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Unit 5: Political Socialisation

to carry on willingly the established values, orientations and norms of their collective life. A new- Notes
born child is not a socialised creature; he is socialised by means of a learning process. Moreover,
such learning “is not limited to the acquisition of appropriate knowledge about a society’s norms
but requires that the individual so makes these norms his own — internalises them —that to him
they appear to be right, just and moral. Having once internalised society’s norms, it will presumably
not be difficult for the individual to act in congruence with them.” Moreover, this process of norm-
internalisation is not exhausted with the age of adolescence; it also covers the young for the same
reason which informs that a politically organised society has the same maintenance needs in
which the young people have to play a quite responsible part. Let us, therefore, look at the
norms— internalisation process at two stages—socialisation of the child and the adolescent and
socialisation of the young people.
The process of political socialisation starts when the child becomes aware of a wide environment;
he feels increasingly perceptive in response to particular situations and comes to have an outlook
that becomes increasingly coherent and total where before it was fragmented and limited. It is at
this stage that the general attitude of the children towards authority, obedience, resistance,
cooperation, aggression, etc. has its germination. What a child gets from the family has its
furtherance in the school that cements his early convictions towards political values. Easton and
Dennis posit four stages in the process of political socialisation at the childhood stage —(i)
recognition of authority through particular individuals such as parents, policemen and the President
of the country; (ii) distinction between public and private authority; (iii) recognition of impersonal
political institutions like national legislature, judiciary and voting behavior; and (iv) distinction
between political institutions and persons engaged in the activities associated with those institutions
so that idealised images of particular persons such as the President or the Congressmen are
transferred from the Presidency and the Congress.
Thus, the process of socialisation continues even after the period of adolescence. The main outlines
of future political behaviour “may well be determined in the earlier period, but this is more likely
to create a situation in which there is interaction between early political socialisation and the
environmental and experiential influences of later life than to preclude adult socialisation.” A
study of the voting behaviour, for example, shows how the members of a legislature undergo a
process of political socialisation during the war of votes and that their subsequent legislative
behaviour is determined partly by their knowledge, values and attitudes as these existed prior to
elections, and partly by their experiences within and reactions to their new environment in the
legislature. Electoral studies have demonstrated correlations between party preferences and
characteristics of the voters which are related to environment and experience.

If the factors of environment and experiential influences have their definite impact on the
life of the individual in his childhood and adolescence, it is quite reasonable to assume
that these influences have an importance of their own during the phase of adulthood.

Though it is true that early socialisation lays the foundation of later socialisation, it does not imply
that the pattern of later socialisation should strictly conform to the former. The effect of the later
experiential influences “may bring about a change in the attitudes or orientations of men at an
advanced stage of his life. “The knowledge, values and attitude acquired during me cnildhood
and adolescence will be measured against the experience of adult life: to suggest otherwise is to
suggest a static political behaviour. If the process of adult socialisation tends to reinforce those of
childhood and adolescence, the degree of change may be limited to that of increasing conservatism
with age, but where conflict occurs, radical changes in “political behaviour may result: such
conflict may have its roots in early political socialisation, but it may also be attributable to the
experiences of later socialisation.”

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