The Contemporary Political Culture

Abstract

Political culture has been defined in this volume as the ‘behavioural and attitudinal matrix within which the political system is located’. We shall be concerned in what follows, therefore, with changing patterns of political behaviour as much as with the political beliefs and values associated with them. This is not to suggest that the two will necessarily be in exact accordance. Certain forms of political behaviour, such as strikes and demonstrations, are effectively prohibited in the USSR and no conclusions can therefore be drawn from their relative infrequency; while others, such as the affirmation of support for each new Five Year Plan or change in party policy, are in practice so close to obligatory that little can be inferred from their generally unanimous character. Not all forms of political behaviour, however, are equally regimented; and in some, such as the complex of activities known as ‘socio-political activity’, a degree of discretion is permitted which allows at least provisional conclusions to be drawn from the widely varying rates of participation which do in fact emerge. The fact that a particular form of political behaviour may be effectively prohibited, moreover, does not in fact prevent all citizens from engaging in it, as the activities of a well-publicised group of ‘dissidents’ has in recent years made clear;