Authors: Nohlen
Summary: In approximately 1800 words the entry proceeds from a very general definition to discuss three main elements of political culture, debates the explanatory power of political culture as a variable, and discusses factors that determine political culture. Identified as the subjective dimension of the political society, political culture falls at least into three dimensions: it includes the totality of politically relevant aspects of personality, the predispositions anchored in opinions, believes, attitudes and norms, and concrete political actions. While personality aspects such as self-esteem or political afficacy are discussed briefly, the entry spends more time on the subject of attitudes; for example by referring to Parsons' distinction between affective, cognitive, and evaluative aspects of opinions and attitudes. The entry then summarizes the debate on the explanatory value of phenomena subsumed under political culture as either an independent variable (as Weber and culturalists argue), as a dependent variable (as Marxists for example contend), or as an intervening variable. Among the factors determining political culture are discussed political socialization in primary and secondary groups, the economic interest, and dramatic collective experiences such as revolutions or war. Which factors are regards as influential depends also on what is understood to be political. The entry here refers to Almond and Powell's distinction between the political culture of the political system, subjective aspects of particular political processes, and the political culture of particular policy fields. The entry ends by briefly reflecting on the question of how political cultures change over time and on the impact of integration and globalization on former distinct national or regional political cultures.