Political Culture Theory and the Role of Professionals

Abstract

This research examines the political culture literature and follows its admonition to test culturalist ideas in representative ethnographic studies. It is based on public opinion surveys in 1973 and 1987, elite interviews in 1972-1973, and focus groups organized by the authors during 1987. There are three important findings. First, the political culture of professionals in the wake of social discontinuity was fragmented in the aggregate. Fragmentation was not as pronounced as anticipated by culturalist theory. The second finding concerns the internal structure of political culture in which political regimes become consolidated without a great legitimating revolution. The authors detected a strong positive affect for the central institutions underpinning Venezuela's post-1958 regime, highly positive evaluative orientations toward the institutions' governing capabilities, and a positive evaluation of overall regime output. Third, the authors found professional political culture in 1987 supportive of reconciliation democracy; but evaluative orientation toward regime outputs had become negative.