The concept of political culture received its first substantial use in political science in the pioneering Civic Culture study by Almond and Verba in the early 1960s, when it was used to analyse and explain different levels of democratic stability and consolidation across five countries. It was also deployed in wider studies of comparative political developmental trajectories, including the communist states and ‘Third World’ countries, where again the prospects of democracy were a central concern. Historians also began to use the concept, though they differed in treating it as an index of change – as in discussion of ‘cultural revolution’ or of the ‘new political culture’ inaugurated by the French Revolution – rather than as a constraint on it. The concept has also received much criticism for its wide scope and contested methodology, and it has long been implicitly challenged by the emergence of rival conceptualizations in its space, such as (in an empiricist vein) social capital and political trust, and (in a hermeneutic vein) narratives and social imaginaries. Nevertheless, its relevance has been reasserted in the current conditions of ‘post-truth’ and populism, with the claim that ‘post-truth politics needs to be understood as part of a much broader development in political culture’ (Saul Newman and Maximilian Conrad, eds, Post-Truth Populism: A New Political Paradigm, Palgrave Macmillan, 2024, p. 338).
In view of the original usage in which political culture research was closely associated with the study of democracy and its prospects, this is indeed a plausible claim, though it contradicts the widespread former expectation, shared by Almond and Verba, that democracy would be ‘consolidated’ by the passage of time. Instead we see not only recently established, but venerable and longstanding democracies, being subject to alarming levels of democratic instability and erosion. However, the shape of this ‘broader development in political culture’ – or, put differently, the contribution of political culture research to an understanding of the present conditions – has yet to be discerned. The purpose of the conference section is to explore, both in empirical and theoretical terms, this question.
Some possible lines of inquiry, which could form the basis of conference panels, are as follows.
Change: Clearly posed by the new conditions, and a longstanding source of critical commentary on political culture research for its alleged conservatism, is the question of how political culture changes. While no one has promoted the implausible view that it is fixed for all time, a variety of timescales and mechanisms of change have been suggested, from long term ‘historical experience’ to formative socialization (implying a generational timescale) and, as noted above, even quite rapid change, sometimes called ‘cultural revolution’. The question in relation to present conditions might be tackled at a general level, or in terms of specific illustrations, or might develop insights from earlier political culture research.
Comparison: Six decades of political culture research have also highlighted the persistent question of whether the main contribution of political culture is its use in comparisons at the level of the nation state, and relatedly, the question of to what extent both subcultures (regional, class, etc.) and supra-national cultures (sometimes called ‘civilizations’) create more useful frameworks of comparison. The same question arises in the case of democratic crisis, which might have general developmental causes, but also different degrees of national or other levels of spatial variation. Is there scope for a comparative cultural analysis of democratic crisis?
Case studies: Reflecting its origins in anthropological understandings of culture, political culture research has lent itself to the development of qualitative case studies. Even so, the location of that research within political science raises the question of what general lessons or implications such studies might have. This applies with greater urgency to studies of the political culture of democratic crisis.
Components and alternatives: Political culture was understood in its initial formulation, within behaviouralist political science, as consisting of cognitive, evaluative and affective components – thus there was already scope in principle for a decomposition of the concept and for studying relationships between these components – scope which later conceptual proposals greatly expanded. Hermeneutical conceptions of overarching cultural ‘patterns’ or ‘ways of life’, while seemingly resisting such analytical possibilities through their holistic formulation, nevertheless met challenges from alternative syntheses as ‘narratives’, ‘discursive formations’, ‘myths’, and so on, and as noted above there have been numerous new conceptual proposals in the empiricist vein too. Applications of such componential or alternative concepts, especially when they consider their relationship with political culture, are welcomed.
Cultural politics: For many observers, an intensive and polarized ‘cultural politics’ has been a key symptom, if not a cause, of recent democratic instability. The very term ‘cultural politics’ – referring to the seemingly increased salience of issues of identity and inclusion, including political movements of reaction against them – both invites and makes problematic analysis in terms of political culture. Much debate even surrounds the question of the existence, or the novelty, of cultural politics, with critics insisting on its fabricated and artificial nature – but even this possibility would not rule out its consideration by students of political culture, since all such political manoeuvres have to achieve popular acceptance in order to have political effect. Again, both case studies and comparisons could illuminate this relationship.
The wide scope of political culture research, while in some ways a disadvantage, brings the advantage of embracing an equally wide diversity of approaches, the methodological foundations and ramifications of which have been resources for prolonged debate about the concept. While resolution of this debate is not in sight, the concept’s openness to diverse approaches, from attitude surveys or experiments to close ethnographic reading of practices, naturally extends to this call for papers. Thus paper proposals, or proposals for entire panels of 3-5 papers, which fall outside the scope outlined above are also welcome.
