Political culture
Bell Ringer:
Explain the term political culture. Why is it important to
examine political culture as well as political institutions
and laws to understand a political system.
Agenda:
Reading Quiz
Political Culture
Homework:
Bring textbook next class
Read Chapter 5
Political culture refers to the broad pattern of
ideas, beliefs, and values about citizens and
government held by a population.
In American political culture, our expectations
of government focus on rules and processes
rather than results.
•We
think government should guarantee a fair
playing field but not guarantee equal
outcomes for all players.
•We
believe that individuals are responsible
for their own welfare and that what is good
for them is good for society as a whole.
Shared core values:
•Liberty
•Equality
•Individualism
•Democracy
•Rule
of law
•Civic duty
Political culture
Objectives:
•Understand
the distinct set of beliefs fundamental to how most Americans think
about government and politics.
•Analyze how political culture has changed over the past 100 years
•Determine how much Americans believe in civic liberty and political tolerance
Bell Ringer:
The U.S. political culture emphasizes the importance of civic duty. This belief has no
validity unless political efficacy exists in reality. Discuss the degree to which the
American public possesses a sense of political efficacy. Is the cultural value of civic
duty legitimately realized in the opinion of the public?
Agenda:
CBM
Political Culture
Alexis de Tocqueville
Homework:
Chapter 5 Review questions
Finish de Tocqueville reading
To live as a nation, citizens have to share a view of
who they are, how they should live, and what their
world should be like.
If not…
They fragment and break apart
Political cultures provide coherence and national
unity to citizens who may be very different in other
ways.
Americans achieve national unity through a
political culture based on visions of democracy,
freedom, and equality.
Although Americans have much in common,
there are over 250 million of us.
We are very different in terms of our
backgrounds.
•Religion
•Education
•Geography
•Race
•Gender
•Prejudices
This causes us to have lots of different beliefs
about politics, the economy, and society.
This is what divides us into opposing camps.
Ideologies: sets of beliefs about politics and
society that help people make sense of their
world.
Luckily our core values about how the world
should be, we can debate and resolve our
differences usually without letting those
differences get out of hand.
Conservatives
•Republicans
•Government
control should be
minimal
•Government can’t be trusted
with too much power
•Government not a competent
economic actor
•Typically wealthier, uppermiddle class
Liberals
•Democrats
•Government
should play
larger role in regulating the
economy
•Economic market can’t
regulate itself, left alone
susceptible to things like
recessions and depressions
•More likely to be lowerpaid blue collar workers
No successful communist or socialist parties in the U.S. Our two
parties still on relatively the same spot on the political
continuum.
•More
people CAN participate in our representative democracy
now than 200 years ago.
•Doesn’t
mean that more people DO participate.
•American
voter turnout rates are abysmally low compared to
other Western industrialized democracies.
•Political
efficacy: the extent to which people feel that their
beliefs and opinions matter and will be responded to by the
government.
•Many
Americans tend to be apathetic toward politics. “my
vote doesn’t matter”. Why is this?
•Elitist:
doesn’t really matter whether people
participate or not all important decisions made by
elites.
1.
2.
3.
4.
Military
Business leaders
Politicians
Media
•Pluralist:
Americans don’t need to participate
individually because their needs are represented in
government sufficiently through their membership
in various groups.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Environmental groups
Labor unions
Professional associations
Religious groups
Veteran’s groups
But…Some say the falling levels of involvement,
interest,
and trust in politics signal a true civic crisis.
•
Democracies can only survive with the
support and participation of citizens.
•
Citizens don’t trust government.
•
Some take their freedoms for granted,
assume that since they were born free,
they’ll naturally remain free.
•
We live in an age of overwhelming cynicism
about and distrust in government.
•
People don’t vote and don’t pay attention to
political issues.
Question of how democratic the U.S. is a question
of power.
Who is likely to be a winner in the political
process?
Looked at this way, the question has lots to do
with your
life, especially as government starts to make
more demands
on your life.
So what? PARTICIPATE!