Democracy and Citizinship - Essay Example

They employed varied methodologies, analytical and theoretical approaches in order to provide a clear understanding of political culture across the state. They both revealed the way civic culture should be culturally recognized as a fundamental right and stepping-stone for gaining political, social and economic objectives. In order to make democracy work, engaging citizens in policy making process and recognizing their fundamental rights is requisite. Therefore, this essay compares and contrasts on the issue of civic culture and making democracy work from a theoretical, analytical and methodological perspective from assorted texts.

Differences between Civic Culture and Making Democracy Work from a Theoretical, Analytical and Methodological Perspective Almond and Verba carried out comparative cross-national survey in five democratic nations including the United States, United Kingdom, Italy, Germany and Mexico in order to determine the quantified ideas and attitudes that compose civic culture. They employed a comparative fashion for testing individual attitudes as a complex way of understanding the civic culture and democratic system in the five democratic nations. . 11).

They also believe that it is through dissemination of cultural ideas that contribute a stable democracy. Therefore, they limited the research to individual attitudes and avoided the question about government. Almond and Verba employed interview research methodology and posed inquiries about the perception of the perception of individual about the democratic government in relation to citizens (Almond and Verba 1964, p.70). They alienated respondents into three political culture categories, which included the parochial culture, subject and participant culture in order to generate comparability atmosphere to understand democracy (Almond and Verba 1964, p.71). From these categories, they found out that the respondent in parochial culture did not have knowledge or interests in political activities.

However, respondents were at least conscious, and they had little information about politics in the case of subject culture. They also understood that their lives were under the government policies. In the last participant aspects of political culture, the respondents in participant culture had fanatically developed political efficacy ideas and competencies as political actors (Lane 1964, p.2). The three categories of political cultural aspects can combine and create change in the political system because they are not jointly exclusive.

The political cultures are different because each category differs and they can be further categorized into a number of cleavage members. This is what makes Almond and Verba believe that the combination between the political culture categories can result to a balanced political culture (Almond and Verba 1964, p. 32). Almond and Verba employ comparative methodology to explore the