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Unit 4: Political Culture

decisions and to agree on the major problems facing the society and how to solve them. In a Notes
conflictual political culture, the citizens are sharply divided, often on both the legitimacy of the
regime and solutions to major problems.
When a country is deeply divided in political attitudes and these differences persist over time,
distinctive political subcultures may develop. The citizens in these subcultures may have sharply
different points of view on at least some critical political matters, such as the boundaries of the
nation, the nature of the regime, or the correct ideology. Typically, they affiliate with different
political parties and interest groups, read different newspapers, and even have separate social
clubs and sporting groups. Thus they are exposed to quite distinctive patterns of learning about
politics. Such organized differences characterize the publics in India, Nigeria, and Russia today.
Where political subcultures coincide with ethnic, national, or religious differences, as in Northern
Ireland, Bosnia, and Lebanon, the divisions can be enduring and threatening. The fragmentation
of the Soviet empire, the breakup of Yugoslavia, and the impulses toward autonomy and secession
among ethnically distinct regions (such as in Scotland or separatist movements in Africa) all
reflect the lasting power of language, culture, and historical memory to create and sustain the
sense of ethnic and national identity among parts of contemporary states. Samuel Huntington has
predicted that the places in the world where the major traditional cultures collide will be major
sources of political conflict in the next century.
4.3 Trends in Contemporary Political Cultures

A political culture exists uniquely in its own time and place. Citizens’ attitudes and beliefs are
shaped by personal experiences and by the agents of political socialization. Yet, in any historical
period there may be trends that change the culture in many nations. The major social trends of our
time— modernity and secularism, postmaterial values, fundamentalism and ethnic awareness,
democratization, and marketization—reflect both general societal developments and specific historic
events.
The major cultural trend that has transformed the world and public values has been modernization.
For almost two centuries now, the secularizing influences of science and control over nature have
altered economic and social systems and shaped political cultures, first in the West and increasingly
throughout the world. This trend toward cultural modernization continues to have powerful
effects as it penetrates societies (or parts of societies) that have been shielded from it. Exposure to
modernity through work, education, and the media shapes an individual’s personal experiences
and sends messages about modernity in other societies. It encourages citizen participation, a sense
of individual equality, the desire for improved living standards and increased life expectancy, and
government legitimacy based on policy performance. It also frequently disrupts familiar ways of
life, traditional bases of legitimacy, and political arrangements that depend on citizens remaining
predominantly parochials or subjects. Alex Inkeles and David Smith’s study of the development
of modern attitudes emphasized how factory experience can create an awareness of the possibilities
of organization, change, and control over nature.
A by-product of socio-economic modernization appears in the nations of North America, Western
Europe, and Japan that have developed the characteristics of a postindustrial society. Younger
generations who grew up under conditions of economic prosperity and international peace are
now less concerned with material well-being and personal security than their parents. Instead, the
young are more likely to emphasize postmaterial values: social equality, environmental protection,
cultural pluralism, and self-expression. Postmaterial values have spawned new citizen groups,
such as the environmental movement, the women’s movement, and other public interest
associations. These changing values have also reshaped the policy agenda of industrial democracies;
more citizens are asking government to restore the environment, expand social and political
freedoms, and emphasize policies to ensure social equality. Politicians in these democracies are
struggling to balance these new policy demands against the continuing policy needs of the past.
A much different response to modernization has been the resurgence of ethnicity, or ethnic
identities, in many parts of the world. As citizen skills and self-confidence have increased, formerly

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