Summary
Bourgeois society has been cast in a purely economic mold: its foundations, beams, and beacons are all made of economic material.
Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, p. 73Since the late 1960s, rational choice models based on economic variables have become the dominant mode of analysis, while cultural factors have been deemphasized to an unrealistic degree.
Ronald Inglehart, Culture Shift, p. 16Political support and political culture are inextricably linked. In an extended essay on the multifaceted relationship between politics and culture Samuel Barnes (1986:16) argued that “at a minimum cultural patterns are the routine, largely unexamined options followed by most people most of the time.” They are derived from widely shared assumptions, meanings and values held by a group of people and provide the context and situations in which behavior occurs. As Barnes puts it, “culture comes early in the causal chain.” His views about culture raise the question of how widely shared assumptions, meanings, and values have to be in order for them to be considered “cultural patterns.” For example, how widely must people share views about the “meaning” of democracy or elections in order for them to be part of a cultural pattern? Also, how much political efficacy, trust, interest in politics or deference toward political authorities must people in a democracy exhibit for a culture to be considered “democratic”? Democratic theorists such as McClosky (1964:361-82) and Prothro and Grigg (1960:176-94) have argued that democratic values do not require a large measure of consensus in order for them to be a component of a democratic culture. Rather, a democratic culture can be sustained and affect the conduct of politics even if the values that lead to general democratic principles (e.g., majority rule and minority rights) are widely shared by only elite segments of a population. Although in a previous study (Kornberg, Mishler, and Clarke, 1982) we have questioned this assumption, it does suggest that any analysis of the complex relationships between political support and political culture should take into account conventional indicators of socioeconomic status such as education and income. As noted in Chapter 1, we will employ these as proxy variables to capture the effects of political socialization experiences on variations in political support.
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- Citizens and Community , pp. 34 - 60Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992