Types of Political Culture

Degree and nature of political orientation in terms of cognitive, affective and evaluative can become the basis of classifying political cultures. These include level of knowledge (cognitive), nature of feeling (affective) and opinion and judgment (evaluative) about:

1. The system in general and the political system
2. Constitutional characteristics and power
3. Inputs (policy proposals)
4. Roles of political elite, leadership and groups
5. Structures (parties, legislature, executive, bureaucracy, judiciary and other incumbents)
6. Outputs (policies and decisions)

Further, orientation towards ‘self’ as an active political actor and participant also becomes an important factor in classifying political cultures. Whether participants have knowledge of their rights, obligations and power and influence that they can exercise and what do they feel about their capabilities or lack of it. How do they evaluate and judge the performance of the political system? Does one evaluate it as less democratic and less responsive to demands of the people? Almond and Verba seek to map political orientation towards political system in general, input and output aspects and the self as a political actor.

Based on dimensions of political orientation (cognitive, affective and evaluative) of the individuals towards political objects (system as a general object, input objects, output objects and self as active participant), Almond and Verba have classified types of political culture.¹⁷ They classify political cultures in three categories: (i) Parochial Political Culture, (ii) Subject Political Culture, and (iii) Participant Political Culture. Each of them are characterized by degree of presence or absence of the level of knowledge, feeling and opinion and judgements about the political system, in general and its elements—inputs and outputs, and self as participant. Almond and Verba have graded the degree of presence or absence of cognitive orientation, nature of affective and evaluative political orientations to assign characteristics to a particular political culture (see Table 14.1).

 

Table 14.1 Types of Political Culture¹⁸

 

Parochial political culture is related to political orientation that is characterized by little or no awareness amongst the people about the political system in general, its inputs, outputs and even their role as political actors. Almond and Verba assign zero (minimal or low or absent) to all dimensions of political orientation. This happens due to lack of clear division between political aspects from that of the social and community aspects. The roles and structures are diffused and not differentiated. Lack of awareness also results in absence or little expectation from the political system. Absence or little knowledge of political system and its elements, less or no expectation from the political system and no standards or criteria of judging the political system lies at one extreme, which Almond and Verba designate as parochial political culture. In this, participation of the self is not considered as relevant for the political system.

However, this represents a pure parochial political culture in which there is little or no awareness of political objects, no feeling or uncertain feeling towards the political objects and no standard or criteria of evaluating the system and little or no political specialization. Further, the role of the self as an active participant is minimal or considered irrelevant. Nevertheless, there is a possibility of the individual being aware of political authority but is affectively uncertain or negative and has no norms of regulating relationship with it. This would represent variation from pure parochial political culture. However, the relationship between the political objects and the individual remains parochial, i.e., uncertain, diffused, distant and non-expecting.

Subject political culture is characterized by high frequency of political orientation towards a differentiated political system and towards the output objects of the political system. This means people are aware about the political system and authority and the impact of the outputs and policy decisions that flow downward. However, there is absence of political orientation towards input objects and towards the self as an active participant. Here the individual is aware of government authority and is attached to it either by taking pride in it or disliking it. There is also evaluation of the system either as legitimate or otherwise. The orientation, however, is restricted towards the system at a general level and aspects of output objects such as policies and decisions flowing downward. On the other hand, there is absence of orientation towards input objects and how demands and policy proposals are put upward.

However, this represents a pure subject political culture in which there is awareness of select political objects such the system and the outputs and their impacts. There is no feeling or uncertain feeling towards the other political objects such as inputs and how they are put forward. There is no standard or criteria of evaluating the system or relating oneself to it. This pure subject political culture is relevant where there is no differentiated input structure. In cases where there is developed democratic institution, it would be limited to affective and evaluative orientations rather than to cognitive orientation. However, the relationship between the individual (subject) and the political objects remain passive.

Participant political culture is characterized by high frequency of political orientation towards a differentiated political system, the input and output objects and role of the self as active participant. This means people are aware about the political system and authority and administrative structures and the requirements and impact of the inputs and policy proposals that flow upward and outputs and policy decisions that flow downward. However, there is active and explicit political orientation towards the self as an active participant. Here the individual is aware of government authority, administrative structures, structures of inputs and outputs and is attached to them either by taking pride in it or being a critical evaluator of the system either as legitimate or otherwise. The orientation is also explicit in terms of participation in the political process and articulation of demands and in outputs and making decisions. The role of the self as participant in the polity is ‘activist’ though participation may be in terms of support or rejection, i.e., favourable or unfavourable participation.

The three-fold classification of political culture by Almond and Verba does not mean each type eliminates or replaces the other. Subject orientation does not replace the parochial orientation or participant replaces the subject and parochial. Subject orientation adds to the existing diffused orientations, specialized orientation to government institutions. Similarly, participant political orientation is added as a layer to the existing parochial and subject orientations. However, Almond and Verba are of the opinion that adding successive orientations onto the existing ones do not mean the earlier ones remain unchanged.¹⁹ This leads to adaptation by old orientations to the newly introduced orientations. Nevertheless, there is a mix of participant, subject and parochial orientations and individual may display this mix of orientation. Almond and Verba term this as ‘citizen’. Civic culture is treated as a particular mix of citizens, subjects and parochials. Thus, three types of participants—citizens, subjects and parochials—are identified. Civic culture is supposed to include all the three types.

These three types of political cultures may generally be associated with three types of political structures. Generally, parochial political culture may be congruent with traditional political structure; subject political culture with authoritarian political structure and participant with democratic. This also implies that in case there is change in the political system and structures but no corresponding or proportionate change in the political culture, it would result in an incongruent relationship between the political structure and political culture. Almond and Verba present a position where there can be congruency or incongruency between the political culture and political structure. Implication of congruency between political culture and political structure is that attitudes and institutions match, while incongruency means attitudes reject political institutions and structures. Probably, this will explain, how many democratic institutions fail to function successfully in many developing countries. For example, Almond and Powell in their Comparative Politics (1966) have pointed out about examples of ‘lag between structural and cultural changes’.²⁰ Introduction of adult suffrage brings a new institution as part of democratic set-up and requires that the voter’s attitude should reflect individual rational decision-making. However, it may happen that voting may be done as per traditional norms. In India, for example, psephologists and political analysts have pointed out that in the aftermath of independence, voting in India has been characterized by ‘patron-client’ relationship. In this, mobilization for voting is not as per individual choice but by a socially determined relationship between somebody dominant and others as clients. This gap between requirement of a political institution (adult suffrage and rational choice-making) and attitudinal orientation (voting as per socially determined relationship) is incongruency between political culture and political institutions.

Almond and Verba have presented the relationship between political culture and political structure in terms of congruency (fit) and incongruency (gap) in the Table 14.2.

 

Table 14.2 Congruency/Incongruency between Political Culture and Political Structure²¹

Allegiant political culture is one in which cognitive, affective and participant political orientations reach a high frequency of awareness, positive feeling and evaluation. Here political culture and political structure fit each other or match and become congruent with each other. In fact, Almond and Verba have explained civic culture as one which shows allegiant characteristics and where political culture and political structure become congruent. This provides an essential condition for successful, stable and participant democracy. In a situation of high frequency of awareness but high frequency of indifference in feeling and evaluation, apathy prevails. In this, congruency between political culture and political structure is very weak. A third situation relates to one of high frequency of negative evaluation or feeling. In this, political culture and attitudes reject the political structures. This presents a situation of instability. As such, allegiance, apathy and alienation also stand for a spectrum of stable, weak and unstable democracies. For Almond and Verba, while stable democracies provide instances of civic culture, instability is found in most of the developing countries. With the help of concept of civic culture, democratic experiences and experiments of different countries can be analysed and classified as allegiant, apathetic and alienated in terms of congruency between political culture and political structure. However, it may be noted that all political cultures are mixed cultures and there are individuals with subject and parochial orientations. Almond and Verba’s civic culture is also a mixed culture.

Since all political cultures, except the parochial political culture, are mixed, Almond and Verba present a combination of different political cultures as: (i) The Parochial-Subject Culture, (ii) The Subject-Participant Culture, and (iii) The Parochial–Participant Culture.

In the Parochial-Subject Culture, people have a mix of parochial and subject orientation. A large number of people may not accept only diffuse authority of the tribal, village or feudal chief. Contrarily, they are oriented towards a more complex political system with specialized and centralized authority such as a king, or a ruler. Almond and Verba cite the examples of African kingdoms²² and the Ottoman Empire (read Usmaniya or Uthmaniya from which the English version ‘Ottoman’ comes) as examples of mixed subject-parochial culture. Similarly, culture might have existed in many of the oriental empires in China, Egypt and India. However, the main feature of the centralized authority is its extractive nature. It may be mentioned here that Karl Marx while discussing about the Asiatic mode of production characterizes oriental despotism chiefly with extractive nature. Parochial–subject culture combines parochial orientation and subject orientation. Though the parochial orientation survives as sub-culture, its character changes over a period of time because of interaction with subject sub-culture.

The Subject-Participant Culture combines subject as well as participant orientations. England presents such an example where subject culture was supplemented by participant culture. A specific feature of this culture is that a substantial part of the population has acquired specialized input orientations and an activist set of self-orientation. This means people are aware of policy proposals that flow upward and they seek active participation in the inputs. However, input functions at times are based on available democratic infrastructures such as local authorities, local communities, municipal affiliations etc. Almond and Verba point out that if parochial and local autonomies survive, they may contribute to the development of a democratic infrastructure. They further suggest that in Britain these groups become first of the interest groups. In this, subject culture survives as sub-culture. Though the subject orientation survives as subculture, its character changes over a time period because of interaction with participant and democratic sub-culture.

The Parochial–Participant Culture is peculiarly identified with democratic participant structures and roles with parochial political cultures. In most of the third world or developing countries, though participant democratic structures have been introduced, the political culture remains predominantly parochial. We have mentioned above about what Almond and Verba say ‘incongruency’ and Almond and Powell say, ‘gap’ between political culture and political structure. Parochial-participant culture is characterized by such a gap or incongruency. This gap or incongruency explains the reason why democratic institutions functions differently, say in England and in India. While in England, voter’s participation may be largely according to individual choices, in India it may be in the patron-client framework or as a vote bank. A participant democratic structure requires a participant political culture, absence of which leads to gap and persisting instability. A parochial political sub-culture will generally resist participant structures. Almond and Verba feel that to bridge the gap, parochial systems can be transformed into input democratic infrastructures such as demand and interest groups.

We may recall, Rajni Kothari’s thesis of ‘politicization of caste and casteism in politics’ presented in the early 1970s in his Politics in India (1970). Caste as a traditional system presented parochial structure, which is now operating within a democratic participant environment. If we take caste as an element of parochial sub-culture and democratic polity as participant structure, Kothari feels that the two must work together to remove the incongruency that Almond and Verba talk about. Castes as parochial sub-culture needed to orient itself as interest or demand groups or may be as politically active participants in place of the self that Almond and Verba talk about. Thus, caste becomes part of democratic infrastructure and oriented to inputs, and democratic politics requires them as participants. Kothari’s conclusion that ‘the alleged casteism in politics is thus no more and no less than politicisation of caste’²³ point to the need of a participant democratic polity to search for its participant political culture. Democratic polity required its participants and caste groups needed a political process for asserting their identity and interests. Politics provides castes a platform to organize and express, caste groups provide politics democratic infrastructure.