The Renaissance of Political Culture

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The purpose of this essay is to compare and contrast the two highly controversial views on the role of political culture in determining institutional performance to maintain democracy and its effects on overall economic and political development in a given society. At one extreme we have Ronald Inglehart, a scholar at University of Michigan who stresses the importance of cultural factors in his article called “The Renaissance of Political Culture”. At the other extreme we have Robert W. Jackman and Ross A. Miller, scholars at University of California and Santa Clara University who believe that cultural values are not linked in any way with political performance and try to prove that in their article called “A Renaissance of Political Culture?” For many decades rational choice models heavily relied on micro and macroeconomic variables without taking into account cultural differences that clearly exist among societies of the world. The lack of data on cultural differences served as justification, but nowadays with the emergence of hi-tech technologies this problem is easily solved. Hence, it is time to reconsider completely how social analyses are conducted. Almond and Verba were first to move from theoretical assumptions to that of testable propositions. The only drawback in their work was the fact that they considered political culture to be constant, something static which is clearly not. In other words, political culture or democracy requires the emergence of certain supportive habits and attitudes among the general public so it is continuous historical process instead. For instance, Almond and Verba found that their German and Italian respondents showed relatively low level of interpersonal trust. At a single point in time it was virtually impossible to determine whether these findings are due to short-term factors – perhaps the harsh conditions of the post-war
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