The Intersection of the Political and Geographical: Elazar

The political culture of the U.S. is rooted in two contrasting conceptions of the American political order can be traced back to the earliest settlement of the country and have exercised a profound influence on American government and politics throughout the nation's history. In the first instance, the political order is viewed as a market place in which the primary public relationships are products of bargaining among individuals and groups acting out of self-interest. In the second, the political order is conceived to be a commonwealth " a state in which the whole people have an undivided interest-in which the citizens cooperate in an effort to create and maintain the best government in order to implement certain shared moral principles" (14).

These conceptions stem from the matrix of values that forms the larger cultural basis of American society (see attached diagram reproduced from page 15). The two poles are power and justice, which for Elazar constitute the two major concerns of civil societies. "Power" concerns itself with who gets what, when, and how. "Justice" speaks to the development of the good society. In the U.S. the way in which goods are distributed and produced are influenced by to key values, efficiency and commerce (the marketplace). Notions of justice reflect a commitment to Agrarianism, a product of both the Protestant and Jeffersonian traditions which envisions society as the union of "self-governing freeholders, each with a tangible stake in his community . . . raised to new heights of human decency through the general diffusion of knowledge, religion, and morality" (16). It is the major source and test of legitimacy in the U.S. As the diagonal arrows suggest these elements condition one another, agrarianism having a distinctly commercial character in the U.S. but also serving as an important check on commercial efficiency. The two approaches to governance described above are connected to left and right sides of the matrix, respectively.

Origins of the Matrix

These values and the political culture they have spawned are the synthesis of three major political cultures, each associated with a different region of the country, but which are now of nationwide proportions having been brought with them by inhabitants of these regions as they have migrated throughout the country over the course of U.S. history. This is responsible for the continuing sectionalism (the fact that different areas are characterized by markedly different modes of governance) as Ferman notes in her comparison of Pittsburgh and Chicago) but also in an interesting intermingling of these traditions. The latter is what Elazar refers to as "human geology". As groups armed with their own cultural traditions move across the landscape, they tend to leave residues of population in various places, to become the equivalent of geological strata: "as these populations settled in the location, sometimes side by side, sometimes overlapping, and frequently on top of one another, they created hardened cultural mixtures that must be sorted out for analytical purposes, city by city and county by county from the Atlantic to the Pacific" (27).

The table below identifies the three traditions, the region of its origin, and its key attributes

Brand of Political Culture Region Characteristics

Individualistic Non-Puritan N. England, Mid-Atlantic Government instituted for strictly utilitarian reasons,

Emphasizes the centrality of private concerns, places a premium on limiting community intervention, whether governmental or non-governmental in private activities to minimum necessary to keep the marketplace in working order

Politics viewed as just another means by which individuals may improve themselves socially economically-politics as a business like any other.

Political life based on a system of mutual obligations-individuals succeed politically not by accepting an abstract notion of good government and striving to implement it, but instead by maintaining his place in the system of mutual obligations-parties fairly important

Eschews ideological concerns (business is business)

Political activity viewed as a specialized pursuit, as the domain of professionals (little room for amateurs)

Love hate relationship with bureaucracy-on one hand its antithetical to the system of mutual favors, on the other hand valued for its efficiency

Moralistic Puritan New England Emphasizes the commonwealth as the conception as the basis for democratic government

Measures of good government: 1)degree to which it promotes the public good and 2)the honesty, selflessness, and commitment to the public welfare of those who government

Intervention in to "private affairs" acceptable when public good is at stake

Politics considered one of the greatest activities of man in his search for the good society Politics ideally a matter of concern for every citizen, in fact a duty. More amateur participation.

Rejection that politics is an acceptable means for pursuit of private economic interests. Corruption an tolerance thereof less common

Parties not as important in that leaders are expected to promote the public good despite their personal loyalties and political friendships-third or local parties emerge with some regularity

Difficulty adjusting bureaucracy to the order in that the efficient, large scale organization necessary to carry out social programs tends to be at odds with the communitarian principles on which this culture is based

Traditionalistic South Ambivalence toward the market coupled with paternalistic/elitist conceptions of the commonwealth

Reflects an older precommercial attitude that accepts a substantially hierarchical society-political power concentrated in the hand of a relatively small and self-perpetuating group who "inherit" their right to govern through family connections or social position

Good government that is successful in maintaining traditional patterns, government plays a custodial rather than initiatory role

Anti-bureaucratic: bureaucracy as interfering with the "fine web" of informal interpersonal relationships that lie at the root of the political system

The current distribution of these political cultures is the product of three subsequent waves of domestic migration:

1. The rural/land (eighteenth, nineteenth century): The basic patterns of political culture were set when individuals from the three major regions identified began moving westward after the colonial period. Confounding this east/west pattern of cultural diffusion were the nation's two major mountain ranges. They served to diffuse cultural patterns because they were obstacles to the continuation of what to that point had been a steady march due Westward. The Appalachians deflected bearers of moralistic culture from the north southward. The barriers resulted in the halt of the progression of the traditionalistic and moralistic approaches, with only those of a traditional bent braving the climb and ultimately settling the areas of Wyoming, Montana, and Arizona.

2. Urban/industrial (last half of 19th, early 20th century): these resulted in the diffusion of the individualist approach into the north central region

3. Metropolitan/technological (middle 20th century): for the most part this has resulted in the movement of southerners into various regions of the country bringing with them the traditionalistic approach. An example would be the influx of southerners into Detroit, which brought a traditionalist culture into what had been a predominantly moralistic one. Another would be the migration of many southerners to lower California. According to Elazar the reactionary right with which southern California has come to be associated is consists of former southerners in revolt against the patterns of social and political life brought to that region by recent non-southern arrivals.

Having identified the primary patterns of cultural diffusion Elazar concludes by stressing that the current cultural landscape is not simply the product of migration, stressing the dynamism of political culture:

"Changes occur internally within particular cultural groups, movement occurs from group to group, cultures "borrow" from one another, and both cultural erosion and cultural syntheses take place over time. All these forces for change are present on the American scene where they function to transform the results of cultural diffusion through migrations into cohesive state and local cultural patterns, themselves dynamic syntheses of cultural movement and change" (38).