Chapter 4: American Political Culture

Political Culture
I. A political culture is a distinctive and patterned
way of thinking about how political and economic life
ought to be out.
The Political System
I. There are five important elements in the
American view of the political system:
A. Liberty: Americans are preoccupied with their
rights. They believe they should be free to do as they
please, so long as they don’t hurt other people.
B. Equality: Americans believe everybody should
have an equal vote and an equal chance to participate
and succeed.
C. Democracy: Americans think government
officials should be accountable to the people.
D. Civic duty: Americans generally feel people
ought to take community affairs seriously
E. Individual responsibility: a characteristically
American view is that, barring some disability,
individuals are responsible for their own actions and
well-being.
II. Americans believe that every citizen should
have an equal chance to influence government policy
and to hold public office, and they oppose the idea of
letting people have titles.
The Economic System
I. Americans judge the economic system using
many of the same standards by which they judge the
political system.
A. Liberty is important to the US economy, thus
Americans support the idea of a free-enterprise
economic system.
B. Americans are more willing to tolerate economic
inequality than political inequality.
Comparing America With Other Nations
The Political System
I. Cultural differences affect political philosophy.
A. Americans have a strong sense of civic duty—a
belief that one has an obligation to participate in civic
and political affairs—and civic competence—a belief
that one can affect government policies.
The Economic System
 I. Americans are more likely to think freedom is
more important than equality and less likely to think that
hard work goes unrewarded or that the government
should guarantee citizens a basic standard of living.
The Civic Role of Religion
I. America is among the most religious countries
in the world. Many Americans are attracted to religion as
much for its civic as for its spiritual significance.
Religion and Politics
I. Religious beliefs have always played a
significant role in American politics.
The Source of Political Culture
I. The Revolutionary War and the political
disputes that followed have given to American political
thought a preoccupation with the assertion and
maintenance of rights. This tradition has imbued the
daily conduct of US politics with a kind of adversarial
spirit quite foreign to the political life of countries that
did not undergo a libertarian revolution or that were
formed out of an interest in other goals.
II. The adversarial spirit of American political
culture reflects not only our preoccupation with rights
but also our long-standing distrust of authority and
people wielding power.
A. This distrust as Revolutionary and religious
origins.
III. The Constitution, by creating a federal system
and dividing political authority among competing
institutions, provided ample opportunity for wide-spread
participation in politics.
IV. The absence of an established or official religion
for the nation as a whole meant that religious diversity
was inevitable. Since there could be no orthodox or
official religion, it became difficult for a corresponding
political orthodoxy to emerge.
A. Protestantism was the dominant religious
tradition of the US. The Protestant work ethic may have
contributed to the rise of capitalism.
B. Such values have political consequences, as
people holding them were more motivated to engage in
civic and communal action.
V. Churches offered ready opportunities for
developing and practicing civic and political skills. Each
church was a miniature political system.
 A. Developing a participatory political culture was
undoubtedly made easier by the existence of a
participatory religious culture.
VI. All aspects of culture are preserved and
transmitted to new generations primarily by the family.
A. Familial characteristics promote a belief, carried
through life, that every person has rights deserving
protection and that a variety of interests have legitimate
claim to consideration when decisions are made.
VII. The combined effect of religious and ethnic
diversity, an individualistic philosophy, fragmented
political authority, and the relatively egalitarian
American family can be seen in the absence of a high
degree of class consciousness among Americans.
The Culture War
I. The culture war differs from other political
disputes in several ways: money is not at stake,
compromises are almost impossible to arrange, and the
conflict is more profound. It is animated by deep
differences in people’s beliefs about private and public
morality.
II. There are two opposing camps, the orthodox and
the progressive.
A. On the orthodox side are people who think that
morality is as important as self-expression and that
moral rules derive from God or nature—laws that are
clear, unchanging, and independent of individual
preferences.
B. On the progressive side are people who think
that personal freedom is as important as certain
traditional moral rules and that those rules must be
evaluated in light of the circumstances of modern life.
III. These conflicts have acquired special
importance today as a result of two major changes in
American society.
A. The first is the great increase in the proportion
of people who consider themselves progressive.
B. The second factor is the rise of the media, which
makes it easy to wage a cultural war on a large scale.
Mistrust of Government
I. There has been a steady decline in the trust
people have in public officials.
Political Efficacy
 I. People have also lost faith in the belief that the
political system will respond to their needs and beliefs.
These changes are called a citizen’s sense of political
efficacy, by which we mean a citizen’s capacity to
understand and influence political events.
A. This sense of efficacy has two parts—internal
efficacy—the ability to understand and take part in
political affairs—and external efficacy—the ability to
make the system respond to the citizenry.
B. Americans have gradually come to the view that
government has become too big and pervasive for it to
be sensitive to citizen preferences.
C. The less voters trust institutions and leaders, the
more likely they are to support candidates from the
nonincumbent major party.
Political Tolerance
I. Citizens must have a political culture that allows
the discussion of ideas and the selection of rulers in an
atmosphere relatively free of oppression.

This chapter discusses many important parts of

American political culture, such as: where our
conception of politics comes from, how these
conceptions change over time, and how they may
vary country to country or region to region. There
are five values that Americans consider important to
their political system: liberty, equality (in
representation, if not economically), democracy,
civic duty, and individual responsibility. Whatever
is considered an important social or political value
can vary on an individual basis, but is generally
widely accepted by the majority of a particular
society. These differing viewpoints can also
influence how people regard religion’s role in
society. The sources of political culture are deeply
rooted in America’s social history, which can make
change difficult and cause dissention among
different groups.