Topic 6 - Political behaviour: Political Socialisation & Political Culture Flashcards
What is Political Behaviour?
Subset of human behaviours that involves the use of power.
Mass Public
The redundant term that refers to the public at large – the recipients of policy rather than the makers of policy
Political Elite
It often refers to elected or appointed officials at all levels from Mayors to Supreme Court Justices. It sometimes also used to refer to media outlets, political parties, or interest groups
Examples of Mass Political Behaviours
1) Voting
2) Voicing opinions – calling representatives, petitions, discussing politics.
3) Participating in a campaign – stuffing envelopes, making phone calls, giving money.
4) Protesting for a cause – striking workers, sit-ins, marches and demonstrations.
5) Political party activities.
6) Interest Group activities.
Mass Political Behaviour
The actions of regular citizens in the process of peacefully determining how power and resources are distributed in society
What is Political Culture?
Political culture refers to the distinguishing beliefs, values, attitudes, habits, and behaviour patterns that characterize a political community.
Political culture is made up of cognitive, affective and evaluative orientations towards the political system.
Essentially, political culture is the aggregate attitudes of members of a society towards the institutions of rule and how they should operate.
Political Culture vs Public Opinion
Political culture is broader than public opinion. It functions as a frame which constrains acceptable political action and discourse. It is more enduring, stable and cross-generational.
The essence of political culture is not agreement on issues, but common perception of the rights and obligations of citizenship and of the rules for participating in the political process.
Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba’s Model of Political Culture
Political culture determined by three main factors:
A] Awareness of government
B] Expectations of government
C] Political participation
Types of Political Cultures
Three types of political culture:
A] Parochial cultures [low awareness, expectations and participation] e.g. Mexico
B] Subject culture [high levels of awareness and expectation but low participation] e.g. Italy and Germany
C] Participatory [high levels of all three] e.g. USA & UK
Parochial Culture
1] In this model citizens have low cognitive orientations towards the political system.
2] Societies characterised by this type of political culture do not expect anything positive of government, nor do they expect to participate in politics because it is seen as the elite domain.
3] Furthermore, the government is seen as the enforcer of its own rules and, consequently, the realm of politics is seen as one to be avoided whenever possible.
Subject culture
1] In this model citizens have high cognitive, affective and evaluative orientations toward only the political system and policy outputs of the system.
2] This tends to be manifested in a citizenry that expects positive action from government, but that does not tend to be politically active themselves.
3] However, orientations towards input objects (like political parties) and the self as active participants are minimal. 4] They, too, see politics as an elite domain only to be engaged in by those with power and influence.
Participatory Culture
1] In this model citizens have high cognitive, affective and evaluative orientations towards both the input and output aspects of the system.
2] Societies which possess this type of political culture tend to have citizens with high expectations of government and of personally participating in politics, if at no other time than voting in an election
3] This type of culture is central to the principles of any democratic society.
Mixed Cultures
Almond and Verba note that political cultures rarely conform to the foregoing ideal-types
Political systems may be characterized by high congruence between culture and structure (which engenders allegiance), weak congruence (which engenders apathy), and incongruence (which engenders alienation)
Political Socialization
The values and assumptions people hold about politics are acquired in a process called political socialization, which simply means the learning of political values and factual assumptions about politics.
Through political socialization people understand, accept, and usually approve and support the existing political system.
Agents of Political Socialization
1) Family: The family is responsible for, among other things, determining one’s attitudes towards religion and establishing career goals.
2) School: The school is the agency responsible for socializing groups of young people in particular skills and values in society. The schools attempt to mould the citizenry according to the ideals of the state.
3) Peer Groups: Peer groups refer either to a group of people who are friends or to people of similar age and characteristics. They are extremely influential in developing adolescents’ tastes and their view of the world but they vary considerably in their political impact
4) Mass Media: This includes newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, films, CDs, DVDs, internet, etc. We are dependent on the media for what we know and how we relate to the world of politics because of the media-politics connections.
5) Socio-Demographic Influences: Geographical region, race, social class, gender and age.
Other agents: State, religion, political events, art.
