Bringing Culture Back In: Inglehart

Chapter 1: Culture, Stable Democracy, and Economic Development

I. notes that the study of political culture, which flourished in the 1960's, has since given way to more economically-based approaches to understanding political behavior. While considering these rational choice models valuable, I. feels that culture must be brought back in and can be of assistance in explaining both short and long term political change. As far as the latter, culture is a crucial intervening variable: "Stable democracy is not a necessary consequence of economic development: It may encourage but does not guarantee the emergence of democratic institutions and a political culture in which they can flourish" (17). We cannot draw a direct causal arrow between economics and politics. The relationship is complex. In elucidating this relationship, I. sees rational choice and political culture not as incompatible but as complementary modes of explanation.

Background

A bit more on the checkered career of "political culture": The fall from favor of cultural based explanations of political behavior was attributable to two major critiques, alluded to by Thompson. Just to recap, the cultural approach was challenged on empirical grounds. Major studies like that of Almond and Verba relied on data from one point in time and created the impression that culture was static. Culture became a constant, a given for each nation which made it impossible to analyze their relationships with other macrophenomena or to trace changes over time. The other attack on political culture was made on ideological grounds. Leftists insisted that we should look not to culture but to structure to explain political behavior, particularly that which was deemed by elites as problematic or deviant (revolutionary activity or political apathy). On the other end of the political continuum, conservatives insisted that political behavior be viewed as entirely a matter of individual responsibility, agency.

Culture Defined

For I., culture can be thought of as a "system of attitudes, values, and knowledge that is widely shard within a society and transmitted from generation to generation" (19). I. parts ways with Thompson in emphasizing the importance of childhood experience, whereas T. & co. allow that adult experiences can be quite formative as well. By virtue of the importance of early experience, I., though not saying culture is immutable, insists that change is most likely to change via intergenerational replacement than by the conversion of already socialized adults.

New and Improved Political Cultural Theory

The political cultural approach, according to I., is the major alternative to rational choice as a general explanatory framework for political behavior. Its two key tenets are:

1) people's responses to their situations are shaped by subjective orientations which vary cross-culturally and within subcultures (a nod to Thompson and his emphasis on national political cultures)

2) these variations in subjective orientations reflect differences in one's socialization experiences, with early learning conditioning later learning, making the former more difficult to undo (a hint of Bourdieu here, habitus as self-reinforcing).

Crossnational Differences

I.'s examination of empirical data suggests that there are enduring differences between nations as far as levels of three attitudes: interpersonal trust, life satisfaction, and the viability of revolutionary change. He melds these three elements into "a political cultural syndrome" that he terms "civic culture". The latter are the product of economic prosperity but also historical developments. He notes that the wartime experiences of Japan and Germany may be a contributor to the low levels of trust and life satisfaction observed in these nations. The development of such a "civic culture" (characterized by high levels of the first two elements, trust and life satisfaction and low levels of support of revolution) is crucial to sustained democracy. But doesn't it all just come back to economics, a rational choice theorist might ask? Actually, the correlation between Gross National Product and years of continuous democracy is negligible. The effect of economic prosperity is largely indirect. The attached diagram (an elaboration of that appearing on p. 44) captures I.'s thesis. The results of statistical analysis imply that "economic development per se does not necessarily lead to democracy. Only insofar as it brings appropriate changes in social structure and political culture does it enhance the viability of democratic institutions" (44).

Culture Shift

In that culture is society's means of adjusting to its environment, as that environment changes so will culture. As entrepreneurial activity is becoming less stigmatized in Catholic countries than it once was, contrasting, but equally profound cultural changes are occurring in industrialized nations, changes that have serious implications for political and economic activity.

I. posits that we are seeing a shift from Materialist to Post-materialist values. Emphasis on economic development is giving way to concern about the long-term consequences of such development. This view is based on two key hypotheses:

1) scarcity hypothesis: one's priorities reflect one's socioeconomic environment so that one places greatest subjective value on those things that are in relatively short supply

2) socialization hypothesis: as alluded to above, to a large extent one's basic values reflect the conditions that prevailed during one's preadult years

Because of the unprecedented prosperity and absence of war that has prevailed in Western Nations since 1945, younger birth cohorts are less concerned with physical and economic security than their parents, giving higher priority to nonmaterial needs, such as a sense of community and the quality of life. As intergenerational replacement has occurred there has been a gradual but perceptible shift in Western publics from Materialist to Postmaterialist goals, as is evidenced by the increasing emphasis on environmental protection and maintaining quality of life, even at the expense of economic growth. As corroboration of this syndrome, I. points to data indicating that the publics of wealthier nations tend to be more Postmaterialist in orientation. We are seeing an "unraveling" of the Protestant ethic with it emphasis on attainment for its own sake (see attached diagram reproduced from page 54).

Chapter 2: The Rise of Postmaterialist Values

We have been asked to read a short excerpt in which I. marshals data that supports his thesis that "the unprecedented prosperity prevailing from the late 1940's until the early 1970's, has lead to substantial growth in the proportion of Postmaterialist among the publics of advanced industrial societies" (71).

He also clarifies his position. He is not positing a one to one relationship between economic level and the prevalence of Postmaterialist values. These values reflect one's subjective sense of security, which is often enhanced by affluence but also influenced by the cultural setting, the welfare institutions in which one is raised, and other events (war, most significantly).

Chapter 11: New Social Movements

Don't Overlook Culture

I. notes that the emergence of social movements reflects the interaction of a number of factors, including the existence of objective problems as well as the existence of social networks or political organizations that coordinate the actions of a large number of individuals. He fears that values have fallen out of the equation in many contemporary analyses of social movements. (He draws a fairly sharp distinction between ideology and values. He describes ideology as essentially a game plan, an action plan propagated by some political party or organization. Values, in contrast, reflect one's socialization as a whole, particularly one's early years. Whereas ideologies can be adopted or discarded from one day to the next through rational persuasion, values are less cognitive, more affective, and tend to be relatively enduring. It is these values that motivate one to adopt an ideology.)

He insists that though objective circumstances, organizations, and the rising level of political skill (or "cognitive mobilization" as he calls it--the result of education and greater availability of information) all contribute to the emergence of social movements, that the emergence of new Postmaterialist value priorities have been an extremely important factor in the emergence of "new movements". He uses the example of the environment. Its growth over the last several years is not entirely attributable to the fact that the environment is in worse condition than it used to be, its not even clear that it is. If environmentalism is on the rise, he argues, it is because the public cares more about the quality of the environment than it once did.

As far as personal characteristics, is a Postmaterialist orientation really what compels people to involve themselves in new movement activities or is this really a function of age, income or religion? I. runs a multivariate regression which includes variables for party affiliation, age, education, degree of religiosity, left v. rightist ideology. Values emerges as the strong predictor of activism and potential activism in the two new social movements he's concerned with, the anti-war and the ecology.

Post Materialism: Disclaimer

In the takeoff phase of capitalism, economic growth was of central concern. As of late, growing numbers of the population place less emphasis on economic growth and more emphasis on the non-economic quality of life. In a nutshell, now that for many (if not for all) life is assured (one can meet one's basic physical needs) the quality of that life has become the focus. To say it in a slightly different way, we are witnessing a shift from a purely quantitative focus to a qualitative one.

But let's not go too far. I. stresses that Postmaterialists hardly reject the fruits of prosperity. It's simply that their value priorities are "less strongly dominated by the imperatives that were central to early industrial society (Dalton makes a similar point in stressing the reformist, rather than revolutionary character, of the new movements).

Interaction with the Established Left

I. notes that cognitively mobilized Postmaterialists are not joining the traditional Leftist parties. They are throwing support behind New Politics parties, and to ecology parties, in particular. The Postmaterialists have been notably unsuccessful, to date, in influencing the orientation of traditional communist parties (they are no more supportive of the ecology and antinuclear movements than those on the extreme right). Socialists have tended to be more responsive.