Political socialization

Political socialization refers to the process by which individuals acquire orientation patterns for community related issues. Since the socialization to the entire conscious and unconscious acquisition of knowledge and skills, attitudes and values ​​related ( internalization ), the term is extremely complex and to be understood in the context of the political culture and education.

While the political socialization in the strict sense then asks how the orientation pattern obtained and are being developed, can be used in a broader sense, the content and results of the process are viewing. Here are overlaps for opinion research.

Conceptual content

Man must learn what the society into which he is born, expected of him, on the other hand, as it can fulfill these expectations in the course of his life on one hand.

Socialization initially refers to the process in which the individuals, the norms, values ​​and behaviors acquire that are deemed appropriate by the group or society as essential in order to meet their requirements. It is a reciprocal process: The company characterizes the behavior of their agreeable ( learning ) individuals, which in turn affect society, are thus actively involved in their development.

The political socialization refers to the behaviors and preferences that belong to the role of the individual in a particular nation and have regard to public life, such as the willingness to participate in political processes.

Research approaches

In the political socialization research can distinguish between instances, processes and content.

Instances

In the instances the focus is on institutions and actors, which in turn are simplistically divided into three areas: A distinction between the primary instance to which about the family or informal friendship groups include, the secondary ones such as schools and youth work, and the tertiary to the political and social institutions include, for example political parties, associations and churches. A clear temporal or hierarchical order, however, may be no empirical evidence, because the instances influence one another and are intertwined.

Processes

The crystallization theory assumes that the early childhood, acquired in the family orientations forever remain in effect. In this way they determine future values ​​of political opinion and action. For the results of the process is not only crucial, when and by whom, but how something is taken. Different parenting styles and forms of communication play an important role. Recent research seems to support that early acquired preferences for general factors - such as the general willingness of political participation - are extremely persistent.

Content

Here one can distinguish between inputs and results of political socialization. Since empirical surveys produce static images in the first place, gradients are, however, only be determined by complicated procedures outweighs the content area that is limited to a sequence of data on the time axis.

Situation in Germany

Research in this field based in Germany after the Second World War, mainly due to the " failed " political socialization of generations, which allows the Nazis or had not prevented.

The older psycho- analytical, research authoritarianism as the newer, coming from the United States structuralist approaches looked just as on the causes of the German catastrophe as on opportunities and successes of the democratic development of West Germany.