Political Culture and Political Science

Abstract

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.