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Politics and Culture: Exploring Dimensions and Current Issues

This lecture and seminar module explores definitions and dimensions of political culture, including value orientations, ethnicity, religion, and tradition. It also examines current issues in political culture theory, such as social capital, civilizations, and gender equality.

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Politics and Culture: Exploring Dimensions and Current Issues

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  1. Core Issues in Comparative Politics(PO233)Module Director: Dr. Renske DoorenspleetAssociate Professor in Comparative Politicsdirector Centre for Studies in DemocratizationDepartment of Politics and International StudiesUniversity of Warwick, UK www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/staff/doorenspleet/ www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/research/csd/ e-mail: renske.doorenspleet@warwick.ac.uk

  2. Content Lecture week 9 • Definitions of Political Culture • Dimensions of Political Culture • Current Issues in Political Culture Theory • Contents of seminar week 10

  3. A. Definitions of Political Culture Culture: sociologists and anthropologists versus political scientists ‘Way of life’ versus ‘attitudes’ See also Ersson and Lane (2008: 423, box 17.1)

  4. A. Definitions of Political Culture Theorizing political culture goes back to classical political theory ‘Political culture in a society consists of the system of empirical beliefs, expressive symbols and values which defines the situation in which political action takes place’ (Verba 1969) It stands for the basic attitudes of people towards politics, policy and polity.

  5. B. Dimensions of Political Culture • Value orientations: • Scholars (selection): • Books and articles by Inglehart (since 1977) • Kaase and Newton (1995) Beliefs in Government • Klingemann and Fuchs (1995) Citizens and the State • Norris (1999) Critical Citizens • Dalton (2008) Citizen Politics • Methods: quantitative, large-N, statistical methods • Data: mainly World Values Studies (WVS)

  6. B. Dimensions of Political Culture • Value orientations: • - 1. Support for political institutions • - 2. Post-materialism • - 3. Interpersonal trust (see Ersson and Lane 2008: 426-427) • - 4. Secularization (see Ersson and Lane 2008: 428-429)

  7. B. Dimensions of Political Culture • Value orientations: • - 1. Support for political institutions

  8. B. Dimensions of Political Culture • Value orientations: • - 2. Post-materialism

  9. B. Dimensions of Political Culture • Value orientations: • danger of ecological fallacy (Robinson’s principle) • see all strengths and weaknesses of quantitative research (see week 2 and 3)

  10. B. Dimensions of Political Culture • (2) Ethnicity: • Fields of research: • Theories of nation/ nationalism (see week 7-8) • Racism • Multiculturalism

  11. B. Dimensions of Political Culture • (3) Religion: • Micro and macro implications • Religion impacts politics through: • Cleavages within societies • Cleavages between cultures (religions as civilizations) • With the rise of fundamentalism, the relevance of religion to politics has increased

  12. B. Dimensions of Political Culture • Tradition: • Cultures inherited from the past may have a great relevance to the presence (collective consciousness) • Elazar’s typology (1966): see Lane and Ersson 2008: 433-436

  13. C. Current Issues in Political Culture Theory • Since the early 2000s attention has focused on three topics: • Social capital: • * Aims at explaining democratic and institutional performance • * Social capital emerged from trust theory • * Difficult to define social capital empirically, since there are different ways to measure trust: • Direct: Interpersonal trust values • Indirect: Occurrence of free associations

  14. C. Current Issues in Political Culture Theory • Civilizations: • * Clash of civilizations (Huntington’s thesis) • * Integration of Muslim population in Europe • * Cultural compactness

  15. C. Current Issues in Political Culture Theory • (3) Gender equality and homosexuality: • * Cultural change fostered post-materialist value • * Attitudes towards gender equality and acceptance of homosexuality are strongly correlated • * New political cleavage in post-modern societies

  16. C. Current Issues in Political Culture Theory Conclusion: Not only political institutions (part 1 in term 2!), but also culture seems to have an influence on politics.

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