European Journal of Political Culture

ISSN 2784 - 0271 ISSN – L 2784 – 0271

Volume 1, Issue No.1 (March 2021), pp.1-9

Published: 30 March 2021

Political Culture at Crossroads:

Resistance to Change vs. Pressure for Change

Editorial for the Launching Issue of the European Journal of Political Culture

Camelia Florela Voinea

European Research Center for Political Culture

Faculty of Political Science

University of Bucharest

Romania

camelia.voinea@unibuc.ro

Argument

Political Culture Theory has been founded in the mid-1960s when Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba published their seminal work “The Civic Culture”. The theory proved the strength of its arguments on impressive empirical data sets collected from five countries: measuring the quality and stability of democracy by measuring the citizens’ attitudes towards public policy and governance, and quantifying the performances of governance, state institutions and political leadership with a new concept, the “open polity”.

The precious idea of their study, namely the relationship between the citizens and the state, represents until today a most powerful approach to the study of any political system, in particular a democracy.

The notion of “political culture” has fueled ever since new theoretical works aimed at explaining it (Pye and Verba, 1969), and hot debates over the nature of this theory. The classic approach of its founders, which combined behaviorism and methodological individualism, has been followed by several other approaches on both theoretical and methodological dimensions, including Weberian, Marxist, neo-Tocquevillian, or neo-Durkeheiminian readings of the term (DaSilva, Clark and Vieira, 2015). Though resistant to change, the classic door remained opened to new theory.

The challenge of new theory development as well as the challenge of the technological development underlying the dynamics of communication and interaction at the societal and political levels has increasingly deepened the pressure for appropriately define the philosophical and methodological status of the classic political culture theory (Voinea, 2020).

Somehow at crossroads between the past and the future, political culture theory seems to teach us another lesson beside that of endurance: the lesson of resisting to a change in argument in order to make the big change toward a new science of participation. In a world globally threatened by as small, invisible, and lethal enemy as the coronavirus, there is no greater release than the idea of a world able to escape the threat by making the individual actors participating in its own re-making. It is this idea of participating in the making of the world that has kept the political culture theory in the lights of the global arena.

It is from here that we start our new endeavor: a new academic journal about political culture theory and research.

Introduction

Political culture theory as conceived by its founders, Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, is a theory of comparative analysis between countries on matters of specific cultures of political participation which makes citizens get involved in a feedback relationship with the government and political leadership, in particular, in the democratic societies. Democracy, democratization, and stability of democratic regimes for large periods of time have been the main concerns of their study. The concepts which have been fundamental for this remarkable work – the attitudes and the open polity – have provided the means for quantitative comparative analysis of the level and quality of citizens’ political participation in the public debates on public policies.

With time, political culture theory has been applied to the study of citizens’ political participation in various political regimes in different countries all over the world. Overwhelmed sometimes by the harsh criticism (Lane, 1992; Pateman, 1971), political culture theory has passed through long periods of reconstruction. Notwithstanding the criticism, political culture theory had several successful comebacks on the front stage of political science debates (Elkins and Simeon, 1979; Mishler and Pollack, 2003). Moreover, it has remained largely in the same conceptual framework and succeeded to preserve its traditional image of undeniable utility as a means of comparative analysis of governance performances in terms of the citizens’ favorable attitudes towards public policies and political leadership. Its unforgettable comeback to the most debated issues of the major political phenomena which covered the deposing of communism in the Eastern Europe and the transition to democracy of the ex-communist countries after the fall of the iron curtain in the 1990s have acknowledged once more its strong explanative power (Mishler and Pollack, 2003; Mishler and Rose, 2001; Klingemann, 1999; Rose, 1998a, 1998b; Rose, Mishler and Haerpfer, 1998; Klingemann and Fuchs, 1995). After several decades, political culture theory proved its resilience against a long list of criticism issues and disproving arguments concerning its missing definition, its missing ontological and epistemological status, and the questionable appropriateness of attitudes as a basic concept (Welch, 2013; Formisano, 2001). Proving in turn a strong pragmatism (Fuchs, 2007), political culture theory provided high expertise and conceptual support in the quantitative comparative analysis of the collective perceptions and expectations, beliefs and value systems, attitudes, and behaviors of the citizens in the post-communist societies with respect to democracy.

However, several decades after 1970s and several decades after 1989 as well, the context and the content of the debates has changed as the political culture research field witnessed the advent of both new theory and new technologies of the artificial with a strong impact on the contemporary condition of political culture theory.

Why does political culture theory remain attractive?

The power and appeal of classic political culture theory resides in some of its essential features:

• Its impressive empirical support for approaching the issues of democratization, stability of democratic regimes.

• Its explanatory power and predictive capacities concerning research issues like collective action, mass behavior, and attitudes toward institutions, governance, and political leadership.

The criticism which has always accompanied political culture theoretical as well as empirical approaches is itself grounded in its other essential (either missing or insufficiently developed) features:

• Its definition as well as both its ontological and epistemological dimensions have constantly required sound approaches and clarifications with respect to its philosophical identity as theory,

• Its predictive value as based on its anticipative (forecasting) capability has systematically addressed the governance dynamic evolutions without providing more than just empirical evidence toward enhancing a conceptual development of a sound theory of the relationship between political culture and political system.

Dimensions of change in the political culture mainstream and connected areas

There could be identified several major dimensions of theoretical and methodological research along which change could be noticed both inside and outside political culture theory.

Some of these dimensions are referred as characteristics of the political culture mainstream research:

First and foremost, there is the relationship between the citizens and the state: the influence citizens have on the state’s operation and dynamics by means of their attitudes toward the public policies. Second, a Parsonian-inspired relationship between a specific type of political participation characterized by the specific attitudes of the citizens toward the political system and democracy as a political system.

Political culture has provided a way to explain what happened in 1989 in the Eastern Europe: the change of communist political system after more than half century. It has been most convincing in providing the conceptual and empirical means to explain the transition phenomena from autocracy to democracy in the Eastern European ex-communist countries. With an enhanced empirical evidence background provided by the huge databases appeared and developed after the 1980s and especially after the 1990s when public surveys could be conducted in the Eastern European countries as well, like WVS[1], ESS[2], and EVS[3], political culture theory has offered the appropriate framework for the study of the new democracies in the Eastern Europe. Exploring and explaining the hard democratization phenomena following the Fall of Berlin Wall, as well as the support for democracy, the transition to democracy and the further consolidation of democracy in the post-communist societies of the eastern half of Europe, made political culture theory one of the most attractive theories. Citizens’ support for democracy has been the major dimension of comparative quantitative analysis in revealing the role played by the citizens in the dynamics of democratic consolidation in Eastern European countries after the after the fall of the iron curtain, in the dynamics of legitimacy, and in their trust in democratic institutions (Klingemann and Fuchs, 1995; Klingemann, 1999).

Other dimensions are referred as directions of internal theory development which have revised some of the fundamental assumptions of the classic political theory:

The theory of modernization developed by Inglehart (Inglehart, 1997; Inglehart and Welzel, 2005) addresses modernization as a process of human development achieved through a chain of economic, technological, and social change phenomena which explain and predict relevant change in the mass value systems of entire societies. The theory of human development revisits the classic theory of modernization and introduces the human empowerment as a theory of social change on a political culture basis by means of three components: the social and economic development, the emancipative cultural change and democratization (Inglehart, Klingemann and Welzel, 2003. In this view, the concept of ‘attitude’ from the classic political culture theory as conceived by Almond and Verba (1963) is replaced with the concept of ‘value’ to the aim of better identify the fundamental concept of political culture and increase its explanatory power. The theory addresses the influence governance has on the entire society down to the individual level by means of the public policies.

Third, there is a huge list of connected areas outside political culture in which research approaches are convergent with the basic assumptions of political culture theory. They address processes of meaning formation in various social and cultural settings from collective perceptions to emotions, attitudes, and behaviors. A good example of connected theoretical areas are those based on narratives: from the governance narratives (Turnbull, 2016; Wagenaar, 2011) to policy narratives (Shanahan, McBeth and Hathaway, 2011). They address the issue of meaning formation from collective perceptions and representations concerning public policy or governance.

Finally, there are some dimensions outside and apparently quite distant from the political culture mainstream. They cover areas of both theoretical and methodological research which provide support to the research ideas of political culture but in different conceptual and methodological settings. The rising interest in the anticipatory systems proves not only a shift in conceptual setting from Parsons’s works (1937, 1951) to Luhmann’s (2012, 1995), but also a shift in paradigm from reactive systems to complex adaptive systems.

Reactive vs. Anticipatory in Political Culture Research

Political culture theory aims to identify the attributes which characterize the citizens’ culture of participation to the political life. Their approach is essentially based on the “reactivity” of the main actors such that explanation consists in revealing the inputs and outputs of a relationship between the citizens and the state. Political attitudes embed the reactions of the individual actor, its backgrounds and internal structure, and its consequences in action decision-making. On the other part, the open polity models the government able to receive feedback and consequently update the policy-making process.

The classic concepts of “political attitudes” and “open polity” need to be revised as the reality of these terms changed a lot (Voinea, 2016). Moreover, political participation needs to be defined in different terms. All this might need addressing other areas of research.

One such area is represented by the domain of anticipatory systems (Rosen, 1985). There is an anticipative dimension of political culture theory which covers its predictive power (Almond and Verba, 1963: p.353). However, the anticipatory systems represent a theoretical area which might provide for substantial revisions of the classic political culture concepts, like the attitudes and the open polity concepts. Anticipatory systems are systems which embed models of themselves and operate on such internal models in order to adapt to contextual change. Viewed from this perspective, political culture could be defined as an internal model of the political system and its own dynamics could induce adaptivity in the political system itself. On the other hand, political system as an anticipatory system could embed multiple internal models, which could in turn embed their own internal models. Imbrication of such internal models might explain the structural relationship between several sub-systems inside political culture, like value system, belief systems, and attitude system.

The notions of “community” and “polity” need to be defined as anticipatory systems with internal models and self-organizing capacities based on their anticipatory capabilities. The view of the open polity as an anticipative system is not new, it has been suggested by the classic text (Almond and Verba, 1963: p.353). The approach is, however, different since anticipatory systems are complex adaptive systems. While the classic suggestion makes reference to the notion of “political anticipation“ in the traditional meaning of ‘prediction’, today there are two alternative meanings and theories about what is called ‘anticipative thinking’ (Caillol, 2017), and “anticipatory systems” as defined by (Leydesdorff and Dubois, 2004; Leydesdorff, 2003, Dubois, 1998; Rosen, 1985).

Connected research areas, no matter how close or distant, could transform the classic picture of political culture into a puzzle with many missing pieces. If found and placed in their proper place in this puzzle, these missing pieces might reveal that political culture is just a small part of a much more enhanced body of theories on political participation, and political system.

European Journal for Political Culture: The Launching Issue

Launching the European Journal of Political Culture in the current context, is a challenge for students of political culture from all connected research areas and from all over the world.

This Launching Issue brings together few articles about political culture and the research approaches in areas which are worth taking into consideration in order to understand what political culture is or could be. It aims at recommending debate issues, research ideas and essential trends in political culture research. The Contributors to this EJPC Launching Issue aim at stimulating the interest in publishing research on political culture as developed in – but not limited to - as different areas as political and computer sciences, social-psychology and cognitive sciences, the sciences of the urban and artificial environments: a brief overview of the areas introduced by each contribution in this special issue would reveal a whole body of theories, methodologies, discussions and debates which are currently at the heart of political culture research.

For the students of political participation, political culture theory (Almond and Verba, 1963) remains a reference theory. After more than half century, this founding work still dominates the area by emphasizing a concept of political participation which has not been surpassed over time. The young generation, here represented by Marlene Mauk and Stylianos Ioannis Tzagkarakis consider the political culture theory as a reference system in quantitative analysis of the democracies, institutions, and patterns of political participations.

Plamen Akalyiski and Zoran Pavlovic emphasize how theories in the sociology of culture, value theory or human empowerment theory have contributed to keep stable, but also enlarge the classic theory of political culture on both theoretical and methodological dimensions.

Zsolt Boda takes a critical view on the types of political participation, like populism, and take this chance to emphasize a specific political culture of social and political participation in terms of values, beliefs, and attitudes of the citizens, in particular of the European citizens.

Hermann Dülmer provides and a research approach on modelling methodologies in a paper about modernization and democracy taking a methodological stance in political culture research by addressing advanced causality modelling and empirical methodology.

Camelia Florela Voinea approaches the political culture research from a Luhmannian perspective addressing the anticipatory system modelling as a means to explain meaning formation as well as co-existence and co-operation of citizens and governments in complex adaptive political systems.

Political culture theory and the theories which have been founded around it in the past half century have met a challenge much stronger than ever before: the challenge of re-defining the political participation and the challenge of defining a participative kind of society and polity. It is something which one might call “society and polity ‘in-the-making’”, a project which cannot exist without or outside a characteristic (political) culture. It is one of the dimensions of political culture theory which gives us the chance of turning the classic theory into a new theory.

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[1] World Value Survey, online access at url: < http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/>.

[2] European Social Survey, online access at url: < http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/>.

[3] European Value Study, online access at url: < http://www.europeanvaluestudy.eu>.

Corresponding Author:

Camelia Florela Voinea, European Research Center for Political Culture, Department of Public Policy, International Relations and Security Studies, Faculty of Political Science, University of Bucharest, Romania.

E-mail: camelia.voinea@unibuc.ro

Copyright @ 2021, Camelia Florela Voinea

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