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Comparative Politics and Government

Notes internalisation. An inquiry in this regard covers the role of those factors that have their latent as
well as patent influence on the mind of the individual and thereby make up his personality.
Simply stated, it means that we should have a brief study of the factors that internalise political
norms and values what men of earlier ages called lessons in civic education, training for citizenship,
behaviour of men in authority and role of social and political institutions. Thus, the role of the
family, school, church, peer groups, mass media and public relations, etc., should be looked into
in order to find out the veracity of this statement: “Since the individual is continually being
influenced in the shaping of his political attitudes, orientations and values, the process of
socialisation goes throughout his life.” Or as Ball says: “Political socialisation is not a process
confined to the impressionable years of childhood, but one that continues throughout adult life.”
First of all, comes the family that should be described as the ‘child’s first window on the world
outside, it is the child’s first contact with authority’. The chief contribution of the family in forming
the political personality of the individual derives from its role as the main source and locus for the
satisfaction of all his basic and innate requirements. Thus, the child tends to identify with his
parents and to adopt their outlook towards the political system. The father becomes the prototypical
authority figure and thereby initiates the child’s view of political authority. As Davies says: “The
family provides the major means for transforming the mentally naked infant organism into adult,
fully clothed in its own personality. And most of the individual’s political personality— his
tendencies to think and act politically in particular ways—has been determined at home, several
years before he can take part in politics as an ordinary adult citizen and as a political prominent.”
Robert Lane has suggested that there are three ways in which the foundations of political beliefs
may be laid through the family —(i) by overt and covert indoctrination, (ii) by placing the child in
a particular social context, and (iii) by moulding the child’s personality.
Then comes the school as a centre of primary education. Education has long been regarded as a
very important variable in the explanation of political behaviour, and there is much evidence to
suggest that it is a very important agent of political socialisation. Almond and Verba have pointed
out that the more extensive an individual’s education, the more likely he is to be aware of the
impact of government, to follow politics, to have more political information, to possess a wider
range of opinions on political matters, to engage in political discussions with a wider range of
people, to feel a greater ability to influence political affairs, to be a member of and to be active in
voluntary organisations, and express confidence in his social environment and exhibit feelings of
trust. It is for this reason that the selection of courses comes to have an importance of its own and
the politically conscious people fight for the revision of the syllabi as pertaining to their interests.
Thus, the leaders of the Muslim League in Kerala struggled for the expunction of certain portions
from the school textbooks in which Jawaharlal Nehru had said about the communal and antinational
role of the League in the pre-independence days. To take another example, we may say that the
American negroes have become more vocal in their criticism of the neglect of negro contributions
in school text-books and have successfully demanded the inclusion of ‘black studies’ programme
in many educational institutions.
What matters much in this direction is that, the problem of political socialisation arises after the
children emerge from the early influences of their family and primary schools into the world of
higher classes—also known as the ‘peer groups’ — and thus “may become subject to other influences
which may reinforce or conflict with early politicisation.” Martin Levin has found a tendency for
individuals to adopt the majority group within the ‘peer groups’. The courses of study, debates,
discussions and other extra-curricular activities have their own impact upon the attitudes of the
grown up students. Thus, the centres of higher education play their part in proto-political context
and thereby become effective sources of political enlightenment. In this way, pedagogy finds its
integration, with social sciences as the aim of both, as C. Wright Mills in his work The Sociological
Imagination says, “is to help cultivate and sustain publics and individuals that are able to live with,
and to act upon adequate definitions of personal and social relations.”
Not merely the family and the educational institutions but social and political institutions as a
whole play their part in the process of norm-internalisation. The role of religious institutions, for
instance, need not be undermined. The effect of the church on political attitudes “is less apparent

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