Political Culture and Institutional Development in Costa Rica and
Nicaragua: World Making in the Tropics. By Consuelo Cruz. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2005. 302p. $80.00.
Political culture has remained an attractive subject since works such
as Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba's The Civic Culture: Political
Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (1963) propelled it to the
fore of comparative politics in the 1960s. Over the last four decades,
different approaches to political culture sought to provide theoretical
leverage on an array of political phenomena, including political
participation, modernization, democratic development, and state building.
The appeal of the concept of political culture lies primarily in its
intuitive logic: Individuals, organized into groups, are responsible for
the creation of political realities. While these realities may certainly
be influenced by an array of exogenous factors, their creation is
dependent on individuals' perceptions and preferences. Critics of
political culture research suggest that attributions of political culture
are frequently deterministic or difficult to falsify scientifically. In
Political Culture and Institutional Development in Costa Rica and
Nicaragua, Consuelo Cruz analyzes political culture employing what
she refers to as an integrative approach, a rational-structural
culturalism that recognizes the direct influence of morally driven,
rational political actors on institutional norms.