A discipline divided

Schools and sects in political science

Gabriel A. Almond 1990

The study of political culture Almond begins his article by having a look on the prehistory of Political Culture Theory: political culture, as well as the concepts and categories used in its analysis subculture, elite political culture, political socialization and cultural change go back to the very origins of political science, implied in ancient and classic writings; the notion of political culture change is one of the most powerful themes of classical literature PLATO, in The Republic: governments vary as the dispositions of men vary, and that there must be as many of the one as there are of the other, and concerning political socialization mother and nurses, fathers, tutors, and political officials, all have the obligation to guide and coerce the incorrigible animal into the path of civic virtue. ARISTOTLE treats the relationship of political culture variables to social stratification variables on the one hand, and to political structural and performance variables on the other. He says the middle amount of all the good things of fortune is the best amount to possess, that is to say that the best attainable form of government is the mixed aristocratic democratic form in a society in which the middle classes predominate. PLUTARCH reports on the engineering of the Spartan character from the moment of birth, growing the children to be not afraid of the dark, or of being left alone MACHIAVELLI AND MONTESQUIEU draw lessons from Roman history on the importance of moral and religious values and upbringing for the formation of the Roman character, which in turn explained the remarkable performance in war and in peace of the Republic ROUSSEAU used terms such as morality, custom and opinion to identify political culture, treating these as a kind of law: this forms the real constitution of the State TOCQUEVILLE says that the manners of the people may be considered as one of the great general causes to which the maintenance of a democratic republic in the United States is attributable, where manners stands for the whole moral and intellectual condition of a people

The Enlightenment, Liberalism and Marxism

during this period political culture research emerged as the response to the failure of enlightenment and liberal expectations as they related to political development These beliefs in intellectual, material and moral progress met a favorable context by the second half of the 19th century, mostly due to 3 favorable factors: a) the Industrial revolution, b) the success of political and social reforms in Britain and the American example, and last but not least, c) the development of evolutionary ideas in biology MARX arranged the theoretical variables differently: material improvement produces three political subcultures: a capitalist class, an exploited and coerced working class and an enlightened organization of revolutionaries. The result is a universal enlightenment culture and society of mass welfare, rationality and creativity. There was also a skeptical and cynical school of thought, MOSCA, PARETO, MICHELS, who pictured a future of permanent elitist exploitation and authoritarian rule based on a different set of psychological and sociological premises.

How the rise of Modern Political Culture Research happened: 3 intellectual components that fed into political culture research: - the sociological tradition of Weber, Durkheim, Mannheim, Parsons and others - the social psychological tradition of Graham Wallas, Lippman, Lazarsfeld and others - the psychoanthropological tradition stemming originally from Freud, and including Theodore Adorno, Harold Lasswell, Max Horkheimer and many others However, the most important step in the rise of modern political culture research was the development of survey research methodology and technology. The revolution in survey research technology had 4 main components: 1. the development of increasingly precise sampling methods 2. increasing sophistication of interviewing methods to assure greater reliability in the data 3. development of scoring and scaling techniques 4. increasing sophistication of methods of statistical analysis and inference After all these steps that influenced the development of political culture, we can now say that: Political culture theory defines political culture in a fourfold way: 1.it consists of the set of subjective orientations to politics in a national population or subset of a national population

2. it has cognitive, affective and evaluative components, including knowledge and beliefs about political reality, feelings with respect to politics and commitments to political values 3. it is the result of childhood socialization, education, media exposure, and adult experiences with governmental, social and economic performance 4. it affects political and governmental structure and performance Critiques of political culture theory 4 different perspectives:

1. BRIAN BARRY AND CAROLE PATEMAN political socialization produces political attitudes which in turn cause political behavior and underlie political structure. They say that causality works in the way in which institutions and performance influence attitudes. 2. MARXIST CRITIQUE JERZY WIATR attitude change results from economic and social structural change. Causality works from class structure to political attitudes, political behavior and structure. 3. STUDENTS OF COMMUNISM RICHARD FAGEN, ROBERT TUCKER, STEPHEN WHITE one cannot separate political attitudes from behavior. Restricting the concept of political culture to its psychological aspect amounts to a radical subjectification of the phenomenon. 4. THE RATIONAL CHOICE OR THE METHODOLOGICAL INDIVIDUALIST SCHOOL OF THOUGHT RONALD ROGOWSKI, SAMUEL POPKIN argue that political structure and behavior can be explained by the short-run material interest calculations of political actors. In some versions of this approach, there is no place for values, norms, feelings and more complex cognitive components. Lets have a look on the literature of contemporary political culture theory: the literature of contemporary political culture scholarship is focused on the experience of three regions:

1. the political culture of advanced industrial societies a) a literature dealing with findings related to the Civic Culture (Almond & Verba 1963) b) a literature dealing with the theme of changing political culture in advanced industrial societies associated primarily with the work of Ronald Inglehart and Samuel Barnes 2. the role of political culture in the development of communist societies

3. the role of political, economic and religious culture in the modernization of Asian countries Lets take it one by one: 1. After The Civic Culture, appeared Follow-up studies of political attitudes in US, Britain, Germany and Italy. These studies showed a declining civic culture in the United States and Britain and an emerging civic culture in West Germany, proving that political culture can be a relatively soft variable, influenced by historical experience and by governmental and political structure and performance 2. studies of political attitudes in communist countries suggest the persistence of certain aspects of political culture in the face of very powerful transformative efforts. This literature argues that despite the systematic efforts of communist movements to penetrate, manipulate, organize, and coerce over a period of several decades, nothing like socialist man has emerged: nationalist feelings have survived in substantial strength: cultural and religious identities persist with great vitality 3. the studies on the extraordinary rate of economic growth of the East Asian Confucian countries in contract with other Asian countries influenced by Islam and Hinduism suggest the importance of culture in the shaping of economic and political behavior. Further on, Almond focuses on the stability or persistence of political culture data suggests that political moods (trust in political incumbents and confidence in political and social institutions) are quite changeable, varying with the effectiveness of the performance of these leaders however, basic political beliefs such as regime legitimacy have considerable stability. most resistant to change are attitudes, identities and values commitments associated with ethnicity, nationality and religion In what Political socialization is concerned most significant change in the process was the emergence of electronic media, particularly television. Katz and Lazarsfeld two-step flow of communication theory = the impact of the mass media on attitudes and behavior was mediated by opinion elites trusted individuals, clergymen, teachers, older family members and the like. Television has weakened the hold of opinion leaders and has accentuated the importance of the mass media in the shaping of values and attitudes. political culture has become rather a theory that emphasizes the cognitive level attitudes and expectations influenced by the structure and performance of the political system and economy.

A system, process and policy approach to political culture Finally, lets see which are the components of political culture and how do they relate one to the other? In order to answer this question, Almond says, we must separate the political system into three levels of system, process and policy, meaning that every political system has a system, process and policy culture. Lets see the meaning of each of these components: System culture = consists of knowledge, feelings and evaluations vis--vis the political authorities, role of incumbents, the regime, the institutional structure, and toward the nation Process culture = knowledge, feelings and evaluations member of the political system have toward the self as political actor and toward other political actors. Policy culture = knowledge, feelings and evaluations members of the political system have toward the outputs of the system its internal policies and external policies in the end, treating political culture in terms of these three levels illuminates some aspects of political strategy and provides some solutions in dealing with threats to a regime by virtue of process dissatisfaction, in a direct manner.

Micro and Macropolitics: political culture as the connecting link

Developments in social science methods enabled a better understanding of the motivational basis of the political attitudes and behavior of individuals. A consistent literature covers this area of interest: studies of electoral attitudes and behaviors, analyses of the relations between ideological and public policy tendencies and deeper attitude or personality characteristics, psychopolitical biographies of political leaders, studies of political attitudes, in particular, social groupings Rokkan and Campbell distinction between micro and macropolitics: - micropolitics: the focus on the individual, his political attitudes and motivations (as individual or member of a sample of a larger population) - macropolitics: the traditional concern with the structure and function of political systems, institutions and agencies, and their effect on public policy

 the connecting link between micropolitics and macropolitics is political culture the concepts of political culture political subculture and role culture allow us to relate political psychology to political system performance by locating attitudinal and behavioral propensities in the political structure of the system any polity may be described and compared with other policies in terms of: - structural function characteristics - cultural, subcultural and role-cultural characteristics the relationship between political culture and political structure is one of the most significant researchable aspect of the problem of political stability and change; such research would stress on the importance of specific learning of orientations to politics and of experience with the political system in the case of the civic culture, a pattern of socialization which enables the individual to manage the inevitable dissonances among his diffuse primary, his obedient output, and activist input roles supports a democratic polity. in the 5 countries, research has shown that the gross differences in political culture seem more clearly to be related to characteristics of the social environment and patterns of social interaction, to specifically political memories, and to differences in experience with political structure and performance. the case of mixed political cultures: the relations between political structure and culture, on the one hand, and character and personality, on the other, are relatively clear and dramatic. These societies are either undergoing rapid systemic cultural structural change or have stabilized in a condition of subcultural fragmentation and structural instability. Fragmentation of political culture is associated with general cultural fragmentation, which further leads to high incidence of psychological confusion and instability.

The countries included in the study United States, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, and Mexico-selected because they represent a wide range of political-historical experience. Explaining the choice of countries: United States and Britain, both representing relatively successful experiments in democratic government. However, authors have pointed out that the British political culture combines deference toward authority with a lively sense of the rights of citizen initiative, in contrast with the American populist ideology

rejecting the conception of a professional, authoritative governmental service and the corresponding role of the obedient subject Germany in order to establish to establish which elements of a participant culture are present in the German population and which are lacking. Italy and Mexico in our study as examples of less well-developed societies with transitional political systems (Mexico in order to have at least one "non-Atlantic community" democracy)

The five nation survey - cross-national, multi-contextual study, about one thousand interviews carried on in each of five nations, with an attempt made to obtain a national cross-section sample (40 min 1h per interview, mostly structured, only 10% of questions open-ended). Interviews were carried on June and July 1959 (US March 1960), with follow-up interviews after 6 months 1 year. Survey data and political system Objective: making statements about the relationship between attitudes and the way in which the political systems operate, with an interest in understanding democratic political systems Major problem: how to use responses from one thousand individuals who have never met to answer questions about the characteristics of a political system. Solutions: 1. Assuming that the interviews with one thousand individuals can be generalized to the entire population - with, of course, the usual allowances made for errors 2. Making generalizations about the respondents' answers, making statements about the number of people in each nation who hold to certain attitudes and engage in certain behavior 3. Assuming that the attitudes reported have some significant relationship to the way the political system operates- to its stability, effectiveness and so forth, and considering the five nations as examples of types of political democracy - more or less stable democracies, more or less effective/participatory By moving constantly from characteristics of the political system to frequencies of particular attitudes within the system to the pattern of attitudes within the individual members of the system, the plan was to develop plausible, testable hypotheses about the relationship between what we have called political culture and the workings of political systems.