ABSTRACT
Politics may be studied as culture in the anthropological sense, i.e., as a whole that is determined and pervaded by economic, social, ideological and artistic factors. The term political culture has been created in order to shed light on this fundamental fact. Political cultures have a history and constitutes a tradition, i.e., a set of patterns of action, ways of thinking, and ethical and aesthetic preferences that retains coherency over time, but which as a rule is internally conflicted. The educational and edifying heritage of social democracy has been classicist, while Christian socialism has often inherited romantic leanings. In certain historical situations, the divergences within the socialist movement have taken on forms of expression that may be characterized using the points of difference existing between classicism and romanticism. The consciousness and cultural and political identity of people is to a larger degree shaped by stories that provide meaning and ideals rather than by thought-through and reflected-upon notions stemming from reason.
