Taking a Look at Political Culture

Throughout the world there are many diverse political cultures. A political culture is the attitudes, beliefs or practices among a group of likeminded individuals. (Giardino pg. 27) There are different categories that embrace a political culture like an Individualistic, traditionalistic and moralistic. An individualistic culture is one that prefers less government involvement. The traditionalists’ culture maintains government as the social and economic hierarchy and does not like change. The moralistic culture favors public good and it revolves around social issues. In shaping a political culture demographics such as population size, growth, distribution and diversity are essential to determine how a state is in any of the three categories. Society is strongly affected by decisions of who, what and when does an individual receive any types of goods or services. Government is the structure, buildings and institutions that are held within politics.

Political culture is a set of values, beliefs, and feelings that are related to the government, politics and the people. According to political scientist Daniel Elazar, Texas’s political culture is a combination of traditionalistic and individualistic elements, Elazar stated, “The traditionalistic aspects of state politics are exemplified by the long history of one-party dominance in state politics, the low level of voter turnout, and social and economic conservatism. The individualistic nature of state politics can be seen in the support for private business, opposition to big government, and faith in individual initiative”. Living in Texas, the regions are very different from the west, east, north and south regions of Texas. Each region

Most people are exposed to the same principals and agents of political socialization. Families spread values that support political authorities and can heavily contribute to children's initial political ideological views, or party preferences. Families influence political knowledge and identification depending on variables such as family demographics, life cycle, parenting style, parental level of political skepticism and frequency of political discussions. Demographics such as gender and age also attribute to political socialization. School is another agent of political socialization. Spending numerous years in school, children in the United States are taught and reinforced a view of the world that their text books tell them to trust. Through primary, secondary and high schools, students are taught key principles such as individual rights and property, personal responsibility and duty to their nation. Another is mass media. Mass media is not only a source of political information; it is an influence on political values and beliefs. Various media outlets, through news coverage and late-night programs, provide different partisan policy stances that are associated with political participation. Religions, beliefs, and practices play a role in political opinion formation and political participation. The perspective offered by religious institutions shape judgement regarding public policy, and political decision

The idea of political culture is found within the state’s history. The history of the state is impacted by the people settled in the region, religious backgrounds, and geography. The history of the state influences the attitudes and beliefs that people hold regarding their political system. Daniel Elazar theorized a connection between the states’ history and attitude towards government by explaining differences in government between states. Every state is different with some common ground. Elazar’s theory divides states into three types: moralistic, traditionalistic and individualistic. The state’s constitution defines the powers of government with political culture bias. Because of the state constitution, the political culture

This was the party slogan for the political culture in George Orwell’s novel, 1984; a stark, depressing world where “Big Brother” is watching you at all times. The political culture of the Untied States, thankfully, is a much more democratic and freeing environment. “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...” is what we live by, not “Freedom is slavery.” The political culture of the United States is made up of two main concepts: liberty and equality. These will be discussed in this paper.

Political culture is an individual's' shared structure of qualities, convictions, and propensities for conduct identified with government and legislative issues. These goals and examples of conduct create after some time and influence the political existence of a state, local or nation. Political culture is essential since it sets up the scenery against which legislative issues develop. It sets up the external furthest reaches of what is conceivable, or plausible in the political domain.

A culture can be defined as a way of life of a group of people- their behaviors, beliefs, values that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next. It also includes the customs, arts, literature, morals/values and traditions of a particular society or group (Virginia Encyclopedia). Culture can also be considered as a way of thinking, behaving, or working that exists in places or organizations. This topic is of huge importance to our society mainly in the state of

Have you ever thought about why you have the political beliefs and values you do? Where did they come from? Are they simply your own ideas and experiences or have you been influenced by others in your thinking? This process by which individuals acquire their political beliefs and attitudes is called political socialization. In another words, Political socialization is a concept where the study of the developmental processes by which children and adolescents acquire political cognition, attitudes and behaviors. What people think and how they come to think it is of critical importance to the stability of the government. The beliefs and values of the people are the basis for a society's political culture and that culture defines the

“The American Political Tradition” published in 1948 was written by a well-known historian at Colombia University. Richard Hofstadter was born on August 6, 1916, in Buffalo, New York. He attended both the University of Buffalo and Columbia University where he studied philosophy and history. Hofstadter was married twice and later in 1970 died from leukemia. Throughout his life Hofstadter had a lot of published works including Social Darwinism in American Thought, William Leggett, Spokesman of Jacksonian Democracy, The Age of Reform, The United States: the History of a Republic, and many more. Hofstadter’s purpose for writing this book was to give people a better understanding about our history. He wanted to help Americans understand who was

Canadian Political Culture, in a nation- state context, can be break down as beliefs and attitudes that Canadian have of political objects( Jackson, Politics in Canada.1994).

It is no secret that America’s political culture, comprised of a set of common values, attitudes, and beliefs, centers mainly around ideals such as liberty, equality, democracy, and individualism. Those ideas originated from the separation of our nation from England, as well as the convictions of our founding fathers. But are the political cultures of other countries the same as America’s? China’s, for example, is very much different. When discussing the values that make up her political culture, harmony, respect, and loyalty are predominant.

The general understanding of democracy is that it is a state of leadership where citizens of a country participate equally either directly or by representative individuals in the establishment of laws, which run the society. However, like many other forms of leadership, democracy has its cons and may not give the citizens the necessary freedoms that they think they have. Different philosophers have different insights on democracy in terms of concepts such as liberty, which they embraced. This paper will look at Benjamin Barber and Joseph Schumpeter’s idea of democracy contrasting their definition in terms of citizenship, obligation, rights and duties of each individual in the society declaring whose idea of democracy creates a compelling vision (Terchek & Conte, 2001).

one essential conviction, expressed in the word democracy itself: that power should be in the hands of the people. Although democracy today has been slightly inefficient in this idea, with the wealthy, elite class challenging this right, “it nevertheless claims for itself a fundamental validity that no other kind of society shares….” To completely understand the structure of democracy, one must return to the roots of the practice itself, and examine the origins in ancient Greece, the expansion in the Roman Empire, and how these practices combined make what we recognize as today’s democratic government.

The term ‘politics’ itself has changed over many years. To ask if the evolution of political culture changes how people participate in politics is simple. The answer is yes. To begin with, let’s define political culture; ‘Authors define the term political culture as the particular distribution of patterns of orientation towards political objects among the members of a nation’ (Almond and Verba 1963: 13 cited in Welzel and Inglehart, 2014 p.285). Now let’s define culture; ‘the term culture covers a broad set of phenomena. It includes traditions, habits, and patterns of behaviour shaped by a society’s prevailing beliefs, norms and values’ (Nolan and Lenski, 1999 cited in Welzel and Inglehart, 2014 p.285). Taking this into account, examples of culture could be how to play hopscotch in a playground or following the rules to a game of tennis or badminton. To address the question, this essay will firstly assess how any capable individual is able to participate in politics and secondly if the growth of political culture has increased or decreased participation.

Political culture refers to believes, feeling and how people think they should act about government. In the US political culture lays some core ideals and values which are of course not shared by all the Americans. However, the two shared political values in the US by vast majority the regardless of race, creed, national origin are liberty and democracy. In most political debates, there is a tendency to come up with the best framework on how best to achieve these ideals and values assert (Schudson, 271).