ABSTRACT
One of the most enduring debates in social science concerns the relationship between the mass public’s beliefs and values and political authority. Liberal scholars label these beliefs “political culture,” or “a historical system of widespread, fundamental, behavioral, political values actually held by system members (the public).”1 Political culture therefore embraces the dominant pattern of beliefs and values that are acquired and that modify and change as a result of a complex process of socialization and feedback from the political system. In other words, individual citizens acquire attitudes toward politics through learning from parents and their environments (socialization), and these attitudes adapt and change as political authorities produce particular responses or policies over time (feedback). Political culture is the sum of individual beliefs and values, and, crucially, it is essentially independent of political authority. In some systems it may be incompatible with prevailing political institutions-as in Spain during the 1970s when an authoritarian regime was replaced
by democracy, or in Weimar Germany before the rise of Hitler-in which case, regime change occurs. In other systems, ethnic, religious, racial, cultural, or linguistic divisions may be so great that no single political culture and institutional structure can accommodate these differences. In such cases civil war may ensue or the country may disintegrate. The breakup of the former Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia can be explained in this way, as can the American Civil War in the mid-nineteenth century. In other cases, the political culture supports and succors the political system. Liberal scholars invariably label the modern American system in such terms. U.S. politics and political culture may change, but they tend to be mutually supportive. Regime change is extremely unlikely in such a situation.
