Concept Of Political Culture Research Articles

Herder on esthetic imagination as a source of post-national democratic solidarity: A contribution to Habermas’ constitutional patriotism

Constitutional patriotism has been criticized for providing too thin an identity as the ground for common citizenship. Answering this criticism, Habermas recently stressed the role of affective attachments in creating constitutional patriotic bonds. Still, an account of the type of imagination that could foster such post-national affective attachments is lacking. Drawing on Herder's conception of political culture, I argue that constitutional patriotism requires a modern form of mythology. This would include narratives that shape people's imaginative capacity to see their own culture as a vulnerable and fallible part of a plural mankind and as a free and equal contributor to the global advancement toward humanity. In contrast to ideological mythology, an enlightened use of myth would engage the interactive and communicative potential of poetic images in ways that shape a common feeling of humanity. In short, Habermas’ constitutional patriotism requires supplementing the power of law to create bonds between people. This can be done through the cultivation of imaginative engagements with foreign others. Such imaginative engagements would shape good dispositions that are conducive to tolerance, peace and justice. This addition also allows Habermas’ argument for constitutional patriotism to better answer the communitarian accusation of supranationalism.

Jovens e sujeitos da História

This paper discusses Brazilian, Argentinean and Uruguayan young people’s conceptions on historical individuals, based on their learning inside and outside school. The data were obtained from the “Brazilian and Argentinean young people before History” international research based on questionnaires to 15 year old students and their teachers, using mainly the Likert’s scale. Theoretically, the research is sustained in the historical consciousness and historical culture concepts, as formulated by the German History Didactics, and also in the political culture concept. The results, in a few words, points that, inside the investigated universe, the so called “important people”, typical of traditional History teaching at schools, are recognized overall when we refer to the nations’ “founding fathers”, but not to individuals who represented alternative possibilities at the national history development. The same happens with feminine personages. Science, technology and inventions are taken as a most significant factor of change than the “important people” and these, by their turn, are overcame by the recognized importance of collective movements.

Political cultures and transnational social fields: Chileans, Colombians and Canadian activists in Toronto

AbstractWe offer an institutional analysis of Chilean and Colombian transnational politics in Toronto to account for cross‐group variation in transnational political practices and the formation of different types of transnational social fields of political action. The article is based on interviews conducted with Chilean and Colombian community activists and Canadian refugee rights and social justice activists. We use the concept of political culture to account for differences in Chilean and Colombian transnational politics and to explain the different kinds of relationships the two groups have developed with non‐migrants. We introduce the concept of activist dialogues, understood as patterns of strategic political interaction between groups, to characterize how migrants and non‐migrants read and navigate their interlocutors' ways of doing politics. We argue that variation in the character of activist dialogues results in different types of transnational social fields of political action. Chilean–Canadian activist dialogues reflect a convergence of political cultures and strategies of action; Colombian–Canadian activist dialogues are marked by a relationship in which there is a divergence of strategies of action. Convergent dialogues produce thicker and more stable transnational social fields. Divergent dialogues are associated with a series of ad hoc initiatives, the absence of stable and strongly institutionalized partnerships, and a thinner transnational social field of political action.

Political culture, schooling and subaltern groups in the Brazilian Empire (1822–1850)

This paper articulates the concepts of political culture, schooling and slavery in order to comprehend the process of instituting modern schools in Brazil, during the period immediately after Independence in 1822. With a view to this, it takes as its starting point the strategies and proposals of different groups disputing the direction of the nation‐building movement, and the importance they attached to instruction amidst this process. Analysis focuses on the province of Minas Gerais, a region in which issues related to education received particular attention. A fundamental characteristic of this region was the hegemonic presence of blacks in its demographic structure, a large proportion of whom were slaves. The paper thus seeks to relate the profile of the population to the educational proposals which circulated in debates on the process of organising and structuring the province. Various documentary sources were used in the analysis, especially projects proposed by politicians, minutes and reports of the Provincial Presidents, newspapers and provincial censuses.

Jóvenes y Sujetos de la Historia

This paper discusses Brazilian, Argentine and Uruguayan young people's conceptions on historical individuals, based on their learning inside and outside school. The data were obtained from the Youth and international research based on questionnaires to 15 year old students and their teachers, using mainly the Likert scale. Theoretically, the research is sustained in the historical consciousness and historical culture concepts, as formulated by the German History Didactics, and also in the political culture concept. The results, in a few words, points that, inside the investigated universe, the so called important people, typical of traditional History teaching at schools, are recognized overall when we refer to the nations' founding fathers , but not to individuals who represented alternative possibilities at the national history development. The same happens with feminine personages. Science, technology and inventions are taken as a most significant factor of change than the important people and these, by their turn, are overcame by the recognized importance of collective movements

The Cultural Turn in the US-Israeli Relationship

AbstractThe 'special relationship' between the United States and Israel has endured for more than four decades and is one of the more anomalous global political alliances. Conventional explanations have consistently failed to elucidate the underlying nuances of a relationship that has endured the transition from the Cold War to the unipolar world to the present day 'war on terror' and is often costly to the USA in economic and geostrategic terms. This article argues that the nebulous but still valuable concept of political culture provides a crucial ingredient to any understanding of the special relationship. In perceiving their society to be a beacon of what they like to call 'freedom' and 'democracy,' in a world in which these values are largely absent, Americans have been encouraged to believe that they share a political kinship with societies similarly imbued and that they have an obligation to assist where such values are under threat. This process of identification is reinforced by the activities of the pro-Israel lobby and the beliefs of America's increasing number of Christian Evangelicals who support Israel for largely religious reasons. It is the many dimensions of this cultural identification that sets Israel apart from other nations and forms the bedrock of the US-Israeli special relationship.

Political Culture and Post-Communism by Stephen Whitefield (review)

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...

El estudio de la cultura política: elementos para un marco teórico

The present investigation advance exposes decisive elements for an integral interpretation around the political culture. The analysis is centered starting from the theory exposed by Almond and Verba, the Civic Culture, which establish that the historical phenomenon, the ideological foundations and the religious facts are essential factors in the conformation of the political culture. Also, it exposes the contributions from the interpretive sociological investigation, which generated so much critical in this respect as theoretical developments to the concept of political culture.

Changes in the Political Culture of Young East and West Germans Between 1992 and 2003. Results of the DJI Youth Survey1

This article focuses on the question whether young people's attitudes to politics in both parts of Germany have become more similar or are still different in relevant aspects. The concept of political culture is used as the theoretical framework. Reference is made to gender, age and level of education. Data from the three waves (1992, 1997 and 2003) of the ‘DJI Youth Survey’ carried out by the German Youth Institute (DJI) are analysed. Each wave was based on personal interviews with approximately 7000 16- to 29-year olds. The text first describes the political involvement of young people, secondly the acceptance of democracy and, thirdly, satisfaction with the reality of democracy and trust in political or state institutions, as well as in politicians. The results show clear differences in some aspects of the political culture of young people in the Western and Eastern ‘Länder’ of Germany, particularly less satisfaction with the reality of democracy in the East. In other aspects the political attitudes have become more similar, especially trust in institutions. However, the political involvement of young people is largely the same in the East and West, i.e. in this respect no change has occurred.

Political Culture, Ethical Cosmopolitanism, and Cosmopolitan Democracy

Sociological theories of cosmopolitanism address its development at different geographical scales, raising questions of the global demos and the global political community. This article considers international human rights as a resource for building global solidarity, and argues that the way in which international human rights are made and enforced primarily by national states must be taken seriously if they are to be considered as such. “Ethical cosmopolitanism” (Benhabib 2002) must be forged among the citizens of national territories for global social democracy to be a real possibility. The concepts of political culture and cultural politics are discussed as valuable for thinking through the relationship between ethical cosmopolitanism and cosmopolitan democracy and there is preliminary investigation of three different types of “jurisgenerative politics,” considered as sites of cultural politics rather than – as Benhabib does – as contributing directly to ethical cosmopolitanism.

Cultura política, ideologia e comportamento eleitoral: alguns apontamentos teóricos sobre o caso brasileiro

Este artigo trata das inter-relações entre os conceitos de cultura política, ideologia e comportamento eleitoral na busca da compreensão do chamado "eleitor brasileiro" através da apresentação de algumas vertentes explicativas. São definidos os conceitos de cultura política e ideologia, além da apresentação das principais teorias do comportamento eleitoral e das tipologias do voto no Brasil. O estudo conclui por um eleitor de tipo personalista, o qual decide seu voto, principalmente, a partir dos atributos individuais, de competência e honestidade dos candidatos. Por fim, busca-se uma explicação de origem histórica para esse padrão de comportamento eleitoral.

The Historiography of Gendered Political Cultures

Students often arrive in undergraduate classrooms knowing very little women's political history. Maybe they will know that women won the right to vote in 1920 or that there was once a debate about a constitutional amendment for equal rights (1). Rarely have they been introduced to historians' conceptual frameworks for studying women and politics. My comments here concentrate on one of these frameworks—gendered political cultures—that has been used both explicitly and implicitly in women's history scholarship and has influenced how political historians think about the nineteenth century. Historians began using the concept of political culture in the 1960s. Political culture involves the values and beliefs, as well as symbols and ideologies, that underlie and inspire political action. By uncovering patterns of attitudes and symbolic representations, historians can see how policies come into being and why political conflicts appear and new initiatives seem necessary (2). In...

Nazis, Pollution, and no Sex

This article briefly summarizes the German research literature on scandal and then outlines a theory of scandal as a socially constructed communication pattern. The theory distinguishes macro- and micro-level approaches for addressing the question of which malfunctions a society selects for scandal. The manifest and latent functions of scandals are discussed with special emphasis on the role of the mass media. The authors’concept of scandal is linked to the concept of political culture. The article then reviews, from a comparative cross-national point of view, (a) scandals that were formative for the development of democratic political culture in Germany, (b) scandals that are linked to the particular history of Germany, (c) scandals that do not distinguish Germany from other societies, and (d) scandals that are conspicuously missing in Germany although common in other countries. On this basis, five conclusions are drawn about the relationship of political scandal and political culture.

The role of cultural paradigms in Georgian foreign policy

Among the range of factors in the ‘global paradigms’ that underpin the cultural context for foreign policy with a brief theoretical discussion of the analytic utility of political culture and concludes that, despite its imprecision, the concept of political culture – central to some of the global paradigms that underpin the cultural context for foreign policy making – cannot be ignored in any analysis of Georgian foreign policy. Four such ‘global paradigms’ in Georgian political culture appear to affect or to have affected Georgian foreign policy making. They are religion, attitudes towards the ‘West’, pan-Caucasianism and anti-Russianism, as revealed by evidence from three recently written Georgian national security documents. Although the importance of culture in Georgian foreign policy decision making should not be overrated, it has an important place among Georgian political elites in defining their regional and international environment.

Articulating America: Fashioning a National Political Culture in Early America: Essays in Honor of J. R. Pole. Ed. by Rebecca Starr. (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000. xii, 276 pp. $40.00, ISBN 0-7425-2076-5.)

This collection of essays grew out of a conference held at Cambridge University in 1995 to honor J. R. Pole. It includes the work of several young historians trained by Professor Pole as well as contributions from distinguished scholars in the field of early American history. While the quality of the separate essays is a bit uneven, most provide interesting insights into various aspects of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century American society. Despite this volume's subtitle, however, the essays do not deal in any coherent manner with the fashioning of a national political culture in early America. Consequently, readers who expect the “linked” essays in this volume to “identify, integrate, and explore the nature of some of [the] chief sinews” (p. 4) of such a culture will be disappointed; only one of the seven essays addresses that issue in any but the most tangential manner. Considered as discrete entities, the essays are not only insightful but entertaining. J. G. A. Pocock provides a fascinating reading of the Histoire des Etablissements et du Commerce des Européens dans les Deux Indes (1772–1780). For his part, Jack Greene elucidates the manner in which the colonists' firm adherence to the basic principles of British common law helped them to form a nation governed by the rule of law. Richard Vernier demonstrates the manner in which Jeffersonians eventually employed the authority of the new science of political economy to attack the Hamiltonian fi nancial program. Despite changes taking place throughout much of the rest of the nation, Andrew W. Robertson reveals how the old political culture based on personal relations persevered in Virginia well into the nineteenth century. Through his analysis of the National Reform Association's promotion of land reform, Lawrence Goldman analyzes how radical workingmen of the 1830s and 1840s forged a “strategic sense of language” (p. 181) by employing the rhetoric of republicanism, English radicalism, and antislavery. In her essay Rebecca Starr attempts to reach a better understanding of the concept of political culture by merging ideological (rhetorical) traditions with methodological (social and political conventions) ones.

Conceptualizing Contemporary Russia

SEER, Vol.8i,J\o. 2, April2003 Rev iew Article ConceptualizingContemporaryRussia EDWIN BACON Alexander, James. PoliticalCulture inPost-Communist Russia.Formlessness andRecreation ina Traumatic Transition. Macmillan,Basingstoke,and St Martin's Press, New York, 2000. Xii + 267 pp. Tables. Notes. Bibliography.Index. [52.50. Bonnell, Victoria E., and BreslauerGeorge W. (eds). Russiain theNew Centu:y.StabilityorDisorder? Westview Press, Boulder, CO, and Oxford, 200I. xii + 380 pp. Tables. Notes. Index. [i6.95 (paperback). Brown, Archie (ed.). Contemporary RussianPolitics:A Reader.Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 200I. xvi + 574 pp. Notes. Tables. Index. [X8.99 (paperback). Shaw, Denis. Russiain theModernWorld: A NewGeography. The Institute of BritishGeographersStudies in Geography, Blackwell,Oxford, 1999. xxii + 314 pp. Maps. Tables. Bibliography. Index. [ I 7.99 (paperback). White, Stephen. Russia'sNew Politics.Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 2000. xiii + 386 pp. Notes. Tables. Figures.Illustrations.Index. 05.95 (paperback). WHEN did the post-Soviet era end? Picking dates is subjective and overly specific though my personal preference is for 26 December 2000, when Russia, with great symbolism,formallyadopted the music of the old Soviet national anthem as its own. What all bar one of the books under discussion here appear to agree on, however, is that the post-Soviet era has ended. We are into 'new', 'contemporary', 'modern '. El'tsin'sfin desiecleresignationwill be remembered by history as the end of the transitional period between Communism and what comes next. After all, the distinguishingprefix 'post'has a limited shelf life almost by definition. As the similaritiesbetween, say, Estonia and Uzbekistan have increasingly disappeared in the past decade or so, what logic remains in lumping them together in the post-Soviet state Edwin Bacon is Senior Lecturer in Russian politics at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies, the University of Birmingham. He is at present on secondment as Director of Research at Bishop Grosseteste College in Lincoln, where he also heads up an ESRC-sponsored research project on the securitization of Russian politics under Putin. 292 EDWIN BACON box? How long can politicians, analysts,and citizens describea statein termsof what it was, ratherthan what it is? In Russia's case the post-Soviet era has ended in the sense that Russia is no longer experiencing the transitional chaos of the El'tsin years, when almost every policy seemed to aim at being as 'post' the Soviet Union as possible. Not of course that everythingin the Russian polity, economy and society is sorted and static;but ratherthat under Vladimir Putin there is a more settled and familiar air about policy. The great upheavals of privatization, democratic institutionalization, and the establishmentof a formof federalismhave by and largepassed. Gone too is the iconoclastic disdain for the Soviet era perse. Putin's view is that although Soviet communismproved to be an historicalculde -sac, the real achievements of the Soviet regime should not be disowned but celebrated. There is even talk of putting Dzerzhinskii back on his plinth in Lubianka Square, from where his removal represented one of the most memorably symbolic moments of the Soviet collapse. Instead of the 'whatwill happen next?' momentum of El'tsin'stransition,Putin'spresidencyhas adopted an approachwhich is more 'what you see is what you get'. This is twenty-first-century Russia: a democracy, yes, but distinctively Russian; a foreign policy based avowedly on national interests;an economic policy strugglingto break free of endemic corruption and seeing a market economy with stateinfluence at keypoints as the way ahead;and a civil society fenced on every side with new laws on religion, on political parties, on social organizations,on foreigners,on the media, and on extremists. The one book under review here which focuses firmly on the immediate post-Soviet era, rather than what came next, is James Alexander's PoliticalCulture in Post-Communist Russia.Alexander might take encouragement from the shifts in tone of the Putin era noted above. His work is based on research carried out in Siktyvkarand Kirov in 1993 and 1994 into the often maligned concept of political culture. Even then and there, away from the political elite of Moscow and St Petersburg,his view was that 'the dominant trend among the Russian people is expressedin supportfor the symbols and...

Political Cultures and Gambling: Two Recent Case Studies

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

Political Culture and Political Change in Eastern Germany: Theoretical Alternatives

In the past century, Germany, for better and for worse, offered itselfas a natural laboratory for political science. Indeed, Germany’sexcesses of political violence and its dramatic regime changes largelymotivated the development of postwar American political science,much of it the work of German émigrés and German-Jewishrefugees, of course. The continuing vicissitudes of the German experiencehave, however, posed a particular challenge to the concept ofpolitical culture as elaborated in the 1950s and 1960s,1 at least inpart to explain lingering authoritarianism in formally democraticWest Germany. Generally associated with political continuity or onlyincremental change,2 the concept of political culture has been illequippedto deal with historical ruptures such as Germany’s “breakwith civilization” of 1933-1945 and the East German popular revolutionof 1989. As well, even less dramatic but still important and relativelyrapid cultural changes such as the rise of a liberal democraticVerfassungspatriotismus sometime around the late 1970s in West Germany3and the emergence of a postmodern, consumer capitalist culturein eastern Germany since 19944 do not conform to mainstreampolitical culture theory’s expectations of gradual, only generationalchange. To be sure, continuity, if not inertia, characterizes much ofpolitics, even in Germany. Still, to be of theoretical value, the conceptof political culture must be able not only to admit but toaccount for change.

Political Culture in Post-Communist Russia: Formlessness and Recreation in a Traumatic Transition. By James Alexander. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000. 267p. $65.00

Of all the “traumatic transitions” in the postcommunist world, the Russian one ranks as one of the most tortuous and painful. Why is this? Does the problem lie in the institutional structure created in the early postcommunist years, or do the roots lie deeper, in Russia's innate authoritarianism and cult of strong leadership? Employing the concept of political culture, this is the question that Alexander seeks to answer. He approaches the idea in an unusual way, however, by focusing rather more broadly on the concept of “culture” and its potential for change rather than any narrowly defined notion of “political” culture. He insists that a nation's political culture cannot be reduced to one or two simple and measurable parameters but is a complex web of malleable relations and contradictions; and he seeks to understand them by using what he insists are nonstandard approaches.

The Concept of Political Culture

Although historians have frequently employed political culture in their writings, they often seem unaware of the long-standing controversy that has engaged social scientists regarding its theoretical grounding, its methods, and its substantive findings. Moreover, cultural historians who have pioneered new ways of looking at symbolic and expressive forms of power have tended to slight the more traditional dimensions of power—such as persisting elite hegemony and control of material resources—that ought not be excluded from the concept's domain. Historians would do well to attend more fully to the implications of political culture, especially its inherently comparative logic.