Political Culture – shared political values, beliefs and norms.
a distinctive pattern of ideals about how
political life ought to be carried out
Liberty/Freedom
- Speech
- Religion
- Privacy
Equality
-political: one man
one vote
- legal: equal protection
- economic: opportunity
not results
Democracy
Civic Duty
- equal representation
- right of majority
- respect of minority
- participation/adversarial
- obey laws
- pay taxes
- vote
- serve on jury
Important Related Effects of Political Culture:
Mistrust of Government
(+) = “fear of government”
Political Efficacy:
internal:
external:
(-) = cynicism
is it all worthwhile- being a US citizen?
confidence in your ability to understand and
participate in political affairs.
confidence that government will listen and
respond to your efforts to influence policy.
How Do We Know What We Should
Value? = Political Socialization
The learning of Political Culture
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
AGENTS OF SOCIALIZATION (teachers of culture)
Family
Education
Peers
Government (overt socialization)
Media
Be aware that socialization is not the same for all nor does it have the same effect on all. In fact
some values taught are in conflict. Wilson calls these “crosscutting cleavages”
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
occupation ( social class)
Region
Ethnicity/race
Religion
Gender
So yes we have an American Political Culture, but differences in how to live these
values out, are present because of how or how deeply people have been socialized
or how present are crosscutting cleavages in our lives. These differences can
comprise what is called- Political Opinion
Public Opinion
is
the distribution of individual attitudes toward a particular issue, candidate, or political institution.
Although the definition is simple enough,
public opinion encompasses the attitudes of millions of diverse people from many racial, ethnic, age, and regional groups.
As a result, the study of American public opinion is especially complex,
but also very important. For American government to operate democratically, the opinions of the American public
must reach and become an integral part of the political process
POLITICAL CULTURE
=
POLITICAL Opinion/ Ideology=
set of agreed upon values and goals
the manner of best achieving those
same agreed upon values/goals
an ideology is a consistent set of beliefs/attitudes
For United States in 2014, we make this highly complex difference in political opinion too simplistic with the
notions of
LIBERAL
versus
CONSERVATIVE
the LEFT
DEMOCRAT
PROGRESSIVE
versus
versus
versus
the RIGHT
REPUBLICAN (GOP)
ORTHODOX