Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T20:13:32.811Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Many Voices of Political Culture: Assessing Different Approaches

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Richard W. Wilson
Richard W. Wilson
Affiliation:
University of New Jersey
Get access

Abstract

Works in political culture have employed a variety of approaches with different assumptions and methodologies. Commentary on the field, however, generally fails to take account of these differences or to assess the merits of the different approaches. Recent works that typify five different approaches are evaluated in terms of the ways that they conceptualize preference formation and the linkage between preferences and cultural norms. The tendency in most approaches to conflate preferences and norms points to the need for further theoretical development.

Type
Review Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , January 2000 , pp. 246 - 273
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Verba, Sidney, “Comparative Political Culture,” in Pye, Lucian W. and Verba, Sidney, eds., Political Culture and Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), 513Google Scholar.

2 Pye, Lucian W., “Political Culture,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, vol. 12, Sills, David L. (New York: Macmillan and Free Press, 1968), 218Google Scholar.

3 Preez, Peter du, A Science of Mind: The Questfor Psychological Reality (London: Academic Press, 1991), 101–2Google Scholar.

4 See, as examples, Dittmer, Lowell, “Political Culture and Political Symbolism: Toward a Theoretical Synthesis,” World Politics 29 (July 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Edelman, Murray, Constructing the Political Spectacle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Edles, Laura Desfor, Symboland Ritual in theNew Spain: The Transition to Democracy after Franco (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fernandez, James, Persuasions and Performances (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Kapferer, Bruce, Legends ofPeople, Myths ofState (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian, 1988)Google Scholar; Moore, Sally F. and Myerhoff, Barbara G., Secular Ritual (Assen, Netherlands: Van Gorcum, 1977)Google Scholar; Ortner, Sherry B., High Religion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

5 Aronoff, Myron J., Power andRitual in the Israel Labor Party (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1992)Google Scholar; Geertz, Clifford, Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; and Kubik, Jan, The Power of Symbols against the Symbols of Power: The Rise of Solidarity 2nd the Fall of State-Socialism in Poland (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

6 Aronoff, , Israeli Visions and Divisions: Cultural Change and Political Conflict (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1989), xv–xviGoogle Scholar.

7 See, as examples, Douglas, Mary, ed., Essays in the Sociology ofPerception (Boston: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1982)Google Scholar; Douglas, Mary and Wildavsky, Aaron, Risk and Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Ellis, Richard J., American Political Cultures (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Thompson, Michael, Ellis, Richard, and Wildavsky, Aaron, Cultural Theory (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1990)Google Scholar; Wildavsky, Aaron, “Choosing Preferences by Constructing Institutions: A Cultural Theory of Preferences,” American Political Science Review 81, No. 1 (1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, “In dispensable Framework or Just Another Ideology? Prisoner's Dilemma as an Antihierarchical Game,” Rationality and Society 4, no. 1 (1992).

8 Inglehart, Ronald, “Post-Materialism in an Environment of Insecurity,” American Political Science Review 75, no. 4 (1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 For an attempt to incorporate psychological variables, see Dake, Karl, “Orienting Dispositions in the Perception of Risk: An Analysis of Contemporary Worldviews and Cultural Biases,” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 22, no. 1 (1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Fiske, Alan Page, Structures of Social Life: The Four Elementary Forms ofHuman Relations (New York: Free Press, 1991)Google Scholar.

11 See, as examples, Banfield, Edward C., The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (New York: Free Press, 1967)Google Scholar; Bell, Daniel, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 1976)Google Scholar; Goldhagen, Daniel, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996)Google Scholar; Inkeles, Alex, Exploring Individual Modernity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Metzger, Thomas A., Escapefrom Predicament: Neo-Confucianism and China's Evolving Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Pye, Lucian W., The Mandarin and the Cadre: China's Political Cultures (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1988)Google Scholar; Rudolph, Lloyd I. and Rudolph, Susanne Hoeber, The Modernity of Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967)Google Scholar; and Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (Los Angeles: Roxbury Publishing, 1996)Google Scholar.

12 Barker, Benjamin R., Jibatt vs. McWorld (New York: Random House, 1995)Google Scholar.

13 Putnam, Robert D., Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

14 See, as examples, Almond, Gabriel A. and Verba, Sidney, eds., The Civic Culture Revisited (Boston: Little, Brown, 1980)Google Scholar; Inglehart, Ronald, Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989)Google Scholar; McClosky, Herbert and Zaller, John, The American Ethos (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Triandis, Harry C., “The Psychological Measurement of Cultural Syndromes,” American Psychologist 51, no. 4 (1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Verba, Sidney et al., Elites and the Idea of Equality (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

15 See, as examples, Candee, Dan, “Ego Developmental Aspects of New Left Ideology,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 30, no. 5 (1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chilton, Stephen, Defining Political Development (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1988)Google Scholar; Emler, Nicholas, Renwick, Stanley, and Malone, Bernadette, “The Relationship between Moral Reasoning and Political Orientation,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 45, no. 5 (1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rosenberg, Shawn W., Reason, Ideology and Politics (Princeton; Princeton University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Rosenberg, Shawn W., Ward, Dana, and Chilton, Stephen, Political Reasoning and Cognition; A Piagetian View (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Snarey, John R., “Cross-Cultural Universality of Social-Moral Development: A Critical Review of Kohlbergian Research,” Psychological Bulletin 97, no. 2 (1985)Google Scholar; and Wilson, Richard W., Compliance Ideologies: thinking Political Culture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

16 Kubik (fn. 5), 10, emphasis in original.

17 Solomon, , Mao's Revolution and the Chinese Political Culture (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1971), 5Google Scholar.

18 Laitin, David D., “The Civic Culture at Thirty,” American Political Science Review 89, no. 1 (1995)Google Scholar

19 Billig, Michael et al., Ideological Dilemmas: A Social Psychology ofEveryday Thinking (London: Sage Publications, 1988), 18, 25Google Scholar.

20 Fiske, Alan Page and Tetlock, Philip E., “Taboo Trade-offs: Reactions to Transactions That Transgress the Spheres of Justice,” Political Psychology 18, no. 2 (1997), 284CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Putnam (fn. 13).

22 North, Douglass C., Structure and Change in Economic History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981), 201–2Google Scholar.

23 Wilson (fn. 15).

24 Wilson, Richard W., “American Political Culture in Comparative Perspective,” Political Psychology 18, no. 2 (1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Another work that utilizes a rational choice perspective although without specific reference to political culture or moral prefeences is Fearon, James D. and Laitin, David D., “Explaining Interethnic Cooperation,” American Political Science Review 90, no. 4 (1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 See, as examples, Alexander, Richard D., The Biology of Moral Systems (New York: Aldine De Gruyter, 1987)Google Scholar; Axelrod, Robert, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984)Google Scholar; Barkow, Jerome H., Comides, Leda, and Tooby, John, eds., The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Blackmore, Susan, The Meme Machine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Dawkins, Richard, The Selfish Gene (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976)Google Scholar; Durham, William H., Coevolution: Genes, Culture and Human Diversity (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1991)Google Scholar; and Wright, Robert, The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life (New York: Vintage Books, 1995)Google Scholar.

27 Eckstein, Harry, “A Culturalist Theory of Political Change,” American Political Science Review 82, no. 3 (1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.