Zoran Pavlović

European Journal of Political Culture

ISSN 2784 - 0271 ISSN – L 2784 – 0271

Volume 1, Issue No.1 (March 2021), pp11-19

Published: 30 March 2021

In Search of the Theory of Values in the Political Culture Research.

A commentary

Zoran Pavlović

University of Belgrade

Serbia

pavlozoran@gmail.com

There is hardly a concept in the social science literature like political culture – both ‘old’ and ‘modern’, complex and intuitive, used and disputed. It denotes the phenomena that were debated in Ancient Greece, as well as during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic; it relates to comprehensive and very complex areas of human behaviour elaborated in long books, yet seems easily understood by the common people; some use it to explain why societies and political systems ‘fail’ (e.g. Almond, 1983), while others argue that explaining something by political culture is little better than saying “I do not know” (Thompson et al., 1990). Still, when so many scholars speak the scientific language of culture and/or politics, dissonant tones and misunderstanding are to be expected.

The questions that need to be addressed regarding the study of political culture are numerous and scholars’ answers to them are often irreconcilable. A more thorough elaboration of major epistemological, theoretical, and methodological issues in the political culture studies cannot be offered here and may be found elsewhere (see, for example, Elkins & Simeon, 1979; Gibbins, 1989; Pavlović, 2017; Street, 1994; Voinea, 2020; Voinea & Neumann, 2020; Welch, 2016). Here it will suffice to say that scholars often come to the conclusion that the developments of the political culture research since the seminal work of Almond & Verba (1963) have been characterized by an intense proliferation of methodological scientific apparatus (mostly in the related fields, not the political culture studies themselves), while the theory development lagged largely behind (e.g., Voinea, 2020; Voinea & Neumann, 2020). A quick search of millions of books available in Google service shows a steady decline in covering the theme of ‘Political culture’ in the past two decades (Figure 1). Is it due to its lack of theory, i.e., political culture diminishing explanatory power? - Possibly. Any significant theoretical advancement should thus be welcomed and deserves to be inspected in closer scrutiny. We aim to offer a few remarks on the state of the art of one of the major theoretical developments in recent years – a value-based approach to political culture.

The concept of values has gained much attention in the political culture studies. Intellectual roots of a specific understanding of political culture in a psychological/subjective sense are to be found in the seminal work The Civic Culture (Almond & Verba, 1963). Pages after pages of elaboration of the role of subjective orientations hugely influenced later thinking of political culture, and the view on political culture as a set of politically relevant cognitions, perceptions, evaluations, attitudes, and behavioural predispositions, has since become predominant (Patrick, 1984; Pavlović, 2017). The classic study utilized the concept of attitude. But starting from the Inglehart’s influential theses on the cultural/value shift in advanced democracies (Inglehart, 1971; 1988; 1990) and the development of large-scale comparative surveys, such as the World Values ​​Survey, a sort of conceptual shift from the subjective orientations and attitudes to values (understood in the subjective sense, also) occurred. Dealing with the political culture today most notably means focusing on the predominant political values in a society, which, besides the study of social and political trust, seem to be a ‘hot topic’ in comparative empirical surveys on political culture today.[1]

Research under this paradigm gathered abundance of findings that show a very intense relationship between the prevailing values in a society and, broadly speaking, its quality of democracy (Inglehart & Welzel, 2005; Welzel, 2013). Values are viewed as the major consequence of the modernization processes and major antecedence of political institutions. Democracy, simply put, has cultural roots (Klingemann et al., 2006; Inglehart, 2018; Inglehart & Welzel, 2005; Welzel, 2013). Most recently, the rise of the support for the populist movement during Brexit & Trump ‘era’ has been explained by the patterns of generational differences in values (Norris & Inglehart, 2019); the greatest support for populist-authoritarians comes from the older (‘materialists’) generations as compared to their younger counterparts who are more likely to favour post-material values and their related politics. Similarly, research has long shown that such values-boosted, ‘post-materialist’ politics is visible in unconventional activism (Inglehart, 1990; Inglehart & Welzel, 2005; Welzel et al., 2005). ‘Grassroots’ political upheavals are very prominent today and most recently counterbalance the populists and democracy-in-crisis developments. The global rise in protest movements (such as #BlackLivesMatters, #MeToo) has brought a global uprising of the like-minded citizens who were motivated by emancipatory value goals and stood up in defending the basic norms of equality and justice. That is but one manifestation of the rising trends of the ‘normalizing’ protest activity as an expression of the underlying liberating and civic value preferences (e.g., Dalton et al., 2010; Inglehart & Welzel, 2005; Welzel et al., 2005).

All said, there are a lot of reasons to focus on values and treat them as the most important aspect of political culture[2]. The development of the understanding of the nature of human values started in the 1970s with Milton Rokeach’s influential work (1973). It led to a fast accumulation of knowledge on the social psychology of values and an understanding that they have great heuristic and predictive power (see, for example, Maio, 2016; Schwartz, 1992). Nowadays, it is greatly acknowledged that values are clearly conceptually different from other relevant concept such as attitudes (Maio, 2016) and coherently related to political behaviour and ideology (Caprara et al., 2006; Rokeach, 1973; Pavlović, 2017). They are the basis on which groups are formed, social identity is developed, norms are accepted, and behaviour is judged and evaluated (Maio, 2017; Rokeach, 1973; Schwartz, 1992). In research, it is well investigated and highlighted how values are developed (by ways of social learning during the process of socialization, under the influence of personal and social factors[3], see Maio, 2016 for an overview) – and changed (in cases of important personal and social events) (Rokeach, 1973; Schwartz & Bardi, 1997). Values are visible in cultural practices, rituals, and symbols, they are the major building blocks of culture, and the criteria by which the cultures are defined and measured (e.g., Inglehart & Welzel, 2005; Pavlović & Todosijević, 2020; Schwartz, 2007; Welzel, 2013). Focusing on (political) values as a core element of political culture can be justified.

Yet, the usage of the concept of values in the political culture research is dubious, theoretical assumptions frequently questionable and empirical findings misinterpreted and (often) contrary to the mainstream research on values in social psychology.

First and foremost, the major issue seems to be conceptual. The reasoning on the nature of values and their relevance for the societal measures of democracy development seems to be decided ad-hoc, by way of statistics (latent dimensions identified via factor analysis are treated as values). The measures of values often comprise dispositions (e.g., social trust) and behaviours (e.g., protest participation) that cannot be treated as values per se, but only (weakly and unclearly) related to values (Pavlović, 2009). As Schwartz noticed, the meaning of such concepts is inevitably weak (Schwartz, 2007).

Under the culturalist, value-based paradigm, the idea that values are a product of early socialization and change only on the aggregate level by the generational replacements is almost taken for granted (Inglehart, 1988; 1990; Inglehart & Welzel, 2005; Welzel, 2013). But little, if any, empirical research in social psychology supports a view of values as early instilled and unchangeable in later life, quite the contrary (Maio, 2016; Rokeach, 1973). If so, any personal or societal change would not be possible in relatively short term and there is overwhelming evidence that such changes in values do happen. We shape our cultures and deliberate our values every day through our interactions with one another. Challenges like the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic put new pressure on our cultures, and our responses to that pressure can truly mould our world in a powerful way. But if culture is constantly debated and re-created, then the patterns of values/political culture will change as a response to shocking global and local events. Such view is in accordance with the conception of values as they adapt to the prevailing social conditions and change as a response to the changing patterns of reinforcement contingencies (Schwartz & Bardi, 1997).

After all, empirical research has shown that the very same measures of different values dispositions developed under the culturalist paradigm (e.g., postmaterialist values, self-expression, or emancipative values) are sensitive to the prevailing socio-political context and this context-sensitiveness cannot be explained by the culturalist and deprivation view of values’ acceptance (e.g., Duch & Taylor, 1993; Pavlović, 2009; 2015; 2018). In more general terms, the “thick” culture conception – culture as essential, fundamental, coherent, durable – seems to be a rather poor “approximation” of the dynamic socio-political reality. As thoroughly debated elsewhere (Mishler & Pollack, 2003; Pavlović, 2016; 2018), a “thin” conception of culture, which is rationally based, reciprocally related to political institutions and dynamic, seems more valid and of greater heuristic value.

This theoretical stance has great consequences. If values “are” a relatively stable element of culture that changes only in the long term, then the often-reached conclusion on the primacy of culture over structure (Inglehart & Welzel, 2005; Ruck et al., 2020; Welzel, 2013) and the fruitfulness of efforts to build democracy where democratic political culture is weak seems “justified”. However, we must be very precautious when making such inferences and not just because of the opposite set of empirical findings (e.g., Muller & Seligson, 1994; Seligson, 2002). The empirical research in the study of values (in any social science discipline) is yet to prove that values cause anything. The fact that mass attitudes and values ​​are correlated with the societal measures of the political system effectiveness and stability is unequivocally supported by the systematic and comprehensive empirical research (e.g., Dalton & Welzel, 2014; Inglehart, 2018; Inglehart & Welzel, 2005; Welzel, 2013). A quick visit to the websites of large comparative projects, such as the World Values Survey, and even a brief overview of their published data will dissuade any open-minded sceptic. There is also evidence that values drive subsequent institutional change more than the other way around (Ruck et al., 2020; Welzel, 2013). But it is all correlations in the end and correlation is not causation. The more important point of this issue is that there are some limits in what we can know, i.e., ontological shortcomings inherent in, among other things, cross-sectional research designs and great complexity of the studied phenomena.

Further, correlations are relative measures. The fact that countries’ average value levels co-vary with, for example, their ratings on some measures of the quality of democracy does not necessarily mean that democratic values are highly accepted, and political culture is civic in more democratic countries in some absolute sense. The low level of political knowledge (Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996; Gronlund & Milner, 2006), the prevailing political intolerance (Mondak & Sanders, 2003; Peffly & Rohrsceneider, 2003; Sullivan et al., 1979) or declining political participation (Gray & Caul, 2000) are widespread in both democratic and less-democratic countries. Hence, this leads us to the simple and general rule of human individual and/or collective behaviour. The mere “presence” of values does not “guarantee” any social change or political consequences. People’s collective behaviour that brings societal consequences is never motivated by values and values only. It is rather the other way around – values themselves are utilized at different levels and in a different manner, depending on the wider social context.

That said, the often-drawn conclusion that post-communist countries’ low prospects of developing full democracy due to incongruent political culture (Klingemann et al., 2006) misses two points. One is that values can be grown by effective institutional pressures or by creating the values’ supportive context (Muller & Seligson, 1994; Pavlović, 2015; 2018; Spaiser, Ranganathan, Mann, & Sumpter, 2014). This emanates from the very idea of values as relatively stable dispositions, moulded by personal and social factors; values are learned, and can be un-learned and re-learned. Civic culture is, in a sort of a “virtuous circle”, thus moulded both from below (social, intellectual, and material empowerment) and from above (institutional arrangements). The second important point is the mirroring “vicious circle”. A sort of culture inertia that hardened the road to democracy, for example, in the Eastern Europe during the 1990s, was in some instances paralleled by a sort of institutional inertia. Long after its introduction, democratic institutions stayed democratic in names only. Therefore, the lack in civic culture can be due to the absence of systematic and effective institutional incentives to develop it, which further obstructs the process of democratization and so on.

Finally, all this would mean that a more ‘local’ perspective is needed. Looking back at the civic culture study, one of its authors, Sidney Verba, recently reminded that,

“The book has been criticised as having a näıve, too Anglo-Saxon model of democracy, as paying too little attention to context and institutional structures; that it put cultures into similar a mould”

(Verba, 2015: 238).

Analysing the cultural preconditions of democracy today largely suffers from the same overstatement weaknesses. The established relationships are usually presented with a universalistic tone. There are nevertheless important “deviant” cases that do not question the role of values and culture in politics but lead to more elaborated and nuanced insights into the complex dynamics of the relationship between the citizens and the state. It really does not take much effort to show that each and every national state on the Earth is a unique community, heterogeneous in every possible way, in terms of political culture, among other things. There is no one-size-fits-it-all solution to the problem of democracy developments. The sooner we acknowledge that – the better.

More than half a century ago, in a paper which introduced the notion of political culture in its modern meaning, Gabriel Almond (1956) stated that the ultimate criterion of heuristic usefulness of scientific concepts was “in the hands of the future scholarly generations who will try them out for ‘fit’” (p. 409). Just after the fall of the communism and in the down of the democratization wave in the 1990s, Almond, optimistically, stated that,

“After all these years, it is clear that the concept of political culture has found its place in the conceptual vocabulary of political science ... it is part of the strategy of explanation”

(Almond, 1993: 14).

Most recently, Verba (2015) concluded that the basic statement of civic culture study “will continue to make a mark upon the future trajectory of comparative research on public opinion” (p. 234).

It seems that the “show” still goes on and is not to be over anytime soon, if ever.

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[1] We cannot elaborate this issue further on, but this conclusion stands for the mainstream comparative quantitative surveys.

[2] Although explicit positioning is rarely given, under the value-based approach to political culture, values are essentially seen not as one aspect, but as the political culture. The two concepts are treated as overlapping (see Pantić & Pavlović, 2009).

[3] As a consequence, the acquisition of values is not uniform and the society’s culture in value terms is never homogenous and unitary. Everyone adopts their own “private” and selective version of society’s culture (Kluckhon, 1954). This has several implications for the later discussion, most obvious being the overlooking of the heterogeneity of the culture when “measuring” it by way of aggregating individual values.

Corresponding Author:

Dr. Zoran Pavlović, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Psychology, University of Belgrade, Serbia. Contact Address: pavlozoran@gmail.com

Copyright @ 2021, Zoran Pavlović

European Journal of Political Culture Vol. 1(1):11-19.

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