Political Culture

This paper will define political cultural and it will also discuss three major influences on political culture in Ireland. To demonstrate this, this paper will explain political culture in a simple way and it will discuss the civic culture theory and Marxist tradition which will illustrate different views on the role and nature of political culture. The three major influences that this paper will discuss are socio-economic development, cultural evolution political experience in Ireland.
The notion of political culture is how people view the political system as a whole. It is the way in which people respond and act towards the political system. Pye (1995 p.965) defines political culture as “the sum of the fundamental values, sentiments and knowledge that give form and substance to political processes”. Heywood’s view on political culture is that it is ‘the pattern of orientations to political objects such as parties, government, the constitution, expressed beliefs, symbols and values. Political culture differs from public opinion in that it is fashioned out of long-term values rather than simply people’s reactions to specific policies and problems’ (Heywood, 2002: 200). The process through which we learn about politics and how our political attitudes and values can be influenced is through political socialization. The main agents of political socialization are the family, education, mass media and the government.
Two American scholars, Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, studied political culture and published a book a book of their studies, ‘The Civic Culture’. Its purpose was to identify the political culture within which a liberal democracy was most likely to survive and develop. Almond and Verba (1989) identified three pure types of political culture the parochial, subject and participant. ‘A parochial political culture is marked by the absence of a sense of citizenship, with people identifying with their locality rather than the nation, and having neither the desire nor the ability to participate in politics. A subject political culture is characterized by more passivity amongst citizens, and the recognition that they have only a very limited capacity to influence government. A participant political culture is one in which citizens pay close attention to politics and regard popular participation as both desirable and effective.’ (Heywood 2002:206). ‘Almond and Verba’s core idea was that democracy will prove most stable in societies where subject and parochial attitudes provide ballast to an essentially participant culture. This mix is termed ‘civic culture’. In this ideal combination, citizens are sufficiently active in politics to express their preferences to rulers but are not so involved as to refuse to accept decisions with which they disagree.’ (Hague, 1998: 60).
A very different view of the role and nature of political culture has been developed within the Marxist tradition. In Marx’s view ‘ideas and culture are part of a superstructure that is conditioned or determined by the economic base, the mode of production’ (Heywood 2002: 207). These ideas have provided Marxism with two theories of culture. The first theory, in Marx’s own words, is ‘it is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness’. In other words Marx believes that culture is essentially class-specific as members of a class share the same experiences and have a common economic position and interests, they are likely to have broadly similar ideas, beliefs and values. The second theory of culture ‘emphasizes the degree to which the ideas if the ruling class pervade society and become the ruling ideas of the age. In this view political culture, or even civic culture, is thus nothing more than bourgeois ideology.’ (Heywood 2002: 207). ‘Bourgeois ideology is a Marxist term, denoting ideas and theories that serve the interests of the bourgeoisie by disguising the contradictions of capitalist society’ (Heywood 2002:207). The most important thing about this view is that it sees culture, values and beliefs as a form of power.
There are many influences on political culture but the main three influences tend to be socio-economic development, cultural evolution and political experience. Coakley states that the shape of a country’s path of socio-economic development is of great importance: the extent to which society has industrialised or even passed through to a post-industrial phase, the nature of this process and its effects on social structure. Cultural evolution is the degree to which particular values (e.g religious) have come to be dominant and the extent to which these are challenged by alternative values (e.g loyalty to ethnic groups). A country’s long-term political experience also needs to be considered: external influences, patterns of post domination by distinctive groups and other consequences of the course of history may be of great significance (Coakley, 2009: 38-39).
The transition from an agrarian society to an industrial society is what is found to be one of the main aspects of socio-economic development in Ireland. Up until the 1840s in Ireland, less than 41 per cent of the population were literate. However in 1831 an ambitious network of national schools was established throughout the country. This encouraged children to learn and to actually go to school. The impact of this system on literacy was dramatic by the 1910s 96 per cent of the population were literate. ‘The level of educational development in Ireland and the growth of literacy, then, proceeded much more quickly than the more retarded pace of economic development would have suggested’ (Coakley, 2003: 42) . British educational policy in Ireland contributed to the Anglicisation of the county. Surveys from 1851 shows that already at that time 94 per cent of the population were able to speak English and that a considerable majority of 61 per cent were able to speak English only. By the beginning of the twentieth century virtually the entire adult population was familiar with a single language of wider communication, English (Coakley, 2009: 43).

Religion is found to be one of the main aspects of the cultural evolution in Ireland. ‘As a source of basic values, religion is an important component of political culture in many countries. This is because of religion’s power to legitimate- or delegitimate- secular authority. Claiming to stand above the secular world, religion gives rather than receives legitimacy; religious leaders responsible for interpreting their creed can become at their most influential the guardians of political culture’ (Hague, 1998: 68). Changes in the area of religious belief have been very dramatic in Ireland. For example the Protestant population in the nineteenth century was 25 per cent but it has fallen dramatically to only 3 per cent in 1991. From a comparative point of view, the position of the Catholic religion within Irish society has been rather remarkable, ‘it was along religious denominational rather than linguistic lines that political mobilisation took place in the nineteenth century. This arose in part from the perceived but in reality, imperfect coincidence between the two main religions and two ethnic traditions- Catholic Irish natives, and Protestant British settlers’ (Coakley, 2009: 45). Irish history offers many illustrations of the grip of the Catholic Church on the people. Even before the famine of 1845-49, when evidence suggests that only a minority of Catholics attended mass weekly the church had become intimately involved in popular political movements ‘first in the movement for Catholic emancipation, then in that for repeal of the Act of Union, both led by Daniel O’Connell’ (Coakley, 2009:45). This involvement continued after the famine and weekly mass attendance rates began to approach 100 per cent. Even before the new state was founded Ireland had already been known for its ‘remarkable loyalty of Catholics to the church and for the absence of anticlericalism’ (Whyte, 1980: 3-8). However the figure for those attending mass weekly began to fall in the 1980s and by 2006 only 46 per cent were weekly churchgoers. From today’s perspective, the dismissal of religion is becoming a problem in Ireland. Religious leaders themselves have not been immune from the pattern of value change in Irish society, and scandals associated with the clergy are likely to have further undermined the teaching authority of the Catholic Church.
The democratic system in Ireland is one of the main aspects of Ireland’s political experience. Irish voters adopted the country’s democratic basic law, the constitution, in 1937, at a time when democracy was collapsing elsewhere in Europe. Electoral evidence relating to the character of Irish democratic values is positive. Although individual deputies within the established parties may have wavered at times in their commitment to democracy, the parties themselves have remained firmly within the liberal democratic framework. ‘While a larger proportion of Irish people typically abstain from voting than is the case in continental Europe, Ireland compares favourably with other English-speaking countries, with an average turnout rate of 72 per cent in the 18 general elections over the period 1948-2007. The evidence for commitment to local democracy is less convincing’ (Coakley, 2009: 56). Local elections are known for having a poor turnout rate and there were no protests from the public about government decisions to postpone local elections, or even to suspend local councils and replace them by appointed commissioners, and one observer has commented that ‘the public is relatively unconcerned about local democracy’ (Collins, 1987: 51).
The evidence above clearly defines political culture and has also thoroughly explained two very different theories of the role and nature of political culture - civic culture and the Marxism tradition. I have also explained in great detail including aspects of each of the three major influences on the political culture in Ireland, socio-economic development, cultural evolution and political experience.