Marcus A. Stadelmann - Political Science For Dummies

Many governments of all types use the process of political socialization to intervene in the creation of a good citizen. Governments can do so through the educational process, control of the media, a state religion, public events such as military parades, and commemoration of past events.

The concept of citizenship is a part of political culture. In every society, people are told what makes a good citizen and what type of characteristics citizens should possess.

Every sovereign nation-state in the world has different citizenship requirements and expects citizens to behave in a certain manner. Three examples of different citizenship requirements are

Jus soli (Latin for “right by territory”): In a country following the law of jus soli, everybody born in its territory automatically becomes a citizen. France and the United States use this law.

Jus sanguinis (Latin for “right by blood”): Countries following jus sanguinis bestow citizenship rights based on blood. For example, a person is automatically a German citizen if one of his parents was a German citizen, regardless of whether he ever visited or lived in Germany. (As a side note, Germany will allow individuals to become citizens if they have legally lived in Germany for eight years and apply for citizenship.)

Israel’s law of return: It makes every Jewish person a citizen as soon as he moves permanently to Israel. This can be called citizenship by religion.

Some nation-states have more than one culture. These states, such as Afghanistan and Iraq, are made up of different groups, with different religious traditions, and they don’t even share a common language. Instead, they share loyalty with their tribe and consider it, and not the national government, the ultimate source of power. They don’t share a culture or history with the majority group. This usually results in political struggle for power and often civil war and the possible breakup of a nation-state.

Political cultures vary from society to society. In the U.S., a spirit of rugged individualism survives, where people believe in small government and put the emphasis on individual achievement. In other societies, such as France or Japan, people look to a strong and powerful state for guidance, while individualism is subjugated to the concept of communalism. The community matters in Japan, not the individual.

Political cultures do change over time. However, changes come slowly because people are set in their ways and refuse to change their attitudes and behavior.

A good example of a political culture slowly changing involves racial intermarriage in the U.S. Until the 1960s, a majority of all Americans, including African Americans, opposed racial intermarriage. This attitude began to slowly change in the 1960s, and it took another half a century for most Americans to consider racial intermarriage acceptable.

Political cultures aren’t static and can change over time. The easiest way for a political culture to change is to face a major crisis. Economic crises have changed cultural attitudes toward governments. For example, the Great Depression beginning in 1929 led to a support of government intervention in the economy in the form of a welfare state. At the same time, the economic crisis of 2007/2008 resulted in many Americans losing trust in their government and becoming more cynical in nature.

In other societies, the same can happen. In Japan, for example, decades of no or low economic growth have changed a culture that was very supportive and proud of its form of government. The average Japanese today is more cynical and less likely to be proud of government. Political scandals and wars can have similar effects. Watergate, for example, made American culture more negative toward government, and the invasion of Iraq in 2003 had a similar effect.

The seminal work on political culture was published in 1963 by Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba. Titled The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (SAGE Publications, Inc.), the work was in response to the collapse of democracy in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s and in Africa in the 1950s. In both instances, democracies were established in former authoritarian countries (colonies in Africa) but survived for only a few years. (See Chapter 16for more information on failures of democracy.)

The civic culture is the only culture that can sustain democracy over time in a country.

Almond and Verba believed that political cultures could be used to explain the failure of democracy. For them, democracy needed a certain, specific culture, which they titled the civic culture, to survive in the long run. So they set out to discover the characteristics of a civic culture. They believed that if they discovered a political culture that could sustain democracy, they could change other cultures to create this civic culture and then make sure democracy survived. In their research, they discovered the following five components of a civic culture, necessary to sustain a democracy:

A large middle class: A large middle class has to exist in a democracy, because it’s the class most likely to possess democratic values. If the middle class is small and other nondemocratic classes such as an aristocracy or a radicalized working class dominate society, there’s a good chance that an authoritarian regime can come to power.

A secular society: A society has to be secular with no state religion in place. Religion has to be kept out of government, because many religions hold nondemocratic values. If religion dominates society like in Iran today, democracy isn’t possible.

Pluralism: A democratic society has to allow for the creation of political parties and interest groups to represent the will of the people. In other words, people have to be able to organize and express their wishes to government.

A culture of consensus: A society has to agree on the major political issues shaping it. These include form of government and economic structure. Almost all Americans agree that democracy is the best form of government and that a form of capitalism is the best economic structure for a society. In Russia, on the other hand, such a consensus doesn’t exist. About one-third of all Russians believe in democracy and capitalism, while the other two-thirds support either strong man rule or a return to communism. This makes it tough for democracy to set foot in Russia.

Permission of moderate change: Government and its people have to be willing to change over time. With societies and the world constantly changing, there has to be a willingness to accept change and adapt to it. Societies that don’t change, for either political or religious reasons, will fall behind globally and become pariah nations. In addition, they’ll face constant battles at home between citizens ready for change and those who want to stick with the status quo. Iran and Afghanistan are two good examples of such societies.