Lecture 2

Question 1

Political Culture

Answer 1

relationship that communities have with politics and government. The sum of individual and group values, beliefs, attitudes, norm and expectations regarding politics and government.

Question 2

Key features of political culture

Answer 2

• Limits: not always generalizable, and difficult to apply its features more widely to a given community
  What can we describe as a country’s national political culture?
• Measurement: not always easy to identify or quantify
  Political ideology: the idea that people hold about the role of government and the goals of public policy
  Mentalities: ways of thinking and feeling, more emotional than rational that provide non codified ways of reacting to different situations
• Changeability: culture is not static, it changes with time and place
• Complexity: multiple cultures are most likely to exist than universal cultures
  Subcultures or multiple cultures
  Elite political culture: political norms and expectations held by the closest of the centers of the political power
  Elite: group of people with a privileged position in society, based on a combination of factors such as education, wealth, social class and age.
• Multiculturalism: absence of a dominant national political culture. Active engagement of a state with the preferences and concerns of the multiple cultural or ethnic groups within society

Question 3

challenges to political culture/multiculturalism

Answer 3

Identity politics
globalization
Civic culture
Post-materialism

Question 4

Identity politics

Answer 4

political positions and actions based on association with a particular identity, such as gender, age, ethnicity, religion, disability or sexual orientation.

Question 5

globalization

Answer 5

Builds international connections, promotes interdependence, emphasizes the problems and needs that different communities have in common and heightens the sense of a shared humanity.
Cultural theory: approaches to understanding the dynamics of culture and its relationship to politics, society, the media and economics, for example.

Question 6

Civic culture

Answer 6

a moderate political culture in which most people accept the obligation to participate in politics while acknowledging the authority of the state and its right to take decisions

Question 7

Post-materialism

Answer 7

a set of values emphasizing the quality of life over materialistic values such as economic growth and physical security. (promoted by globalization and education, caused a silent revolution in Western political cultures

Question 8

Political Trust

Answer 8

the belief that rulers are generally well intentioned and effective in serving the interests of the governed
Trust has been decreasing:

Question 8

Political Trust

Answer 8

the belief that rulers are generally well intentioned and effective in serving the interests of the governed
Trust has been decreasing:

Question 9

Kaperson’s 4 dimensions of trust

Answer 9

1 Competent: ability to perform according to expectations or in the subject (of the trust)’s interest
2 intrinsically committed (caring): will act in the best interests of the subject
Because of an intrinsic need to act in line with the subject’s interests
Because they are afraid to be punished by the subject
3 extrinsically committed (accountable because of encapsulated interest): when the object can be held accountable, the interests of the subject become encapsulated self interests of the object
4 Predictable: consistency of past behavior