intellectuals, and opinion-makers, influence public attitudes, values, and political behaviors through various channels such as media, education, and political institutions. Their actions and beliefs have a trickle-down effect, impacting the political engagement of ordinary citizens.
In a stable democracy, the elites are expected to display a participant political culture, as this encourages political participation and fosters a sense of legitimacy and trust in the system. In contrast, a parochial or subject political culture among the elites could lead to apathy, authoritarianism, or mistrust in the democratic process, ultimately undermining stability.
Concept of Civic Culture
Although Almond and Verba accepted that participant political culture closest to the democratic ideals. They argued that civic culture is the most conducive for democracy.
Civic culture is a blend or combination of participants, subjective and parochial political culture. It reconciles the participation of citizens in the political process with the vital necessity for the government to govern. According to the idea of civic culture excessive participant culture is not good because excessive participation may regenerate democracy into mobocracy which often give rise to fascism and demographic leaders. The best scenario is where the majority exhibit participant political culture whereas some sections and groups also have subjective and parochial political culture.
In this study they concluded that the UK came closest to civic culture exhibiting both participant and subjective features. In other words while the British thought that they could influence the government they were also willing to obey authority. In the USA participant attitudes predominated over subjective ones. Hence, Americans are not particularly law abiding. In west Germany the subjective culture was dominant whereas in Italy parochial political culture remained firmly entrenched.
Three Orientations of Political Culture
Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba based on their analysis also provided three orientations of Political Culture:
- Cognitive orientation – It refers to knowledge of and about the political system its objectives and its inputs Outputs
- Effective orientation – It refers to a feeling of attachment, involvement, rejection about the political system, its personnel and performance and their political objectives
- Evaluate orientations – It refers to the judgments and opinions about politics which usually involve applying standard values to political objects and events
With this Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba also suggested the “sleeping dogs” theory of democratic culture that implies that low participation indicates broad satisfaction with government.
Criticisms of Political Culture approach
Political culture approach cannot be described as a very precise variable for presenting a morphological study of the modern political system. This approach cannot be taken as the correct barometer of individual behavior because of the very distinguished varied nature of the same.
Lucian Pye criticized this approach by stating that in no society there is fundamental distinction between the culture of ruler and that of the masses. Therefore any attempt to distinguish them may not be productive.
Other scholars argue that approach is ambiguous because political culture is itself a subsystem of culture. In fact this approach is a byproduct of modernization and development theories. So it is not certain whether they regard it as an independent or dependent variable cause or an effect.
In some cases descriptions of political culture tend to be static as well as simplistic, lacking sensitivity to how a culture continually evolves in response to political experiences. Thus this approach is progressive but reactionary in character.
Conclusion
Despite these limitations this approach is not without its merits. It has heightened the ability of political scientists to examine the psychological environment of political systems broadly and significantly. Thereby it has contributed to conducting both micro and macro studies of political systems as well as to explain the gap between micro-macro politics. Further through this approach political scientists can systematically explain the differences in behavior of similar political institutions working in different societies. It has fortified the process of political socialization. It can be used for analyzing the path of political development of the political system. This approach has also been used to investigate the nature and dynamics of possible political changes, violent changes, revolution and in numerous political systems.
Thus, it may safely be summed up that through the application of this approach the political processes of the different systems can best be known and compared.
Read More:
