Political Socialization and National Development: Some Hypotheses and Data

Abstract

W X HAT was once a trickle of research on political learning has turned into a veritable flood as the study of political socialization has become an attractive intellectual investment in the profession. At the conceptual level the literature raises important questions about the relevance of the socialization process to the maintenance and change of political systems.1 Most empirical research, however, has focused on the United States. It is only comparatively recently that scholars have devoted their attention to the systematic study of socialization processes in other political cultures. The Civic Culture which examined citizen socialization from the perspective of several socialization agents is probably still the single most important comparative work in the literature.2 Nor has recent research shed much light on the nagging questions that students of national development have been asking about the link between socialization and levels of socioeconomic development. Building on the earlier work of Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, we will examine within a single model the relative, truncated influence of different socialization agencies across several nations. It postulates that cross-cultural difference in the relative influence of socialization agents is a function of differences in national socioeconomic development. We raise questions, offer hypotheses and present partial answers. We do not wish to lure anyone into a false dialogue over the truth of our partial tests. Rather we believe that this grouping of questions and hypotheses will ultimately prove more useful than the partial tests.