5.Political culture PDF

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Political and Civic cultures in Five countries ...

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Reflection on “An Approach to Political Culture, the Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations”. 1. Introduction In this paper I examine the chapter on approach to political culture, the civic culture: Political attitudes and Democracy in Five nations by Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, 2015 who conducted and analyzed survey data from US, UK, West Germany, Italy and Mexico. The purpose of the chapter as claimed by the authors is to study political culture of democracy and the social structures and process that contribute for sustenance of democracy by comparing the conditions in five different countries. The authors initiated their analysis by arguing that despite the common moves towards technological and scientific advancements and rationality among the world community the political direction of development is problematic as it is less clear. The only thing known about the feature political condition is that the need participation is rising and every ordinary man will be interested to engage in politics. Despite the fact that the feature politics will be dominated by participation the mood of participation is uncertain. While western societies already establish social structures akin to democracy, the nonwestern world is lagging behind having successful industrial technology and efficient bureaucracy. Almond and Verba (2015) argued that the emerging nations are characterized with two different models of modern participatory state; the democratic and the totalitarian. To develop democratic model of participatory state requires beyond formal frameworks of democracy i.e. universal suffrage, the elective legislature and vibrant political party. Totalitarian participatory pattern have all these formalities but not in functional sense. They further argued that the working principle of democratic polity and its civic culture encompasses political elite’s ways of decision making, their norms and attitudes, the norms and attitudes of ordinary citizens, their relations to the government and to their fellow citizens. The western World has realized the complex sets of democratic infrastructures for democratic polity such as political parties, media and communications, interest groups and the understanding of their inner workings, operating norms, social and psychological preconditions. However this image of democratic state is incomprehensible and heavily stressed ideology to political elites in the third World countries.

Thus what matters most for democracy to be learned in non-western world must be learning bout feelings and attitudes. The political culture suitable to democracy is civic culture. The civic Culture; the civic culture is not a modern culture, but that combines modernity with tradition. A democratic form of participatory form of political system requires a political culture consistent with it. However, the transfer of political cultures as practiced in the western societies to other parts of the world is problematic. Democracy and democratic politics needs a more educated people with higher per capita and wealth that enjoy greater opportunities of modern civilizations to which the emerging nations in non-Western parts of the world lag behind. Another important point raised in the chapter is that democracy should be approached from the culture and psychological set ups of both the leaders and society. Accordingly democratic character qualities comprises; an open ego or a warm and inclusive attitude towards other human beings , ability of sharing values with others, cosmopolitan orientations , self-confident in human environment and relative freedom from anxiety. These psychological and cultural features actually encounter with swift resistance in societies that are not democratic in structure. 2. Definitions and types of political culture; the term political culture refers to individuals or groups orientations and attitudes towards the political system and its various parts. It also includes people’s self-positioning and roles in relation to the system. In a more comprehensive way the society’s political culture refers to the political system as understood in the thought, and evaluated its population. The term orientation in this regard is stands for internalized aspects of socio-political objects and relationships. It includes knowledge and belief about the political system, its roles and the executives of these roles, inputs and outputs of the system, feelings about the political system, its roles, personnel’s and performances, and the judgments and evaluations about political system. Objects of political Orientation refers to a set of general political system s including feelings (patriotism, alienation), evaluation of a nation as large or strong and the ideological affiliation of the polity as democratic, socialistic, constitutional and so on. Almond and Verba (2015) also pointed out that individual’s political orientation towards the polity is determined by factors such as; the quality and extent of his knowledge about his country’s history, political system, the size and locations, constitutional principles, the level of

individuals knowledge about the various structures and roles of political elites, the policy proposals that involve the upward flow of the policy making, the level of his or her knowledge about the structure and downward procedures of policy enforcement and decisions involved in the process, and the way he or she perceives of himself and role as a member of his political community as well as individuals knowledge about his rights, powers and duties and strategies of access to influence. The political culture of a nation characterizes by frequency of different cognitive, evaluative and affective orientations towards the political system, the role of self as a political actor and the inputs and outputs aspects of the system. Based on this idea Almond and Verba (2015) identified three broad categories of political culture; parochial, subjective and participatory political cultures. Parochial Political culture; refers to a condition where the people’s cognitive, affective and evaluative orientations towards specialized political objects and process approaches to nonexistence. The patrimonial political cultures of African tribal society and self-containing local communities fall in this category. While there are no specialized political roles in parochial political culture, leadership encompasses political-economic-religious roles. The political roles are not separated from religious and socioeconomic roles. Generally a parochial political culture is characterized by low expectations and awareness about political system. The subject political culture; characterized by high frequency of orientations towards a distinct parts of political system and the output aspects of the system in general. However, orientations towards specific input objects and toward self as an active political actor approach to zero. The subject or citizens are aware of specialized government authority, identify itself in line to the polity and the system, perhaps pride in it and at the same time evaluate it’s as a legitimate one or not. The relationship between the government and the governed is passive. In subject political cultures individuals are aware of the political system, actors and inputs and out puts of the system but do not participate in politics. The participant political cultures; refers to a political system and culture where individuals are active and involved in the politics and decision making process at various levels in various forms. The members of the polity are explicitly oriented to the system as the whole and the political and administrative structures and process as well as to input and output aspects of

political system. Having this categorical understanding of political culture, Almond and Verba (2015) asserted that the three types of political culture are not mutually exclusive as it most common to have a mixture of three political orientations among various sections of the society in a certain polity. This means that the participant culture does not displace subject and parochial pattern of the orientations as citizens of participant polity not only actively take part in politics, but are also abide by or subject to law and authority and a member of their social groups. In a more sound and general expression Almond and Verba, (2015) said that most political cultures are heterogeneous even well-developed participant political cultures comprises surviving elements of subjects and parochial cultures. More importantly they argued that a successful transition to democratic cultures cannot be done only through participatory orientations but also through proper combination of the three in a way that democratic citizens are active in politics, respect norms of civic obligation and ready to build a sense of civic competence and maintain health social relations and memberships with substantial social groups. 3. The civic Culture: A mixed political culture; the political culture that goes with democracy is civic culture, a political culture that combines participatory, subjective and parochial culture. In this case individual citizens are active participants in the political process, while maintaining their subject and parochial orientations. Maintaining subjective and parochial political orientations is significant to build civic culture alongside the participant political orientations. The traditional parochial and subjective political cultures contribute to regulate individual’s interest to politics and abide by law respectively while actively participating in politics thus to create balanced political culture. Almond and Verba, (2015) argued that political culture links the micro and macro politics as it enable us to systematically discover the relationship between individuals attitudes and motivations and the political system character and performance of political systems they built. Finally Based on comparative analysis of the survey from five countries the authors conclude that the orientation of civic culture is widespread in USA and UK than in Germany, Italy and Mexico. Accordingly, USA and Britain characterize relatively effective experiments in democratic government to look at the patterns of attitudes vis-a-vis stable democratic system.

4. Critical reflections The whole message of this chapter is how individual political orientation relates political structure. While the chapter provides a good insights on political culture and the important of all level of political culture developments at the end they tend to ethnocentric when they argued that USA and UK model is the best model for stable democracy. My expectation was that if they can provide a way to escape from this single universalization of democracies based on the western experiences and to look for alternative explanations that recognize cultural relativism in a much diversified global community. The authors entirely focus on local, personal attitudes and domestic factors and actors of politics. However the increasing interconnectedness of the world, widespread internet services and foreign actors has also becoming significant factors in the political affairs of the country. In this regard the authors only emphasis on individual level of analysis and psychological factor, paying less attentions to the system and state level actors. In that way they tend to be reductionist who diminish politics to social and psychological matters and underestimate global sphere’s influence in local political orientations. While individual’s psychological orientation might be one determinant of politics, we should not stick on it as a comprehensive factor to understand political culture and political system in general.

References Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, “Chapter 1: An Aproach to Political Culture”, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963, pp. 3-41....