Marcus A. Stadelmann - Political Science For Dummies

At the same time, a nation full of subjects would result in the collapse of democracy, too. If every citizen was just a follower who would obediently abide by government rules, government could soon turn authoritarian. The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, for example, consisted of pure subject cultures, with citizens blindly obeying government decisions.

Now what about a pure participant society? Could you imagine if every American citizen was a pure political animal? What would happen to the system if more than 150 million people were active in politics and demanded benefits from government? According to Almond and Verba, this would result in a system overload. Government couldn’t deal with that many demands, and people in turn would take action against government if they didn’t get what they asked for.

For this reason, Almond and Verba advocate for a mix of the three cultures. Every democracy has to have all three cultures to survive in the long run. A democracy needs people who just don’t care about politics, have no knowledge of what’s going on, and don’t participate (parochials). At the same time, government often has to make controversial decisions for the good of the country, such as increasing taxes to pay off government debt or fund new programs. In this scenario, a democracy needs subjects who will complain bitterly about these decisions but won’t take any action against government.

Finally, participants are needed to hold the government accountable. Whenever government makes a decision, it needs to know that its citizens will hold it accountable for these decisions. Almond and Verba refer to this as anticipated reaction. Government and its leaders make decisions based on how they believe people will react to their decisions. Often no reaction will come, but a rational leader believes that it will, and so policy is made, which is acceptable to most people.

In the last few decades, fewer and fewer people have been voting in democracies. This has concerned many, but the concept of anticipated reaction comes to the rescue. Anticipated reaction refers to political leaders assuming that the people will react to their policies and, if objecting, will organize into political parties or join interest groups and, most important, will participate in voting. Therefore, every rational politician will do his best to represent the people. It’s out of fear of people becoming upset and holding political elites accountable that politicians attempt to do their best to represent people. Recent examples of people organizing because they were upset with government decisions include the Tea Party movement as a reaction to Obamacare in the U.S. and the creation of new populist parties in Europe, such as the Alternative for Germany as a reaction to mass migration from the Middle East and Africa.

Political Socialization is the process of how people acquire their political values. The political values people possess in turn will shape their political behavior within the state. Political socialization teaches children political values and norms that will later impact their political behavior. The objective of political socialization is the same for every government: to create a populace that is well socialized and supports the current form of government. For this reason, many governments directly intervene in the socialization process. This can be done through educational structures and even religion.

Studies have shown that successful political socialization has to create loyalty to the political system in the following areas:

Loyalty to the state: This is the most important because, without it, states will collapse at some point. If a majority of the people opposes the existence of the state they live in, there’s no future for the state.Recent examples include Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, both states that collapsed because a majority of the people opposed the state itself. Loyalty toward the state is created through nationalism and patriotism. The goal is to instill pride into a people through patriotic activities, such as singing the national anthem before sports events and pledging allegiance to the flag of a country.

Loyalty to the political structure: Loyalty toward the state is important but not sufficient for the survival of a government. Besides supporting the country, the populace also has to support the current government structures and the ideas they’re based on.In the U.S., the government is based on democracy and capitalism. For this reason, the government has to artificially create loyalty toward these two. In civic education classes, mandatory in most states, children are taught about the virtues of democracy and how great capitalism works for the well-being of most Americans. At the same time, the evils of authoritarianism and communism are imprinted into children’s minds. Polls show that a vast majority of all Americans support and are very proud of their form of democracy, while a smaller majority also supports various forms of capitalism.

Loyalty toward the current government: Loyalty toward the current government in power is a necessity. A populace has to be socialized to accept their favorite candidate losing and still supporting the new government elected. Even though a favorite candidate may have lost, people still have to consider the new government legitimate. If they don’t, they could turn against government and political violence can result.When Hillary Clinton lost the presidency to Donald Trump in 2016, many American were shocked and dismayed. However, nobody took up arms and initiated political violence to overthrow the newly elected Trump administration. This signals that Americans are well socialized into accepting losing elections and living with a president they didn’t support. In other countries, such as Kenya, this wouldn’t have happened. The losing side would have initiated political violence, and civil war would have broken out.

How do citizens of a nation become socialized? In other words, what and who are the institutions that transmit political values to people? Agents of political socialization refer to the various institutions and people that will have an impact on a person’s learning of values and norms of political behavior. The following sections explore these questions.

The family is still the most important agent of political socialization today. Parents are who children see the most in early life, and this allows for parents to imprint children politically. Even if governments attempt to indoctrinate children through school or youth organizations, as the Soviet Union did, they fail. While schools preached socialist messages in the Soviet Union, the Russian grandmas back home would tell children stories about the czars and teach them about religion. Lenin considered Russian grandmas among the most dangerous group of people during the Russian Revolution.

Therefore, families do matter, and parents influence political behavior. A majority of all people perceive politics as their parents did and also base their voting behavior on their parents’ voting behavior. Even a like or dislike for government can be transferred as can trust and distrust. It’s important to point out that most parents act as an unconscious agent of political socialization. All this means is that parents don’t consciously attempt to indoctrinate their children, but children overhear parents discussing political issues and model their political behavior on their parents’ political behavior.