Transcript B. Dimensions of Political Culture

Core Issues in Comparative Politics
(PO233)
Module Director: Dr. Renske Doorenspleet
Associate Professor in Comparative Politics
director Centre for Studies in Democratization
Department of Politics and International Studies
University of Warwick, UK
www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/staff/doorenspleet/
www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/research/csd/
e-mail: [email protected]
Content Lecture week 9
A. Definitions of Political Culture
B. Dimensions of Political Culture
C. Current Issues in Political Culture Theory
D. Contents of seminar week 10
A. Definitions of Political Culture
Culture:
sociologists and anthropologists versus political scientists
‘Way of life’ versus ‘attitudes’
See also Ersson and Lane (2008: 423, box 17.1)
A. Definitions of Political Culture
Theorizing political culture goes back to classical political theory
‘Political culture in a society consists of the system of empirical beliefs,
expressive symbols and values which defines the situation in which
political action takes place’ (Verba 1969)
It stands for the basic attitudes of people towards politics,
policy and polity.
B. Dimensions of Political Culture
(1) Value orientations:
Scholars (selection):
Books and articles by Inglehart (since 1977)
Kaase and Newton (1995) Beliefs in Government
Klingemann and Fuchs (1995) Citizens and the State
Norris (1999) Critical Citizens
Dalton (2008) Citizen Politics
Methods: quantitative, large-N, statistical methods
Data: mainly World Values Studies (WVS)
B. Dimensions of Political Culture
(1) Value orientations:
- 1. Support for political institutions
- 2. Post-materialism
- 3. Interpersonal trust (see Ersson and Lane 2008: 426-427)
- 4. Secularization (see Ersson and Lane 2008: 428-429)
B. Dimensions of Political Culture
(1) Value orientations:
- 1. Support for political institutions
B. Dimensions of Political Culture
(1) Value orientations:
- 2. Post-materialism
B. Dimensions of Political Culture
(1) Value orientations:
-
danger of ecological fallacy (Robinson’s principle)
see all strengths and weaknesses of quantitative research (see week
2 and 3)
B. Dimensions of Political Culture
(2) Ethnicity:
Fields of research:
- Theories of nation/ nationalism (see week 7-8)
- Racism
- Multiculturalism
B. Dimensions of Political Culture
(3) Religion:
•
•
Micro and macro implications
Religion impacts politics through:
- Cleavages within societies
- Cleavages between cultures (religions as civilizations)
With the rise of fundamentalism, the relevance of religion to
politics has increased
B. Dimensions of Political Culture
(4) Tradition:
•
Cultures inherited from the past may have a great relevance to
the presence (collective consciousness)
•
Elazar’s typology (1966): see Lane and Ersson 2008: 433-436
C. Current Issues in Political
Culture Theory
Since the early 2000s attention has focused on three topics:
(1) Social capital:
* Aims at explaining democratic and institutional performance
* Social capital emerged from trust theory
* Difficult to define social capital empirically, since there are
different ways to measure trust:
Direct: Interpersonal trust values
Indirect: Occurrence of free associations
C. Current Issues in Political
Culture Theory
(2) Civilizations:
* Clash of civilizations (Huntington’s thesis)
* Integration of Muslim population in Europe
* Cultural compactness
C. Current Issues in Political
Culture Theory
(3) Gender equality and homosexuality:
* Cultural change fostered post-materialist value
* Attitudes towards gender equality and acceptance of
homosexuality are strongly correlated
* New political cleavage in post-modern societies
C. Current Issues in Political
Culture Theory
Conclusion:
Not only political institutions (part 1 in term 2!),
but also culture seems to have an influence on politics.