Political Culture - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Political Culture

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Sources of political culture: Friends. Global society. Region, Country. Polity. Affiliations, ... Family, school, society through primary political socialization ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Political Culture


1
Political Culture
  • Citizen attitudes and orientations and their
    impact

2
Political Culture
  • Attitudes and orientations toward politics how a
    group of people (e.g a social class, an ethnic
    group, a region, or a nation) think
  • about themselves
  • about others
  • about how they are governed
  • about how they ought to be governed..

3
Political culture v. ideology
  • different from an ideology or a religion
  • not a (logically) constrained or integrated
    belief system, but rather sets of attitudes or
    orientations distributed among a given population
  • these can be evenly or unevenly distributed,
  • widely or narrowly held
  • a society can have distinct subcultures

4
Common to distinguish among
  • Homogeneous v. fragmented political cultures
  • mass v. elite political culture
  • mass political culture attitudes and
    orientations toward politics held by the
    population as a whole
  • elite political culture orientations held by
    those who have (or are likely to hold) power

5
Sources of political culture
Family Media
Friends
Schools Economy
Affiliations, Memberships Polity
Region, Country Global society
6
What shapes political culture?
  • Different views
  • Family, school, society through primary political
    socialization
  • The regime and political system, as a consequence
    of the ways in which people experience it
    secondary political socialization

7
Different views
  • Political culture
  • Society
  • Experience with
  • political system
  • Political Culture

8
Some questions and problems
  • Difference between political culture and national
    character?
  • How can we characterize political culture(s)
  • What difference does political culture make?
  • Do you need a democratic political culture in
    order to sustain democracy?
  • What constitutes a democratic political culture?
  • Is it sufficient for elites to be committed to
    democracy or must ordinary citizens be so
    committed as well?

9
Remaking German political culture
  • Imperial Germany (1871-1918)
  • A fragmented and divided society
  • prevailing values authoritarian
  • The Weimar Republic (1918-1933)
  • democratic regime, established following
    surrender
  • highly fragmented
  • regime lacked legitimacy some groups supported
    it, others tolerated, but few loved
  • aristocracy, business elites, military fail to
    support regime when it was challenged
  • totalitarian regime established by legal means

10
Postwar Germany
  • Occupied, divided into 4 occupation zones
  • Liberal democratic regime established in the
    three Western zones
  • Communist regime in the eastern (Soviet) zone
  • Problem for both east and west how to
    establish new regimes in a country which had
    given fervent support to Nazism

11
Solutions
  • In the east, the solution is Communism remake
    the economy end capitalism and you end Nazism
  • In the west, political culture is gradually
    reshaped
  • Bonn Basic Law (temporary constitution still in
    effect) establishes citizen rights, liberal
    democratic order
  • West Germans initially quiescent, accepting
    proud of economic achievements
  • Holocaust eventually acknowledged, dealt with in
    schools
  • Political system gains acceptance, in part
    because of economic success, stability,
    integration into Europe

12
Contemporary Germany
  • Problem of bringing together east and west
  • Different experience of Ossies and Wessies
  • Problem of who belongs
  • East v west
  • Immigrants and refugees
  • Question of Germanys role in the world

13
Contrasts between Germany and Austria
  • Austrias self image as victim
  • Limited de-nazification
  • Reluctance to come to terms with Holocaust
  • Today far greater support for parties of the
    right

14
Remaking political culture in countries
transiting to democracy
  • What does it take to remake elite political
    culture?
  • What does it take to remake mass political
    culture if it has to be remade?

15
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