Political cultures of texas - Research Paper Example

This culture establishes the outer boundary of all the possibilities within the political dominion. According to ‘Texas Politics, today’ (Maxwell et al., pp. 20-39), the political culture of Texas consists of three sub-cultures: traditional, individualistic, and moralistic. The individualistic culture stresses minimum government intervention that should be limited to safeguarding individual rights while other social and political relationships should be upon private sector. One the other hand, moralistic political culture urges government intervention in social and economic matters for the well-being of the people and general welfare.

Traditional subculture, however, has a different viewpoint. It states that since the political power lies in the hands of the dominating or elite group therefore role of the government should be limited to maintaining the social order and tradition. The traditional subculture dominates in East Texas while other subcultures dominate in the rest of Texas. The political culture and philosophy is elaborated under three philosophical streams: classical liberalism, social conservation, and populism.

Firstly, Classical liberalism’ focus is to place political value on political measures which helps an individual to exercise full liberty until and unless others are not limited by it. It often forms opposition to the use of the government to attain social goals. They press for the market forces or private motives to provide the best outcome. Moreover, historically Texas also supported religious acceptance for civil liberties for both individualism and entrepreneurship. One of the classic examples of reputation in Texas is H.

Ross Perot (political candidate and rich businessperson). Other examples also include Willie Nelson and several Texans who disobeyed social values, rejected the acceptance of race and gender like Barbara Jordan (Maxwell et al., pp. 23-25). Social conservatism came out of classical conservatism viewed liberalism with distrust and appreciated traditional hierarchical social relations. This has rooted in feudal English and European thinking. Moreover, in contemporary forms, the idea of government intervention to reinforce social relations is very well substantiated by the social conservatives.

They value traditional practices such as religious beliefs and respect traditional authorities, which can include business or religious leaders. While on the other hand, socially conservatism continues to influence within Democratic Party since decades although their ideology is under the ideas of Republican Party. Populism, the third category, is concerned with well being of ordinary people and has both political and social dimensions. Popular will is the quality of doing what is right and avoiding what is wrong in political position.

The idea of Populism supports government politically in managing society and the economy. Populism depends on the style and rhetorical appeal to its audience rather than on the content of the policies of the political candidates. Populism can also take socially conservative forms in its support to the political leader. Thus, populism has different positions to support, which depend on the context. Moreover, it ignores the traditional views