Historical Roots of the Political Culture Concep - Essay Example

Political Culture Political Culture Political culture is the pattern of attitudes, beliefs, and values in politics that can be conscious, unconscious, or explicit and implicit (Newton and Jan, 171 and Caramani, 285). Values are the ethical priorities that shape the attitudes and beliefs of individuals in a society. Individuals have beliefs, values, and attitudes but because of interaction and close association, there are certain groupings that results from sharing the same beliefs, values, and ideas and are exemplified by Chileans, South Africans, and South Koreans as being different from their difference in opinions and ideas. The share of harboring of similar ideas, interests, and ways of behavior by the groupings is what forms political culture. This paper aims at making an exposition of political culture through analysis of its historical roots; the critiques it has receive as a theory, and comparing civil culture with recent ways of thinking about political culture. Historical roots of the political culture concept The political culture concept is developed basing on a number of assumptions and historical sources that govern it (Caramani, 288). The primary assumption of the development of political culture is that the determination of the political system to regulate an individual population is the beliefs, orientations, and values of the community. The assumption is attributed to Aristotle, who explained the development of democracies from middle-class societies having egalitarian ethos. The formation of political culture is a threefold causal process that encompasses Aristotle’s assumption (Caramani, 288). The process starts with the formation of social structures by a given population followed by the presence of predominant beliefs and values among the population resulting in a particular set of values associated with the chosen community. The third stage in the development of political culture is the acceptance of a particular political system by the population basing on the beliefs and values predominant in the population. The process is exemplified by the development of dictatorship that starts from social structures that are hierarchical followed by authoritarian ideas shaping the beliefs and values of the community paving the way for the acceptance of dictatorship as an accepted political system. The development of tyranny results from the presence of egalitarian beliefs that are caused by horizontal social structures in the community (Caramani, 288). The arguments for political culture show that a constitution of a nation’s political system as a monarchy, tyranny, or republic is dependent on the presence of honest, servile, or egalitarian views among the constituents of that nation. The American people also demonstrate these historical roots of political culture through their liberal, participatory, and egalitarian behaviors that have resulted in the flourishing of democracy. The [presence of these beliefs and values in America were conducive for democracy to thrive further strengthening the historical roots of political culture. The rise of the Nazi and the subsequent holocaust and WWII is an explicit depiction of political culture and explains that a democracy requires the legitimacy of the constituents and orientations for democracy to succeed. The other historical root for political culture is the acceptance of the fact that it is paramount for the majority of the people to share an orientation for the political system to be successful. This is explained by Lasswell (1951) that the emergence and survival of democratic regimes are anchored by the presence of shared orientations compatible with democracy’s operation by the majority of the people (Caramani, 288). These orientations arise from freedom from anxiety that allows development of human potentialities, self-esteem, and respect for others. Modernization has enabled the development of similar orientations by the people paving the way for democracies through augmenting tolerance to opposition, political pluralism, and criticism. Congruence theorem holds brings forth the need for legitimacy beliefs as a requirement for stable political institutions, and democracies demonstrate this through following mass preferences, as a measure of not corrupting its own principles. Political culture is very much rooted on congruence theorem. Critique of political culture theory Criticism has been leveled against political culture theory including that political culture theory is a fuzzy concept that has no particular item to explain through having many generalizations ending up explaining nothing. Events that cannot be explained by other reasons including economic, constitutional, class, is assumed to be defined by culture that cannot be subjected to empirical test to prove the relation is one to the main critique of political culture theory. The other critique of political culture theory is the risk of political culture being circular meaning the inference of people’s beliefs from their behavior and explaining their behavior from their beliefs. This is clearly demonstrated by the assertion in political culture theory that democratic behavior stems from democratic values and that democratic values arise from their democratic practices. The other criticism of political culture theory is the absence of cause and effect between structures and culture that is known to relate and coexist but the theory lacks a clear exposition in the theory of the cause and impact of culture and structures. The other criticism of political culture is the absence of a sorting out of the top down or bottom up explanation of the political system in the country. There are arguments for bottom-up system developed from the mass opinions and behavior of the people while others argue for top-down creation of attitudes and behavior from the system structures in the country. The importance of subcultures and the manner of gauging this importance is not well envisaged in the theory and the amount of citizen participation that best describes the culture in the nation has no specific value that is used as a basis. The result is ambiguity and lack of guidelines to base the reference of the country as participative or alienated showing the other shortfall of the political culture theory. Political culture theory describes the culture in the country as participative or alienated but fails to state the source of political culture and does not explain the presence of different political culture in various countries. The lack of a source of political culture and the inability to explain differences in political culture between countries are the other criticism level against political culture theory. Political culture does not highlight the real and primary causes of behavior that determine the political culture including individual psychology, economic, or historical instead dealing with the last link that behavior define the political system. Compare theory of civic culture with more recent ways of thinking about political culture Civic culture and other recent ways of thinking about political culture are explained in the last part of this study. Civic culture defines political culture as outline of political orientations that relate to political objects including parliament, the nation, and elections (Newton and Jan, 175). The orientations are then divided into cognitive, affective, and evaluative. Cognitive orientations require the awareness and understanding of the political system for political participation by citizens including the institutions, elections system, nation’s development, and historical events. Affective orientations make citizens participation in politics a value for their time while evaluative orientation requires justification for the participation in terms of the subjective efficacy, system efficacy, and political support for the system making the decision to participate or not participate in politics after the result of the evaluation. Marxist class theory argues that the shaping of political attitudes and behavior is attributed to capitalist’s institutions that result in the reproduction of the system resulting in the concealment of capitalism nature by the ruling class on the led/working class. These institutions include education institutions, religious centers, and mass media. Hegemony refers to the use of power by the ruling class to influence ordinary people and is the main concept in Marxist and class theory. Elite theory developed as a critique of Marxist class theory and has a similarity to class theory in arguing that few people dominate politics but differs with Marxist theory on the long run political establishment with elite theory starting that perpetuation of the political class is not possible in the long run. The reason is the emergence of new elite groups with superior political skills and popular appeal but this theory is anchored on the presence of few people dominating politics despite the constituents of the political elite changing with time. Rational choice theory states that political affiliation is in relation to parties the achievement of personal preferences resulting in importance for parties to appeal to media voter. The other theory on political attitudes and behavior are social capital theory and civic participation arguing for the development of attitudes and behavior from membership of voluntary associations. Civic participation is evident in the presence of civic societies that are not related to state, the commercial sector, and family. References Newton, Kenneth, and Jan W. Deth. Foundations of Comparative Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Print. Caramani, Daniele. Political culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Print. Read More