Political Culture and Political Change in Eastern Germany: Theoretical Alternatives

THE CONCEPT OF POLITICAL CULTURE was ingrained in classical works of political philosophy. However, as an explicit concept to orient understandings of politics, political culture came to the fore in the 1960s. Several writers contributed to the development of this explanatory concept.1 Of these, this essay will highlight ideas from Almond and Verba’s five nation study, The Civic Culture, and Daniel Elazar’s American Federalism: A View from the States. Political culture is a collective mindset or patterns of thought that people have toward political objects: the political community, a people’s identity as a national group, leadership and authority, political activity, feelings of personal obligation and efficacy, and attitudes toward fellow citizens as political actors. While Almond, Verba, Elazar and the others who enunciated the concept of political culture as a tool for political analysis provided good definitions, they left much work to be done by others. The works by Elazar and Almond and Verba must be considered seminal, however they provided only the road map, they did not take the journey. Subsequent works dealing with the political culture concept have not definitively established its value as an explanatory tool for public policy analysis in a comparative framework. They have essentially treated culture as a dependent variable as they have sought to explain forces yielding one cultural style or another in a specific jurisdiction. This article has taken another direction. By focusing upon one issue area—gambling—the author has used the concept in a cross national analysis as an independent variable which is offered to provide insight regarding policy outcomes. The study suggests that the scholars did identify a useful component for policy analysis. While focusing upon cultural concepts as a unifying theme for understanding outcomes, this work is nonetheless mostly descriptive and qualitative in format. As such its data are not subject to the rigorous tests of significance which must be quantitatively oriented. Moreover, this study does not present an integrated set of hypotheses for testing. Hopefully, by showing the viability of the concept of political culture as an independent variable, such hypotheses may be formulated in subsequent studies and subject to more rigorous tests of validity. The author has treated the concept of political culture in other studies with colleagues Asher Friedberg and Carl Lutrin, as well as in an entry in a gambling encyclopedia, and the

In “A Culturalist Theory of Political Change” in the September 1988 issue of thisReview,Harry Eckstein argued that “a cogent, potentially powerful theory of political change can be derived from culturalist premises.” But Herbert Werlin finds Eckstein's effort to accommodate culture theory to political change unsatisfactory. Werlin argues that politics in the sense of political engineering, rather than cultural changes, mainly accounts for transformations in political life. Eckstein responds, arguing that the political methods for inducing change are themselves culturally conditioned.

762 SEER, 86, 4, OCTOBER 2008 and Tymoshenko started would not triumph without widespread popular support. But it was also a verymodern revolution.Wilson perceptively highlights the unprecedented use of cell phone messaging, Internet, satellite television and rap music as political tools. His analysis is also strong on more traditional points, such as the cultural divide between Ukrainian-speaking western Ukraine and theRussian-speaking east, an issue on which the official candi date Viktor Yanukovych played. This ploy largely worked, as it did in all previous elections, but this time central Ukraine supported Yushchenko on civic issues,which made all the difference. Finally, the author provides a balanced treatment of the controversial issue of the financial support that Russia and the West gave to the two opposing sides inUkraine (pp. 118 and 183-84). In short, Western money went toNGOs rather than directly toYush chenko. The opposition thus spentmuch less than the authorities, and won because of itspopular support. Some of Wilson's forecasts for the future did not come true:Yanukovych's descent into a political afterlife, the collapse of his Party ofRegions, and the Orange Coalition's majority after theparliamentary elections of 2006 (pp. 155 and 171-71). But the author's warnings about Tymoshenko's perilous econom ic populism, the danger of her splitwith Yushchenko, and the president's own indecisiveness proved prophetic. Wilson's sympathies are clearly with theOrange side, yet readers of all political orientations will enjoy his superb analysis ofUkrainian politics. Department ofGermanicandRussian Studies Serhy Yekelchyk UniversityofVictoria Whitefield, Stephen (ed.). Political Culture and Post-Communism. St Antony's Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke and New York, 2005. xvi + 234 pp. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. ?52.00. This volume celebrates the outstanding contributions of Archie Brown to the fields of Russian studies and political sciences. It is a result of a successful conference held tomark his retirement entitled 'Political Leadership, Political Institutions, and Political Culture'. The book's major claim is that our under standing of the dynamics of Communist systems has been substantially improved by taking political culture into account, as illustrated by the pupils and colleagues influenced by Professor Brown's work. Although the term 'political culture' was used as early as the eighteenth century, it came intowide usage in political science about half a century ago (Gabriel Almond, 'Comparative Political Systems', Journal of Politics, 18, 1956, 3, pp. 391-409). Even then, the tendency was to consider the 'culture' explana tion as a last resort, after other explanations (institutionalistor rational choice) were exhausted. Brown points out how undersold the political culture concept has been in thepast. Inmany ways it isBrown's work that has brought it into the centre of post-Communist studies. REVIEWS 763 Although political culture should not be expected to account forall political beliefs and actions ? as Stephen Whitefield emphasizes in chapter one? it is claimed that in a wide range of cases itcontributes something significant to our understanding. Most authors writing in the volume accept that political culture refers to the subjective understanding of politics and is concerned with people's values, attitudes and theirperception of history.Whitefield, as editor, distinguishes two contrasting approaches to political culture. First, there are those whose approach to political culture as a particular form of individual-level social-psychological attribute that can be measured and tested for its relationship to overt political behaviour (Whitefield and Jeffrey Hahn). According toHahn, political culture differs from 'public opinion' because it refers to 'deeper, sometimes even subconscious, values that are enduring' and which result from the process of political socialization. By contrast, the second approach (Richard Sakwa, Charles King and Mary McAuley) tends to view political culture as a property of social collectives, embedded in historically-conditioned social practices, thus generating some explanatory power, whether one uses the concept of political culture as such or not. Out of the formulae offered in the volume Brown himself favours the one whereby 'political cultures are socially constructed normative systems that are the product of both social [...] and psychological [...] influences but not reducible to either' (Richard W. Wilson, 'TheMany Voices of Political Cul ture:Asessing Different Approaches', World Politics, 52, 2000, 2, pp. 246-73: 264). Some contributors are critical...

It is more than twenty years since the publication of Archie Brown and Jack Gray’s Political Culture and Political Change in Communist States (Brown and Gray, 1977) and Archie Brown’s Political Culture and Communist Studies (Brown, 1984a). While Communist power has in the interim largely receded into history, the premise of this book is that the need to consider the value of the concept of political culture in the face of post-Communist realities has not.

The transition of power from Lenin to Stalin directly changed the destiny of the Soviet Union, amounting to much more than just a simple change in leadership. Although to a significant degree, Stalin maintained many aspects of Lenin's leadership, there were still significant political and cultural changes which took place in Russia during the shift of power and ensuing political competitions. Three key political changes stemmed from this transition: 1.) Lenin's New Economic Policy was replaced by a series of policy changes that came to be called "The Great Turn"; 2.) There were significant changes in the formation of the Russian Communist Party, leading to conflicts between old guard Bolsheviks and new members; and 3.) There were significant changes in other policies used to control the country, including the use of police, gulags, and propaganda. In concert with these political changes, there were also two significant changes in the broader Soviet culture: 1.) The earlier revolutionary emphasis on Marxist-Leninism was systematically supplanted by an emphasis on total obedience to Stalinism and Stalin's dictatorship in the "Great Purge" of the 1930s; and 2.) The relative respect for the sovereignty of neighboring communistic countries under Lenin was supplanted by a much more imperialistic and expansionary policy of "state communism" under Stalin. This essay will explore the political and cultural changes as mentioned that stemmed from the transition in power from Vladimir Lenin to Joseph Stalin from 1922-1924, starting from the three political changes before proceeding into the analysis of broader social changes.

The narrative of good governance has become particularly relevant in understanding political and cultural change in Malaysia and Singapore. This study shows that the narrative of good governance is a double-edged sword -- that is, it can be used in rather contradictory ways. In the case of Malaysia, good governance assumes the role of a reformist discourse adopted by opposition forces to pressure the ruling regime into introducing liberal democratic reforms. In the case of Singapore, good governance plays the role of a dominant discourse employed by the ruling elite as a defence against liberal democratic reforms. Not only does this seem to suggest that the relationship between democracy and good governance is a complex one, it also puts some of the recent political and cultural developments in both these cases in a new context. Introduction Prior to the Asian financial crisis, scholars were intrigued with the question of whether Southeast Asian societies that had developed the economic requisites for liberal democratic reforms would actually follow through with these political reforms. [1] With the political changes that have swept through Southeast Asia in the wake of the Asian financial crisis, it seems less justifiable now for scholars to label this region as being recalcitrant to liberal democratic reforms. Nevertheless, two cases in this region continue to stand out as puzzles of political development -- Malaysia and Singapore. In the case of the former, while there have been some signs in the past two years of a democratic awakening, it is still too premature to conclude based on these developments that these forces for political change will lead to any sustained liberal democratic reforms. In the case of the latter, the prospects of change towards a more liberal democratic system seem even less so. Malaysia As is well known by now, the Asian financial crisis precipitated a series of fundamental changes to the Malaysian political landscape. This article will focus less on the actual sequence of events and more on the implications of some of the main political developments in this period. [2] The economic excesses and abuses that had accompanied Malaysia's rapid growth in the early 1990s have been well documented by scholars. [3] It was not until the financial crisis of 1997, however, that some of the real costs to Malaysian society of the illicit nexus between political patronage and wealth creation were realized. During the period of accelerated growth in the early 1990s, the middle class was by and large willing to go along with the trade-off between civil and political freedoms and economic goods since the overall economic pie was clearly expanding even though a small minority was benefiting disproportionately. Scholars who were studying this phenomenon at the time had concluded that as long as the middle clas s was still benefiting from the economic policies of the government, they would largely be compliant with the political structure. [4] Yet, when the opposition forces, with the help of the Internet, brought into the full glare of public scrutiny some of the exploitative practices of corruption, collusion, and nepotism at the highest levels of the political and economic elite, the public opposition to the ruling coalition began to grow. [5] Indeed, when the economy showed signs of a slowdown (and even a collapse), the excesses of the government were no longer tolerated as willingly. To make matters worse, in their desperate attempts to contain the economic fallout from the financial crisis, the ruling elite had taken some bold and reckless steps, which included moves perceived by many to be aimed at rescuing some of their closest economic beneficiaries. [6] We will perhaps not know for some time to come all the reasons behind the sudden fall from grace of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's deputy, Anwar Ibrahim. However, it does seem clear that overt attempts by some in the ruling elite to shelter failing beneficiaries from the full thrust of market forces in the wake of the financial crisis largely contributed to the friction between the two leaders, with Anwar commonly believed to have been less willing to acquiesce to the government's financial bail-outs of these cronies. …

Dangerous Politics: Risk, Vulnerability, and Penal Policy (Clarendon Studies in Criminology) H. Annison. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2015) 288pp. £65.00hb ISBN 9780198728603

In every research project there are ‘defining moments’ when something is said or done that gives direction or focus to the whole investigation. Looking at that advertisement and listening to the pastor was one of them. We were both strangers to this town, but we knew enough of its reputation to believe that we would need to look closely at the role of the churches in the structuring of social relations and the exercise of power. We wanted to know about these matters because, in our wider project, we were attempting to explain the highly varied responses of different communities to some broadly similar environmental issues that they confronted. What we had learned so far, told us that, in this city of Abbotsford, environmental problems had been the focus of much public commentary but that efforts to mobilise citizens around these issues encountered not only apathy and indifference, but active resistance. Our intuition was that understanding the role of religion in the community would be vital for our analysis of almost any aspect of its collective life. That lunchtime interview turned the hunch into a conviction, for it made plain the intimate connection between religion, economics and politics. It opened up questions about networks and structures, but it hinted too at norms, perspectives and practices that we should try to grasp. Most of all, it reinforced our determination to find ways in which we could examine the interface of ‘culture’ and ‘politics’, incorporate some of the interests in ‘political culture’ being explored by a number of our colleagues, but somehow surmount the limitations of the traditional uses of that concept. In essence, we needed to find out whether a distinctive form of conservative, Christian culture really served to structure political and all other aspects of social life in the town, as many insisted it did and, if so, to show how that worked. When it appeared a few months later, a paper by Margaret Somers (1995) pointed to a ‘rejuvenated’ concept of political culture that captured neatly much that we were struggling to articulate: rather than a collection of internalised expressions of subjective values or externalised expressions of social interests, a political culture is now defined as a configuration of representations and practices that exists as a contentious structural social phenomenon in its own right. … By existing as something apart from either the economy or the state, a political culture, when acted upon, will shape the outcome, meaning, and the very course of political action and social processes. (Somers, 1995: 134) KeywordsEnvironmental ConcernCommunity ActivistSocial MovementEnvironmental ActivismPolitical CultureThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

У представленій статті автор аналізує взаємозалежність політичної культури суспільства із стратегічними пріоритетами держави. Аналіз відбувається на основі Української держави. У політичній науці існує безліч концепцій політичної культури. Однак класичною концепцією політичної культури є концепція розроблена американськими науковцями Г. Алмондом та С. Вербою. Згідно з якою політична культура представляє собою систему емпіричних вірувань, експресивних символів, цінностей, які в сукупності і визначають ситуацію, в рамках якої існує політична діяльність [1]. Також у даній статті наводиться авторське бачення феномена політичної культури. Процес модернізації політичної системи спричинив зміну основних стратегічних пріоритетів розвит­ку України. Ці зміни привели до зміни ціннісних установок та типу політичної культури українського суспільства. Політична культура виявилася тим фактором, який здатний безпосередньо сприяти або перешкоджати модернізації, демократизації політичного розвитку. У статті виділена низка факторів внаслідок яких формуються стратегічні пріоритети країни. На думку автора, соціально­економічний фактор є найважливішим, що формує політичну культуру і визначає пріоритети розвитку. Оскільки добробут є найточнішим показником, який свідчить про те, чи подобаються народу кроки влади та обрані напрями майбутнього розвитку. Пропонується розробляти та поширювати ідеологію стратегічного розвитку, що забезпечить ефективне функціонування політичної культури суспільства.

If a large variety of ways of operationalizing the concept of political culture is found within the behaviouralist idiom, the same is all the more true within interpretivism. While the stringent scientific standards of behaviouralism are not always adhered to in political culture research, at least standards exist. Interpretivism begins, as we saw in the Introduction, by denying the need for such standards. Accordingly, a wide range of uses of political culture could be marshalled as examples of interpretivism, from historiography as well as political science. But rather than beginning with a broad survey, we will follow a procedure similar to that adopted in earlier chapters, of looking in detail at a representative example. In this case, however, we need to go further; we will examine a use of political culture that to some extent has to be inferred and constructed from a number of sources. The initial and main source for this use is Robert C. Tucker’s political cultural interpretation of Stalinism. However, the use we will develop and assess goes beyond Tucker’s in some ways and limits it in others. Our purpose in so doing is twofold: to present interpretive political culture research in its most persuasive light, and to distinguish it clearly from the hybrid uses with which, the Introduction argued, it is often intertwined, as it is in Tucker’s work. Although vulnerable to criticism, the interpretive use that we will develop is, therefore, far from being a straw man.

Perceptions of State Political Culture by State Education Policy Elites and Building a Taxonomy of State Education Policies describe research designed to develop methods of classifying states based on their approach to policy making. A classification of states based on policy makers' perceptions of the state's political culture, and a taxonomy of state education policies should be helpful to people who want to analyze the educational policies of the states and who need some tools and concepts to help them organize the states into groups. For those of us who are in the states trying to help establish workable policies, however, such systems are of marginal use. We need information about other states and about systems for organizing the states into groups so that we can identify those which are most similar and dissimilar to ours in educational policy making styles and current approaches to issues. The concepts of political culture and state policy mechanisms do not meet these needs. For example, I could use a conceptual framework that will help me respond when somebody quotes to me a law from Texas and wants to know if it would work in Arizona. I need a way to determine how Texas differs from Arizona with respect to the issues raised by the proposed law. I might need to know, for example, whether Texas tends to support the concept of control as much as Arizona does, and to what extent Texas laws and regulations typically allow local determination in the specific policy areas of concern. The concepts of political culture and state policy mechanisms are just too general to be of assistance in situa-

Acknowledgements - Introduction - Political Culture and Democracy - Political Culture and Modernity - Political Culture and Communism - Political Culture and Comparative Explanation - Political Culture and Stalinism - Political Culture and Interpretation - Political Culture and National Identity - New Trends in Political Culture Research - Conclusion - Bibliography - Index

InThe Civic Culture, perhaps the best known study of political culture, Almond and Verba say that ‘the relationship between political culture and political structure [is] one of the most significant researchable aspects of the problem of political stability and change’. I want to look at the way this relationship has been treated in one particular area, an area very relevant to questions of political stability and change in our own society; that is, in studies of political participation and apathy, especially research into the sense of political efficacy or competence. This is the area with whichThe Civic Cultureitself is largely concerned, and it is now well established that individuals low in a sense of political efficacy tend to be apathetic about politics; indeed, Almond and Verba consider the sense of efficacy or competence to be a ‘key political attitude’.

The connection between the Late Bronze Age (LBA) Aegean costumes and social, cultural and political changes is a rather unexplored topic. Probably the only exception are kilts, the connection of which to such changes on Crete during the 15th century BCE remains a commonly discussed topic in studies focusing on the LBA Aegean iconography and other data sets. However, many questions remain open and the topic is far from exhausted. In this paper I build on the work of various scholars who have studied LBA Aegean kilts in the context of social, political and cultural changes. I diachronically study the changes in the representations of kilts since the beginning of the LBA in the Aegean until the end of the Palatial period on the Greek Mainland (ca. 1700/1600–1200 BCE). Moreover, I examine the spatial distribution of specific kilt types in different periods. In cases of several different kilt types appearing in contemporary contexts in the same region, I explore whether similar costumes might have had different social connotations within the same communities. Moreover, I examine the influence of elite power structures and socio-political changes on the perception of kilts. However, I do not observe kilts as passive reflections of specific social, cultural and political contexts, but rather as material forms actively used in the creation of social realities.

Political culture may be defined as the attitudinal and behavioural matrix within which the political system is located.1 The political culture, that is to say, both expresses and influences the patterns of political belief and behaviour within a given political system: it informs the actions of political actors; comprehends political symbols, foci of identification and fundamental beliefs and values; and generally both reflects and influences popular orientations towards the institutions and practices of government. It is a broader concept than ‘operational code’ or ‘political style’, terms which apply more properly to the actions or assumptions of a particular sub-group of a total population (and particularly to its political leadership); it is a narrower concept, at the same time, than more familiar notions such as ‘national character’ or ‘public opinion’, which have a range of reference much wider than the political system as such. In recent years the concept of political culture has been used with increasing frequency in the comparative analysis of political systems. In this first chapter we shall examine the use of the concept which has been made in the study of one such political system, that of the USSR, and then go on to consider a number of the difficulties with which the employment of the concept has more generally been associated.