政治文化——从公民文化到大众文化

Political Culture–from Civic Culture to Mass Culture
John Street
British Journal of Political Science / Volume 24 / Issue 01 / January 1994, pp 95 ­ 113 DOI: 10.1017/S0007123400006803, Published online: 27 January 2009
Link to this article: /abstract_S0007123400006803 How to cite this article: John Street (1994). Political Culture–from Civic Culture to Mass Culture. British Journal of Political Science, 24, pp 95­113 doi:10.1017/S0007123400006803 Request Permissions : Click here
Review Article: Political Culture - from Civic Culture to Mass Culture
JOHncy within political science to treat political culture like a familiar piece of furniture. Everyone is vaguely aware of its existence, but only rarely do they comment upon it (usually when they bump into it accidentally); and few bother to ask how it came to be there in the first place. Textbooks on British politics typically regard political culture as part of the backdrop, against which the main dramatic activity takes place. Political culture appears as secondary, something which, while enriching our understanding of political life, is not deemed essential to our comprehension of it. The intellectual roots of this attitude can be found in Marxism and functionalism. Both treat culture as subservient to material forces or systemic requirements. Such positions do not necessarily deny all relevance to the ideas and values which constitute political culture, but they do limit severely its role in explaining political activity. And even those who, like Brian Barry, belong to neither methodological camp believe that, compared to political culture, there are usually more parsimonious explanations for political action.' Other thinkers, however, make political culture a core idea. Early in the second volume of Democracy in America, de Tocqueville writes: In order that society should exist and, a fortiori, that a society should prosper, it is necessary that the mind of all the citizens should be rallied and held together by certain predominant ideas; and this cannot be the case unless each of them sometimes draws his opinions from the common source and consents to accept certain matters of belief already formed.2 This broad suggestion, that society is forged in the interaction of beliefs, inspires those who place political culture at the centre of their analysis. Thus, Aaron
British Journal of Political Science
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B.J.Pol.S. 24,95-114 Printed in Great Britain
Copyright © 1993 Cambridge University Press
* School of Economic and Social Studies, University of East Anglia. The author thanks Keith Dowding, Martin Hollis, David Marsh, Steve Smith, Albert Weale and an anonymous referee for their comments on the first version of this review. They were justly sceptical and generously constructive. 1 B. Barry, Sociologists, Economists, and Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 51. 2 A. de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Volume II (New York: Knopf, 1945), p. 8. It is a view whose origins are most frequently ascribed to J. G. Herder, see Reflections on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968; originally published in 1791).
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Wildavsky argues that it is culture which generates people's preferences, and that these, in turn, drive the political process.3 In 1963, the argument over the explanatory usefulness of political culture was galvanized by the publication of Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba's The Civic Culture* Its focus on culture meshed with challenges to Marxist materialism and mechanical structural-functionalism, while its empirical methodology clashed with an emerging doubt about positivism and individualism. Thirty years later, there are signs that culture is again becoming an important concern of political scientists. The collapse of Marxist regimes and the rise of nationalism have drawn attention to the way regimes legitimate themselves and the way citizens identify themselves, both processes which suggest an important mediating role for culture. Political culture is also implicated in the debate over the effect of mass communications on political behaviour.5 At the same time, there has been a theoretical turn within the social sciences towards postmodernism, which, in its disdain for grand narratives and first causes, has placed increasing weight on cultural accounts of human action.6 To observe these events and trends does not, of course, make an incontrovertible case for the reinstatement of political culture, but they do suggest that this is a good moment to re-examine its usefulness to political science. Thus, this review asks whether political culture provides more than background colour to an account of political action.7 If political culture has a useful role, then we need, first, to know what the term means; we then need to be able to say what role - if any - it plays in explaining behaviour. For political culture to have any explanatory force it must do more than simply fill out the details of political action; it must actually shape (or even determine) the character and intention of that action. A cultural theory must account for action more persuasively than do, say, materialist or rational choice theories. Or more weakly, it must demonstrate