Political Science For Dummies. Marcus A. Stadelmann
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Название: Political Science For Dummies
Автор: Marcus A. Stadelmann
Издательство: John Wiley & Sons Limited
Жанр: Зарубежная публицистика
isbn: 9781119674771
isbn:
Political cultures aren’t static and can change over time. The easiest way for a political culture to change is to face a major crisis. Economic crises have changed cultural attitudes toward governments. For example, the Great Depression beginning in 1929 led to a support of government intervention in the economy in the form of a welfare state. At the same time, the economic crisis of 2007/2008 resulted in many Americans losing trust in their government and becoming more cynical in nature.
In other societies, the same can happen. In Japan, for example, decades of no or low economic growth have changed a culture that was very supportive and proud of its form of government. The average Japanese today is more cynical and less likely to be proud of government. Political scandals and wars can have similar effects. Watergate, for example, made American culture more negative toward government, and the invasion of Iraq in 2003 had a similar effect.
Sustaining Democracy: The Civic Culture
The seminal work on political culture was published in 1963 by Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba. Titled The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (SAGE Publications, Inc.), the work was in response to the collapse of democracy in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s and in Africa in the 1950s. In both instances, democracies were established in former authoritarian countries (colonies in Africa) but survived for only a few years. (See Chapter 16 for more information on failures of democracy.)
Almond and Verba believed that political cultures could be used to explain the failure of democracy. For them, democracy needed a certain, specific culture, which they titled the civic culture, to survive in the long run. So they set out to discover the characteristics of a civic culture. They believed that if they discovered a political culture that could sustain democracy, they could change other cultures to create this civic culture and then make sure democracy survived. In their research, they discovered the following five components of a civic culture, necessary to sustain a democracy:
A large middle class: A large middle class has to exist in a democracy, because it’s the class most likely to possess democratic values. If the middle class is small and other nondemocratic classes such as an aristocracy or a radicalized working class dominate society, there’s a good chance that an authoritarian regime can come to power.
A secular society: A society has to be secular with no state religion in place. Religion has to be kept out of government, because many religions hold nondemocratic values. If religion dominates society like in Iran today, democracy isn’t possible.
Pluralism: A democratic society has to allow for the creation of political parties and interest groups to represent the will of the people. In other words, people have to be able to organize and express their wishes to government.
A culture of consensus: A society has to agree on the major political issues shaping it. These include form of government and economic structure. Almost all Americans agree that democracy is the best form of government and that a form of capitalism is the best economic structure for a society. In Russia, on the other hand, such a consensus doesn’t exist. About one-third of all Russians believe in democracy and capitalism, while the other two-thirds support either strong man rule or a return to communism. This makes it tough for democracy to set foot in Russia.
Permission of moderate change: Government and its people have to be willing to change over time. With societies and the world constantly changing, there has to be a willingness to accept change and adapt to it. Societies that don’t change, for either political or religious reasons, will fall behind globally and become pariah nations. In addition, they’ll face constant battles at home between citizens ready for change and those who want to stick with the status quo. Iran and Afghanistan are two good examples of such societies.
Being behavioral in nature
The civic culture is a classical behavioral study (see Chapter 2). Almond and Verba researched human behavior through empirical testing. For this reason, they set out and interviewed 5,000 people — 1,000 in each one of the five countries they had selected for their research. The five countries were two successful democracies, the U.S. and Great Britain; two classical failures of democracy, West Germany and Italy; and one lesser developed country, Mexico. The attempt was to find a culture in these five countries that could sustain democracy in the long run. If that was possible, a blueprint for democracy could be created to bring this civic culture to other countries. This in turn would allow for democracy not only to be spread globally but to actually maintain it over time.
Asking questions
In their study, Almond and Verba decided to personally interview 5,000 people in five countries. The most relevant questions concerning political culture were centered on these topics:
Cognition: They asked people whether they were familiar with their national government, knew about officeholders, and most important, knew how they could participate in the political process. The results were that knowledge of government and participation were high in Great Britain, West Germany, and the U.S. At the same time, cognition was high in northern Italy and low in southern Italy. In Mexico, cognition was low at the national level; however, at the local level, Mexicans were keenly aware of their political structures.
Feelings toward the system: Feelings of pride and support of the current form of government were very high in Great Britain and the U.S. In West Germany, people weren’t very proud of the structure of the system but supported it because it was efficient and delivered the goods. In Mexico, people were proud and supported their local system, but not their national political structure.
Partisanship: In both the U.S. and Great Britain, partisanship was low. Political science usually measures partisanship in a society by asking the following question: “Would you allow your child to marry someone with a different partisan identification?” Although this wasn’t a problem in Great Britain and the U.S., parents not having much of a problem being a Democrat and their child marrying a Republican, it matters in the other three countries. In both West Germany and Italy, people expressed great partisanship by refusing to consider such a marriage. In Mexico, the question wasn’t relevant because Mexico at this time was a one-party state ruled by the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party).
Civic obligation: The questions of civic obligation involved feeling an obligation to participate in politics by voting or participating in other ways. In both the U.S. and Great Britain, civic obligation was high, while in West Germany, people expressed an obligation to vote, but that was about it. In Italy and Mexico, feelings of civic obligation were low.
Civic competence: Civic competence refers to the public believing СКАЧАТЬ