Political culture

Political culture is a political science, sociological and historical technical term with which the distribution is all called cognitive, emotional, and rater ( evaluative ) settings related to policy issues, in particular settings for general order, organization of the political system in a society and their own role in the system.

The political culture of a state or of parts of its population can take various forms, for example, if the majority prefers a democratic political system, the political culture can be described as "democratic", with multiple forms of democratic political culture are conceivable. If political culture and political order of a state differ significantly and in the long term, which can lead to serious problems of legitimacy of the state and to its destabilization. There are also implications for the integration, participation and political participation of members of society.

Conceptual history

The term political culture comes from the United States and is in the research generally as value-free. In common usage in Germany, however, there is a purely positive use of the term for a stylish and moral approach to political power, which is either endorsed or may be denied a. This use of the term in common parlance and in the press is to be distinguished from the scientific definition of terms.

The " Civic Culture " study

For the first time Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba led the term political culture in policy research a. In the 1950s, they tried to clarify the question of why some young democracies fell apart shortly before the Second World War, but were able to establish other systems with the same institutional design and socio-economic development in the long term. An international study was designed to demonstrate the basic assumption Almonds and Verbas that for the existence of a political system a certain congruence between political culture and the political system was necessary. Scientists define political culture as follows:

" The political culture of a nation is the Particular distribution of patterns of orientation toward political objects among the members of the nation. "

This claim Almond and Verba that generally the part of the citizens, there are four orientations in relation to the political system.

The result of the collective interrogation of these orientations, including statistical analysis, the two scientists leads to the formation of three ideal-typical cultures:

Indicates the predominant presence of this orientation in the population - is the predominant absence of this orientation in the population.

As an example of a parochial political culture political scientists was that of Mexico. In Germany they found a culture subjects. With the release of their study in 1963 Almond / Verba spoke clearly in favor of a mixed culture of parochial political, participatory and subjects elements as ideal type. As an example of the political culture of the United States and Britain should be considered.

Starting from these concepts were made developments of the concept of political culture by Seymour M. Lipset and David Easton. In German-speaking countries the concepts of Dieter Fuchs are to be mentioned. Strong attention was in particular the concept of political support by David Easton.

Karl Rohe

At the Civic Culture study their only quantitative character has been criticized frequently. Karl Rohe contrast, has performed a qualitative concept of political culture in the field.

The concept of political culture is primarily a macro concept, which makes use of aggregated individual data ( from surveys ) and therefore involves the micro level. With the political culture, the political culture research sets out ways in which is a part of political science. Wide application learns it by the Comparative Politics.