European Journal of Political Culture

ISSN 2784 - 0271 ISSN – L 2784 – 0271

Volume 1, Issue No.1 (March 2021)

Published: 30 March 2021

My View on Political Culture

Marlene Mauk

GESIS

Marlene.Mauk@gesis.org

My view on political culture is rooted in the works of Almond and Verba (1963) and David Easton (1965, 1975). I understand political culture as the composite and interplay of citizens’ beliefs about and attitudes towards the political system, its values, its institutions, and its actors. In this paradigm, political culture is fundamental for the stability and functioning of any political system. When political culture and political regime align, citizens may serve as pillars of regime stability; a mismatch between political culture and political regime, in contrast, is hardly sustainable in the long run and will eventually become a driver of political change. Studying citizens’ views of the political system can help us understand phenomena like democratization, democratic backsliding, or the rise of populism. My own research takes a quantitative and comparative approach to studying political culture, focusing on the attitudinal aspects of the concept, i.e., on political support and its causes and consequences, in democracies and autocracies.

References

Almond, G.A. and Verba, S. (1963). The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Easton, D. (1965). A Systems Analysis of Political Life. New York: Wiley.

Easton, D. (1975). A Re-Assessment of the Concept of Political Support. British Journal of Political Science 5(4): 435–457.

Corresponding Author:

Dr. Marlene Mauk, Postdoctoral Researcher, Knowledge Exchange & Outreach, Research Gateway EUROLAB, GESIS. Contact Address:: Marlene.Mauk@gesis.org

Copyright @ 2021, Marlene Mauk

European Journal of Political Culture, (March 2021) 1(1): 10.

Open Access

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