Globalization Meets the World's Political Cultures
Daniel J. Elazar
Florida Meets the Dalai Lama
On April 16, 1999, the Dalai Lama stopped in Miami, Florida, interrupting his return to India from a visit to Latin America, to accept an honorary degree from Florida International University, the state university for the Miami area. The award was arranged by Nathan Katz, chairman of the Religion Department, an expert on South Asian religions, and the interpreter for the first delegation of Jewish spiritual leaders to visit the Dalai Lama in his Indian exile some years ago.1
The degree was awarded at a convocation held in the university's basketball arena before an overflow audience of 4,500 enthusiastic Floridians including Governor Jeb Bush who had flown down to Miami from the other end of the state for the occasion, students and faculty of the university, and those of the public who could obtain tickets (those released for the general public were all gone within half an hour of the opening of the box office). With the exception of a handful of students and faculty who were concerned about freeing Tibet from Chinese domination, the vast majority of the audience came for private reasons as part of their continuing search for spirituality.
The Dalai Lama, however, had other ideas. With humor and humility, he sought to turn that disconnected audience of private seekers into a public rally for a free Tibet and he succeeded. He did so not by bringing them into his sophisticated spiritual world but by recognizing that theirs was generally unsophisticated, one might even say platitudinous, and masking his own ideas, he used the words that would appeal to them, the words of love, compassion, and brotherhood so common in the West. The closest he came to sharing his own spiritual presence was at the luncheon before the convocation for special guests when he blessed those who approached him in the Tibetan Buddhist manner.
The audience, not unexpectedly, was as heterogeneous and multicultural as the Miami area, including Anglos and Hispanics, Asians and African Americans of all the area's major religions in the United States and most of the major country-of-origin groups. The Hispanic students shouted "Viva Tibet Libre." Then the Dalai Lama flew off to India.
The whole event was a "happening," but the kind of happening which could only have taken lace at the end of the twentieth century when Buddhist lamas speak to American seekers in multicultural newspeak in the economic and social capital of Latin America, which happens to be in the United States, a phenomenon that resulted from the establishment of a Communist dictatorship in Cuba forty years earlier. Had a social scientist been able to study the individuals in the assembly, he might have been able to trace out the different political cultures present and their differential responses to or understandings of what they were experiencing. Obviously, no such study was or could have been made, but the mix of east and west, north and south, religious and secular, could only have occurred in this era of globalization, and although objectively a single integrated event, for its participants it possessed multiple meanings in a way that could be a metaphor for our times.
The Emergence of Globalization
The present wave of what we now know as globalization can be said to have begun in 1944 as World War II moved into its last phase when the nations allied against the Axis came together at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to try to establish a worldwide postwar economic regime that would control the problems of trade and finance that had led to the Great Depression of 1929 and to World War II. In the series of economic and fiscal measures hammered out there and then at Dumbarton Oaks in the District of Columbia, the foundations were laid for the network of international financial institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monatary Fund (IMF), and the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) now the World Trade Organization, that have proved to be remarkably effective in the task that was set for them.
A year later, in the closing days of the war, the same nations assembled in San Francisco and established the United Nations, designed to be a political complement to the world economic superstructure then in the initial stages of being erected. Because it was - and is - political and rested on the principle of national sovereignty in its modern definition, the progress of the United Nations and its associated institutions has been slower and uneven. Nevertheless, it, too, has done much to change the world's landscape or to anchor changes occurring as a result of other developments in the new globalization.
Indeed, in 1999 the world celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document which, like its parent, the United Nations, is a combination of aspirations, rhetoric, and pretense along with solid accomplishment. Today, however, it symbolizes the second pillar of the new globalization. Trade and finance on one side, human rights on the other.
During the five years between 1944 and 1949 the foundations of the postwar world were laid. The five years from 1949 through 1954 witnessed the development of the first expressions of a companion set of international economic and political relations whose task it has become to balance the effects of globalization. These are the instruments of regionalization, the first of which, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO, was founded in 1949, and the second of which, the European Community, now Union, which was established in 1953 as three economic communities grounded in the Franco-German rapprochement then being forged.
Take together, these acts were manifestations of an epochal transformation; that is to say, a shift from the modern epoch which had come into existence 300 years earlier in the 1640s, to a postmodern one whose principal manifestation is a globalization of power, trade, and culture. They were joined by globalization's third pillar, decolonization, which began in 1946 when the United States granted the Philippines, the United Kingdom granted Jordan, and France granted Syria their independence. This meant that the new international relations would take place on a basis closer to the equality of nations and states than ever before in history.
From the Modern to Postmodern Epochs
That epochal transformation bears some striking resemblances to the one that occurred 300 years earlier when the late medieval world was replaced by the modern world. The beginning of the modern epoch was based upon five major steps:
The establishment of the nation-state as the political desideratum for the international order as reflected in the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648.
The elimination of religion as the basis for political conflict, reflected in that treaty's ending the Thirty Years' War on the basis of the principle that every state would have the religion of its sovereign and states would not engage in interstate wars of religion.
The beginnings of capitalism as the engine that would move the world forward economically and would create markets, the industrial revolution, and the transportation and communications vehicles necessary to connect the two.
The emergence of modern science as a major new frontier of advancement that would lead, on one hand, to the discovery of new secrets of the universe, the invention of means to harness those secrets and the powers they represented, and the means to improve human health and allow humans to survive to both undertake that work and to enjoy its fruits.
The birth of the idea of political liberty and the idea that humans could and should govern themselves rather than be governed by others claiming rights as superiors. That idea was to drive the modern epoch through four great revolutions with worldwide impact (the English Civil War, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the Russian Revolution) and numerous others of lesser scope but equal importance for those they affected. It was to result in the invention of modern democratic republicanism, whether in Jacobin or federal form following parliamentary or separation of powers models, and increasingly resting on constitutionalism and the idea of the sovereignty of the people.
What began with so much hope in the middle of the seventeenth century and which achieved so much in the intervening 300 years collapsed in the gotterdamerung of the Nazi and Bolshevik backlash of the twentieth century, leading to a new epoch and the necessity for humans to confront its new challenges. These kinds of epochal changes have been common in human history, coming at about 300-year intervals or what the Bible refers to as "every tenth generation." In the 300 years between 1348 and 1648, the face of Europe was transformed by the Black Death, the greatest plague in recorded history. Three hundred years before that, the years between the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the end of the Byzantine empire and the discovery of America in 1492 brought a similar epochal transformation.
Globalization also had earlier parallels including a false start in the latter half of the nineteenth century which was ended by the eruption of World War I and had to be begun again at the end of World War II. Postmodern globalization, however, is radically different from anything that has come before. These differences are distinguished by new and unprecedented possibilities of global communications and the emergence of a favored culture anchored in humanitarian values which, while not by any means universal as yet, is certainly favored by the powers that are guiding globalization.
It is hardly necessary to provide examples of this but if we were to, perhaps the best would be that of the impact of instant communications. Wherever the mass communications media make the effort to communicate a "story," they can do so in a manner that can rivet the attention of publics in various parts of the world. If that story suggests that the favored humanitarian values are being abused, it is now possible to expect the United States and its allies or some other combination of Western powers to intervene even in matters which only a few years ago were deemed to be protected by the "sacred" principle of state sovereignty and hence the exclusive preserve of the governments of the states involved. We have seen this happen first with the modest intervention of the Office of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Chechnya a few years back, the far heartier and broader intervention of NATO in Bosnia and Kosovo, and now the arrest of General Augusto Pinochet of Chile while in England on a warrant issued by the Spanish government accusing him of crimes against humanity in Chile.
These new developments touch upon all cultures to a greater or lesser extent and all must adapt to them. There has been a spate of books in recent years testifying to the fact that this is the case and suggesting ways in which the new globalization is producing great interregional cultural conflicts between East and West, North and South, Islam and Christianity, and who knows what else.2 What is needed is a more precise mapping and marking of the terrain to see just what is happening, where, what directions, and with what consequences. That is what we propose to do in this book.
Political Culture: Continuity and Change
The responses to globalization have varied from country to country and region to region throughout the world, depending on what each brings to the table. Obviously there are great differences between the United States and American use of the Internet and say, Bangladesh or even Italy. (In 1999, 94 percent of all web sites in the world were American, although that figure is somewhat misleading because many non-Americans use American companies for their web site connections. The misleading percentage is only misleading to reinforce the differences between the U.S. and the rest of the world in this matter.)
Among the determinants of what each puts on the table is political culture. The reality is that globalization involves the further spread of the culture of northwest Europe and North America in its various forms that have been so successful reshaping of technology, economics, politics, and society in various parts of the world. In the early modern epoch, the peoples of northwest Europe managed to globalize European affairs and issues through colonization of the other parts of the world. The Thirty Years' War was the last exclusively internal European war. By the latter half of the seventeenth century, the European wars between France, England, the Netherlands, Spain, and Portugal in particular, were being fought throughout the globe with naval engagements off the South African coast and in the Java Sea as well as the English Channel. Still, those were wars of the great powers and if local inhabitants of these far-flung regions were involved, they were involved as cadres in the armed forces of those powers.
The farthest Russian penetration into North America was Fort Ross, approximately 90 miles north of San Francisco, on the Pacific coast (today Fort Ross State Park). It represented the culmination of four thousand years of western movement. In the 1820s, Fort Ross was the southern-most Russian outpost in North America. For a brief moment, it reflected the expansionist ambitions of certain Russian leaders, who saw in the still politically chaotic Pacific coast of North America of the early nineteenth century a chance to extend Russian hegemony southward in the face of rival British, American, and Spanish claims. The Russian effort was brief and unsuccessful. It had no real support from Moscow and was confronted by intense opposition from rival claimants. The Russians abandoned the fort in the 1830s, withdrawing to Alaska where they were to sit for another thirty years until Secretary of State William Seward arranged to purchase that territory for the United States. Today, Fort Ross is a collection of restored log structure whose piquant history attracts visitors to a lovely section of the California coast.
In one sense, however, Fort Ross is far more significant that its brief history would seem to indicate. In effect, it was at that point that the convergence of various elements of what we generally define as Western civilization brought to a culmination four thousand years or more of expansion that ultimately embraced the whole globe.
Five thousand years before the founding of Fort Ross, the West Asian civilizations, out of which Western civilization was to spring, were reaching their height in the fertile crescent from the Nile to the Tigress and Euphrates valleys. A millennium and a half later, Israel emerged on the scene at the very western end of that region to give rise to Judaism, which became the religious foundation of Western civilization. Shortly thereafter, the Greeks, much influenced by the great civilizations of ancient West Asia, began the development of what was to become Western philosophy and science, first in Asia Minor and then in Southeastern Europe. Between the Semitic peoples of the Mediterranean coast and the Hellenic peoples of the Greek isles, what became Western civilization was spread throughout the Mediterranean Basin during the course of the millennium immediately prior to the rise of Christianity.
Two thousand years ago, Christianity was born out of the Jewish people; within its first millennium it synthesized its understanding of Jewish religious thought with the contributions of Greek civilization and spread throughout Europe. The energies of the West thus organized and released, the following millennium saw the Christianized Russians move eastward and the Christianized Spanish, French, and British peoples move westward away from their European heartlands to colonize vast new territories and implant Western civilization within them. The eastward movement of the Russians and the westward movement of the other European nations finally met after having girdled the globe in northern California at Fort Ross. Thereby completed were literally millennia of migration, settlement, and cultural transformation, the consequences of which became quite apparent in the twentieth century as the entire globe fell within the sphere of Western civilization.
This globalization of colonialism continued until World War II when it collapsed in the face of the humiliation of the West by the Japanese in the early days of the war. Within two decades after the war's end, it had all but disappeared, to be replaced by what was then called "the Third World," newly independent states governed or misgoverned by locals instead of by European colonial powers. In all fairness, it must be said that the new globalization was born partly as a response to the European states' loss of their colonies and their desire to regain the economic benefits of colonialism in a new way. The former colonial powers quickly discovered that it was less costly to dominate the economies of their former colonies than to have the responsibility of maintaining their polities, which gave added impetus to the new trends.
What did remain after decolonization were the differences in political culture among populations in territory after territory. Indeed, those differences were not reduced one whit than the differences among the European powers themselves. Political culture, like all culture, changes but very slowly. Understanding it requires an understanding of both its continuities and its changes. It also requires careful avoidance of confusing style which changes frequently and rapidly, and culture.
Political culture has been defined by political scientist Gabriel Almond as "the patterned orientation to political action" of a particular group.3 Almond was one of the first popularizers of the term, which originated in the 1950s in an effort to capture the recurring patterns of thought and behavior of particular nations and groups which formerly had been discussed under the rubric "national character." At the time, everyone who was conscious of the evils of racism and stereotyping and what they had brought about only a decade earlier, wished to avoid.
While even the use of the kind of generalizations which come about in studies of political culture can come close to stereotyping, by and large the term has been a salutary one for use in identifying patterns without requiring or assuming that every person in a particular place shares those patterns, and for identifying overlapping and parallel patterns where appropriate. Alex Inkeles, the social psychologist, added to Almond's definition by describing political culture as that which is embodied in the modal personality of a particular population.4
The authors of this study have previously contributed to enlarging the understanding of political culture through their work. Daniel Elazar has emphasized the continuity of political culture in his studies of American political culture, both the American political cultural synthesis of marketplace and commonwealth and its three subcultural explications: moralistic, individualistic, and traditionalistic.5
Terry Clark has emphasized political cultural change through his Fiscal Austerity and Innovation project.6 Because of the decisive break with the past that the present globalization is bringing about, our two perspectives have converged as we try to identify what is continuous and what is changing in the political cultures of the world and how much of the latter is the consequence of globalization.
It is our thesis that globalization is a major force for political cultural change as it is for cultural change in general, but that these changes take place differentially with different populations in different parts of the globe. While this statement is hardly exceptional, pinning down those differences and their differential development is a much more difficult task. It is the one we accept for ourselves in this volume.
We begin with two convictions drawn from our previous work. One is that political culture can be distinguished from general culture for certain purposes and, two, that culture, including political culture, is an independent variable in the constellation of forces shaping humans. With those two assumptions, the results of our previous work, and the accumulated knowledge of political cultural studies going back to the early 1950s and national character studies going back at least to the early 1920s if not before, we have a significant pool of data upon which to draw to substantiate our claims.
The following chapters do just that, but first let us try to present a systematic explication of the components of political culture as we see them. We would suggest that political culture is shaped by five basic orientations:
- Orientation to political organization
- Orientation to civil society
- Orientation to polity
- Orientation to political action
- Orientation to political economy
These five sets of orientations form what we may refer to as the political cultural pentagon.
Table 1
Orientation to Political Organization
|
North American New World | Covenantal |
| Northern Europe | Covenantal - Hierarchical |
| Southern Europe | Hierarchical - Organic |
| Eastern Europe | Organic - Hierarchical |
| Latin America | Hierarchical - Organic |
| Middle East North Africa | Organic - Hierarchical |
| South Asia | Hierarchical - Organic |
| East Asia | Hierarchical |
| Africa | Hierarchical - Organic |
Table 2
Orientation to Civil Society
|
North American New World | Civic - Republican |
| Northern Europe | Statist - Republican |
| Southern Europe | Statist - Republican |
| Eastern Europe | Statist - Subject |
| Latin America | Corporatist |
| Middle East North Africa | Statist - Subject |
| South Asia | Statist - Subject - Tribal |
| East Asia | Statist - Subject |
| Africa | Subject - Tribal |
Table 3
Orientation to Polity
|
North American New World | Participatory - Populist |
| Northern Europe | Participatory - Elitist |
| Southern Europe | Participatory - Elitist |
| Eastern Europe | Leader-Oriented - Populist |
| Latin America | Elitist - Traditional - Populist |
| Middle East North Africa | Leader-Oriented - Populist |
| South Asia | Participatory - Elitist |
| East Asia | Elitist |
| Africa | Elitist |
Table 4
Orientation to Political Action
|
North American New World | Moralistic - Individualistic |
| Northern Europe | Moralistic - Traditionalistic |
| Southern Europe | Individualistic - Traditionalistic |
| Eastern Europe | Traditionalistic - Individualistic |
| Latin America | Individualistic - Traditional |
| Middle East North Africa | Traditional - Traditionalistic |
| South Asia | Traditionalistic - Traditional |
| East Asia | Traditional - Individualistic |
| Africa | Traditional - Traditionalistic |
Table 5
Orientation to Political Economy
|
North American New World | Market - Commonwealth |
| Northern Europe | State Involved - Corporatist - Market |
| Southern Europe | State Involved - Corporatist - Market |
| Eastern Europe | State Involved - Corporatist - Market |
| Latin America | State Involved - Corporatist |
| Middle East North Africa | State Controlled - Corporatist |
| South Asia | State Involved - Corporatist |
| East Asia | State Controlled - Corporatist |
| Africa | State Involved |
1. Orientation to Political Organization
Orientation to political organization addresses the question of how particular people or groups of people have addressed the organization of political life. We have identified three basic forms. Indeed, we are prepared to argue that all political philosophy and political science has come to focus on these three basic forms as foundational models, although in reality most expressions of political organization combine more than one.
All political scientific or political philosophic theories of the origins of the polity and polity-building, in the last analysis, suggest that polities are either founded by force and organized as hierarchies, developed by accident as centers with peripheries, or constructed throughout reflection and choice as noncentralized matrices. True, each model is a classic expression of an ideal type. In real politics the three may be somewhat mixed but in fact every polity is constituted on the basis of one or another, which remains dominant in its form of government if and until a fundamental reconstitution takes place (Elazar, 1991).
The pyramid is the classic expression of the hierarchical model, with organizational authority and power distributed among levels linked through a chain of command. Having its origin in some form of conquest, the use of force, a possibility in all polities, its implication of its constitution. Thus it is the military model par excellence. It goes without saying that, in the hierarchical model, the top level must be the most important and the place where decisions are made as to which level does what.
The center-periphery model is one in which authority is concentrated in a single center which is more or less influenced by its periphery, depending upon the situation in which it finds itself. Such polities or organizations tend to develop organically, either around a center or through generating one over time. They tend to be oligarchic in character, with power in the hands of those who constitute the center. Power is either concentrated or dispersed according to decisions taken in the center which may or may nor include significant representation from the peripheries.
The federal, or matrix, model reflects a polity compounded of arenas within arenas held together by common framing institutions and a shared communications network. Its origins are to be found in the deliberate coming together or equals to establish a mutually useful framework within which all can function on an equal basis, usually defined by a pact. Consequently, it reflects the fundamental distribution of powers among multiple centers across the matrix, not the devolution of powers from a single center or down a pyramid. Each cell in the matrix represents an independent political actor and an arena for political action. Some cells are larger and some smaller and the powers assigned to each may reflect that difference, but none is "higher" or "lower" in importance than any other, unlike in an organizational pyramid where "levels are distinguished as higher or lower as a matter of constitutional design".
The matter was most felicitously summarized in the first essay in The Federalist (Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, 1961).
It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, the decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.
Needless to say, each of these models carries with it both certain institutional arrangements and certain patterns of political culture which together have implications and certain patterns of political culture which together have implications with regard to the organization, distribution, and exercise of power and authority (Table 6). The interorganizational relationships within each develop accordingly. At the same time, it is in the nature of politics that various groups, parties and interests which give the system life. The interaction between them and the institutional framework and among them represents the substance of the political process.
Proceeding further, in hierarchic systems, administration of the pyramid on behalf of the ruler takes precedence in the organization of government. Needless to say, it is hierarchical administration, organized from the top down in a chain of command that rests on a professional bureaucracy, as Max Weber has described it. That is certainly the case in France, where the career civil service is even trained in special schools and is organized into various bureaucratic pyramids whose members hold their power regardless of what government is in power. Within the pyramid, access is closely controlled and must go through the chain of command (Hoffman, 1960; Aron, 1968).
Table 6
Models of Foundings / Regimes
| | Conquest | Organic | Covenant |
|---|
| Founding: | Force/Conquest | Accident | Reflection and Choice |
| Model: | Pyramid | Circle | Matrix |
| Structure: | Hierarchy | Center-Periphery | Frame and Cells |
| Governance mechanisms (in rank order) | Administration - top down bureaucracy | Politics - club, Oligarchy | Constitution - written |
| | Politics - court | Administration - center outward | Politics - open with factions |
| | Constitution - charter | Constitution - tradition | Administration - divided |
| Apotheosis: | Army | Westminster system | Federal system |
| Excess: | Totalitarian dictatorship | Jacobin state | Anarchy |
| Most common form of revolution | Coup d'etat | Civil war among elites | Structural resort to arms
|
In the Organic model, politics takes precedence. It is the politics of oligarchy or oligarchies and it finds its expression through a "club" or network of "clubs." In the United Kingdom, when parliamentary government along this model was at its height, the British elite were literally members of a group of acceptable clubs reflecting different points of view cutting across the various formal oligarchies. The elites gathered in those clubs where informal political decisions were made. Failure to gain membership of an acceptable club was tantamount to being excluded from the leadership (Beer, 1969).
In the federal model, the constitution takes precedence. Because it is a polity based upon conscious design, the ends and organization of the polity must be rooted in a general agreement on the part of its founders, preferably written down so that all may have access to it and understand it precisely. Thus the constitution is the foundation document of any political matrix. The United States, indeed, was built on this idea of constitutionalism from its first settlement in the seventeenth century and certainly from the beginning of the United States itself (Lutz, 1988). The US Constitution remains the lodestone of the American polity and its interpretation underlies all aspects of American politics.
In a hierarchy, politics stands in second place to administration in the order of political life, but it is predominantly court politics; that is to say, the intrigues and maneuvers of those who are in or around the top of the pyramid or strive toward it. Again France is a classic example, whether we look at the court of Louis XIV or the presidents of France in the Fifth Republic. The constitution is in third place, either a charter or, when more democratic, resembling a charger; that is to say, embodying the hierarchical principle, handed down from the top to regularize the distribution of power and its control in organic law. Thus, France has had numerous constitutions without altering its fundamentally hierarchical structure. Each constitution has simply provided the regime rules for the functioning of the hierarchy at a particular time.
In the organic model, administration follows politics and it is administration from the center outward. In other words, there is an administrative center just as there is a political center; indeed, the two mix and merge in the clubs. Again, the United Kingdom is an excellent example of this. In third place is the constitution which tends to rest on tradition rather than adoption of organic law after comprehensive design. In other words, when some practice becomes rooted in the system, it is formulated into ordinary law which is given constitutional status by general agreement in the minds of the center and the periphery both, because it has acquired the patina of tradition. This exactly describes the constitution of the United Kingdome, which is not a single document but a collection of documents going back to Magna Carta in 1215, each of which represents the expression of an accepted tradition after a period of conflict over the meaning of that tradition. Formally, those documents only have the status of ordinary legislation, but in fact they have a constitutional status in the minds of parliament and public that prevents their easy alteration.
In the federal model, politics follows the constitution as the second most important element, with politics based upon the rules of the game laid down in the constitution. Because those who have framed the constitution are all substantially equal, it is an open politics. While bargaining exists in some way or for some in every regime, even the most authoritarian and centralized, the locus of effective bargaining depends on the nature of the polity. In hierarchies it is essentially bargaining in the court and in organic polities, bargaining within the center, while in covenantal polities bargaining is open by constitutional design. Hence it usually seems messy to the observer with no clear set of paths or cast of characters. Rather, factions develop and are replaced as situations change and either compete or cooperate with one another to secure their political aims. It seems like every issue demands a new coalition. Moreover, governmental reform in the first two usually involves an effort to make bargaining more open and less secret, so that the spectators, that is the public, will know what is happening. In the last, reform comes when the feeling develops among the public that access and openness are being closed off and that they must be restored to the original constitutional design so that more of the public can participate in coalition-building.
Administration in covenantal politics comes last. It exists only because it is necessary to govern, no because it is considered to be especially deserving or the basis for political order. At that it is normally divided through the separation of powers and federalism with no easy chain of command and no way of being insulated from the politics which dominates the regime in the name of the constitution. This, indeed, is the US pattern (Ostrom, 1987).
The apotheosis of the hierarchical model is an army; that is to say, a military system organized along a chain of command with clear ranks and clear and unequal standing for different ranks. It is not surprising then that the most influential French leaders were Louis XIV, who established France's standing army and brought it to its greatest power in Europe prior to the French Revolution; Napoleon, who gained power through his military prowess and control of the army and who reorganized every aspect of French public life on a military basis; and de Gaulle, who gave France a role in its own liberation in World War II.
The apotheosis of the organic model is the Westminster parliamentary system, of which Britain is the most noted example and its parliament the mother of parliaments. In its pure form, the parliament occupies the center of the system. All else is in their periphery and the parliament itself operates like a club.
In the federal model, the apotheosis is a federal system where authority and power are established constitutionally by design and distributed among the various units in the federal system, with the distribution protected by the constitution and the politics and structure that flow from it. The United States remains the most prominent model of that kind of polity.
In a hierarchy, the excess is totalitarian dictatorship, aspiring to total control of all aspects of life from the tope down throughout the pyramid. The excess in the organic model is the Jacobin state, one in which everything is centralized and the central elites make all critical decisions for everyone. In the federal model, the excess is anarchy, where there is too much diffusion of power, unable to coalesce into a functioning governing system.
Many partisans of the modern state, from Jean Bodin to Max Weber, saw it as a hierarchy, a power pyramid, those pinnacle was the locus of sovereignty. Others from Edmund Burke to Edward Shills, saw the state as following a center-periphery model with power held by an elite at the center and all the rest in varying degrees on the periphery. For most modern states, these models were accurate enough, but those few polities that fell into the category of the third model were not recognized by most political scientists as reflecting a different model of their own, both in theory and often in practice. Rather than reflecting on their indigenous federal model, political scientists tried to force them into the procrustean bed of one or another of the first two. We need to step back and understand how each model has to be understood on its own terms with its own consequences.
Today, rather than trying to force either the unitary or the federal models of statehood or polity into a model more suited for the other, we can examine the political culture and institutions in unitary and federal system each according to its own model and then compare models, thereby doing elemental justice to each form according to its own conceptions before attempting to compare them. The unitary continuum, whether base don the pyramid or the center-periphery model, emphasizes the neat and presumable more efficient organization of power. Liens within it are relatively clear-cut. With issues of centralization and decentralization, choices are relatively unambiguous because the level or circles are relative unambiguous. On the other hand, the federalist model is attuned to the dispersion and diffusion of power and hence is in principle easier for accommodating political cultural and related differences within the body politic.
2. Orientation to Civil Society
Defining "Civil Society"
The term and concept of "Civil Society" had its origins in the seventeenth century particularly by the great political philosophers Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Harrington, Sidney, etc. Those origins were threefold: a) to emphasize the separation between governmental, public nongovernmental, and private institutions and activities while b) maintaining the necessary role of government in framing political and social life, within c) more open, tolerant and, hence, heterogeneous polities in which all (or most) shared the same citizenship, rights, and responsibilities. Thus from the first civil society has pointed us in two directions; first, toward truly independent private and voluntary sectors of political and social activity, and second toward a proper role for government, limited but nonetheless real and vital for the maintenance of the commonwealth.
If not from the first, then at least by the early eighteenth century the idea of civil society had acquired two forms: one was the statist form primarily championed by continental European theorists who saw the state as a comprehensive reified entity controlling all of the authority and power of government, complemented by a strong and growing private sector with the two mediated by mediating voluntary institutions which they referred to more narrowly as "civil society." The other was the federal or associational view, articulated and primarily emphasized by Anglo-American political theorists, but also by some of the early modern Germans, who did not express any concept of the reified state but saw all human activity as associational and government as the most comprehensive association, complemented by the private sector and bridged by the public nongovernmental sector of voluntary associations. Under that theory, what individuals could not do privately was best entrusted to voluntary associations that were public but nongovernmental. While government was necessary and important as a framing institution, it was to be entrusted only with those activities and functions that could not be undertaken though nongovernmental public organization. All three sectors governmental, public nongovernmental, and private together were referred to as civil society, in contradistinction to the statist view. It may be said that civil society was seen as stool that rested on three legs; governmental, public non-governmental and private. All three legs were necessary for the stool to stand and they had to be of appropriate length to be in balance.
Whether in its statist or its federal form, the idea of civil society rested on the premise that the middle, that is to say, public nongovernmental, segment was critical, both institutionally to make the model work and morally to make the model a just one, and so it has continued to be with the civil society idea, whatever its subsequent permutations.
Under either definition, political cultural orientation divides into four categories: elitist, participatory elitist, leader-centered populist, and participatory populist. Under the first, the expectation is that civil society is organized around recognized elites, often with ascribed status, who are thereby entitled to rule or to a major share of rule. Many Arab states fit into this category or China, where mandarin elites have been replaced by Communist party cadres. The second, participatory elites is, for example, a very common category which can be found in England, where elitism has been transformed from deference to a titled aristocracy to include those who are properly trained and cultivated to become part of the ruling elites, to. The third refers especially to the kind of a populist political culture where the people regularly invest their confidence in a single leader or very small group of leaders, a pattern found in Latin America, the Arab world, and Eastern Europe, inter alia. The fourth, characteristically is an orientation which holds that the people rule, or that vox populi is more important than the voice of any elites and that the people are expected to participate in ruling themselves. Australia, Switzerland, and the United States come to mind as exemplars of this model.
3. Orientation to the Polity
The political organization of civil society invariably leads to the establishment of a polity, some form of organized, structured, and continuing set of political institutions. We have identified five basic political cultural orientations toward the character and construction of that polity: civic, corporatist, statist, subject, and tribal. The first is a republican orientation. The polity is expected to be the property of its citizens, who in turn are expected to participate in its governance in such a way that their participation is controlling. Canada and New Zealand are good examples of this. The second sees the polity as structured around permanently institutional groups: religious, ethnic, ideological, or occupational, in such a manner that governance is mediated through those groups and the leaders of those groups handle the tasks of governance jointly. Austria and Sweden are good examples. The third views the state as a reified entity, existing separately from its citizens or from civil society, with governance in the hands of those cadres who have either by ascription or by special preparation have been assigned those tasks. The state is expected to be strongly interventionist in the lives of its citizens. France is a good example of this model. In the fourth, governance of the polity belongs to a separate elite and most of the population are subjects to the polity and that elite with no right of participation in governance or of citizenship as in Saudi Arabia or the Persian Gulf states. The last is essentially confined to premodern traditional arrangements whereby the polity is not easily separable from the total organization of the tribe, itself a small enough group to provide extensive face-to- face relations and in which tribal members acquire roles through traditional processes that are recognized by tribal consensus rather than more formal designations of authority. Traditionally American and African tribal societies reflected this.
4. Orientation to Political Action
Political culture is one of the primary sources shaping politics. Political culture has been defined as the "particular pattern of orientations to political action" in which each political system is embedded.7 A political culture is related to the general culture of a particular society, but is by no means identical with it. As Gabriel Almond says: "Because political orientation involves cognition, intellection, and adaptation to external situations, as well as the standards and values of the general culture, it is a differentiated part of the culture and has a certain autonomy.8 Like all culture, it is so rooted in the cumulative historical experience of particular groups that it has become second nature to those within its embrace.
General culture has its direct impact on politics from the outside, as it were. Political culture, that differentiated aspect of the overall culture which is itself a truly political phenomenon, has its direct impact from the inside.
In lands of great diversity, political culture often serves as an integrative facter encouraging sharing of what can be shared amidst diversity. Political culture, then, is the summation of persistent patterns of underlying political attitudes and characteristic responses to political concerns that is manifest in particular political order. Its existence is generally unperceived by those who are part of that order and its origins date back to the very beginnings of the particular people who share it. Political culture is an intrinsically political phenomenon. As such, it makes its own demands on the political system. For example, the definition of what is "fair" in the political arena - a direct manifestation of political culture - is likely to be different from the definition of what is fair in family or business relationships. Moreover, different political cultures will define fairness in politics differently. Political culture also affects all other questions confronting the political system. For example, many factors go into shaping public expectations from government in the way of services, and political culture will be significant among them. Political systems, in turn, are in some measure the products of the political cultures they serve and must remain in harmony with their political culture if they are to maintain themselves.
The study of political culture in its contemporary form goes back some thirty years. In a sense its emergence in the 1950s represented a reemergence of what was once defined in the study of political science as "national character," substantially refined and certainly more hesitant, skeptical, and cautious.
The "national character" approach had run into problems both methodologically and politically. Racist applications of its premises, which were features of the last generation of the nineteenth century and the first generation of the twentieth and reached their apogee in the Nazi era, made all generalizations about nations, peoples, and groups suspect. Yet however suspect such generalizations might be, the questions they addressed remain enduring ones. Hence it became impossible to continue the study of political science and simply ignore those questions because the way they were treated in previous years was so questionable.
The emergence of the study of political culture represented an attempt to come to grips with the modalities (to use Alex Inkeles' term) one finds within enduring political communities, which seem to have their roots in the very character, or social psychology, of the members of those communities.9 It seeks to do so in a way that avoids the overgeneralization that leads to stereotyped conclusions, whether favorable or unfavorable to the particular group involved, and at the same time does not underplay these factors when we consider institutional and other behavioral dimensions of political life.
Two general approaches to the study of political culture have emerged. One, the school Gabriel Almond pioneered grew out of the study of comparative politics. Almond and his colleagues, Lucian Pye, Sidney Verba, C. Bingham Powell, and others, have tended to focus on "macro" cultural manifestations of an essentially nationwide character, and only from time to time have they tried to explore the subtleties within the nations they have studied. They have developed methods that have been quite useful in exposing and addressing such "macro" questions.10
The other school, which Daniel Elazar pioneered in the Cities of the Prairie project, grew out of the study of state and local politics. It represented an attempt to understand the more subtle subcultural distinctions within the American polity in order to develop an overarching view of American civil society. It was based on a theory designed to deal with the most local and specific manifestations of political cultural differences.
The first approach emerged as an attempt to transcend the limitations of earlier institutional and behavioral studies and to give a comparative dimension to those studies that would allow for greater subtlety of international comparison. The second approach emerged in response to the kinds of glowing generalities about the American character that used to be written to describe the United States as a whole. In such books the American character is delineated by lists of traits, generally positive (i.e., Americans are optimistic, forward-looking, energetic, pragmatic, and whatever). These long lists were not necessarily erroneous, but as propositions they were not systematically organized or tested in any way. As the study of American civil society passed into a more rigorous phase, this kind of treatment seemed increasingly inadequate to many students of American civilization, who began to look for ways to systematically test these propositions or, if they thought they had some merit, to refine them and clarify the subtleties.
Political Culture and Subcultures
Political cultures and subcultures arise out of very real socio-cultural differences (ethnic, racial, linguistic, and religious) among peoples over the years, differences that date back to the very beginnings of civilization. Such differences are to be found within what are commonly conceived to be single nationality groups as often as among them.
The earlier studies have demonstrated that modern and postmodern political culture is expressed through three major political culture variations: that may exist side by side or even overlap. They can be labeled individualistic, moralistic, and traditionalistic.
The individualistic political culture emphasizes the conception of the democratic order as a marketplace. In its view, government is instituted for strictly utilitarian reasons, to handle those functions demanded by the people it is created to serve. A government need not have any direct concern with questions of the "good society" except insofar as it may be used to advance some common conception of the good society formulated outside the political arena just as it serves other functions. Since the individualistic political culture emphasizes the centrality of private concerns, it places a premium on limiting community intervention - whether governmental or nongovernmental into private activities to the minimum necessary to keep the marketplace in proper working order. In general, government action is to be restricted to those areas, primarily in the economic realm, that encourage private initiative and widespread access to the marketplace.
The moralistic political culture emphasizes conception of the common wealth as the basis for democratic government. Politics, to the moralistic political culture, is considered one of the great activities of man in his search for the good society - a struggle for power, it is true, but also an effort to exercise power for the betterment of the commonwealth. Consequently, in the moralistic political culture, both the general public and the politicians conceive of politics as a public activity centered on some notion of the public good and properly devoted to the advancement of the public interest. Good government, then, is measured by the degree to which it promotes the public good and in terms of the honesty, selflessness, and commitment to the public welfare of those who govern.
The traditionalistic political culture is rooted in an ambivalent attitude toward the marketplace coupled with a paternalistic and elitist conception of the commonwealth. It reflects an older, precommercial attitude that accepts a substantially hierarchical society as part of the ordered nature of things, authorizing and expecting those at the top of the social structure to take a special and dominant role in government. Like its moralistic counterpart, the traditionalistic political culture accepts government as an actor with a positive role in the community, but it tries to limit that role to securing the continued maintenance of the existing social order. To do so, it functions to confine real political power to a relatively small and self-perpetuating group drawn from an established elite who often inherit their "right" to govern through family ties or social position. Accordingly, social and family ties are paramount in a traditionalistic political culture, even more than personal ties are important in the individualistic culture where, after all is said and done, a person's first responsibility is to himself. At the same time, those who do not have a definite role to play in politics are not expected to be even minimally active as citizens. In many cases, they are not even expected to vote. Like the individualistic political culture, those active in politics are expected to benefit personally from their activity though not necessarily by direct pecuniary gain. Table 7 summarizes the three political cultures.
In addition, premodern particularly tribal, societies will have traditional political cultures of their own that will emphasize their premodern character. This includes undifferentiated political roles and functions, charismatic leadership, and face to face decision making by consensus.
Table 7
Characteristics of the Three Political Cultures
| Concepts | Individualistic | Moralistic | Traditionalistic |
|---|
| Government |
|---|
| How viewed | As a marketplace (means to respond efficiently demands) | As a commonwealth (means to achieve the good community through positive action) | As a means of maintaining the existing order |
| Appropriate spheres of activity | Largely economic (encourages private initiative and access to the marketplace). Economic development favored. | Any area that will enhance the community although non-governmental action preferred.
Social as well as economic regulation considered legitimate | Those that maintain traditional patterns |
| New Programs | Will not initiate unless demanded by public opinion | Will initiate without public pressure if believe to be in public interest | Will initiate if program serves the interest of the governing elite. |
| Bureaucracy |
|---|
| How Viewed | Ambivalently (undesirable because it limits favors and patronage but good because it enhances efficiency) | Positively (brings desirable political neutrality) | Negatively (depersonalizes government) |
| Kind of merit system favored | Loosely implemented | Strong | None (should be controlled by political elite |
| Politics |
|---|
| Patterns of Belief |
|---|
| How viewed | Dirty (left to those who soil themselves engaging in it) | Healthy (every citizen's responsibility) | A Privilege (only those with legitimate claim to office should participate) |
| Patterns of Participation |
|---|
| Who should participate | Professionals | Everyone | The appropriate elite |
| Roles of parties | Act as business organization (dole out favors and responsibility) | Vehicles to attain goals believed to be in the public interest (third parties popular) | Vehicle of recruitment of people to offices not desired by established power holders |
| Party cohesiveness | Strong | Subordinate to principles and issues | Highly personal (based on family and social ties) |
| Patterns of Competition |
|---|
| How viewed | Between parties; not over issues | Over issues | Between elite-dominated factions within a dominant party |
| Orientation | Toward winning office for tangible rewards | Toward winning office for greater opportunity to implement policies and programs | Dependent on political values of the elite |
Contrasting Conceptions of the Political Order in a Globalizing World
The political culture being pressed forward by globalization is rooted in two contrasting conceptions of the political order, both of which can be traced back to the earliest segments of modernity. In the first, the political order is conceived as a marketplace in which the primary public relationships are products of bargaining among individuals and groups acting out of self-interest. In the second, the political order is conceived to be a commonwealth - a state in which the whole people have an undivided interest - in which the citizens cooperate in an effort to erect and maintain the best government in order to implement certain shared moral principles.
The commonwealth is animated by a vision of the proper political order yet to be attained but that is in the process of being built upon existing foundations - and maintains its strength only by maintaining the vitality of that vision. The marketplace, on the other hand, is animated by a desire to keep the peace through a balance of interests without any necessary commitments other than the preservation of the marketplace itself. Access to the political marketplace is open to all interests that in any way acknowledge its legitimacy and are willing to abide by its rules (at least most of the time). No independent criteria are used to judge the legitimacy of these interests as a condition of participation, so any individual or group that can make its presence felt acquires the functional equivalent of citizenship. In the commonwealth, on the other hand, citizenship, or the right to participate legitimately in the government process, is a matter of very serious concern, and a priori moral criteria can legitimately be applied to determine which individuals or groups have the right.
These two conceptions have exercised an influence on government and politics throughout modern history sometimes in conflict and sometimes by complementing one another. They are so intertwined as to be practically inseparable in any particular case or situation., with marketplace notions contributing to (shaping) the vision of commonwealth and commonwealth ideals being given a preferred position in the marketplace.
Marketplace and Commonwealth - The Western Cultural Matrix
The two conceptions just noted are reflected in the matrix of value concepts that forms the larger cultural basis - general as well as physical - of American civilization. Its component value concepts together provide the framework within which the value orientations of the peoples of the West, whereas the differences in emphasis in the interrelationships among them reflect the various subcultures.
The four elements of the matrix are located between power and justice, the two poles of politics that between them encompass the basic political concerns of all civil societies, namely, "who gets what, when and how" (power), on the one hand, and the development of the good society (justice), on the other. The major continuing task of every civil society is to shape an immediately practical relationship between the two poles in a manner that best fits its situation. Indeed the character of any civil society is in large measure determined by the relationship between power and justice that shapes its political order. Consequently, a particular civil society's conceptions of the uses of power and the nature of justice are important aspects of its political culture.
Efficiency may be defined operationally in this context as the achievement of the goals in a manner that involves the least wasteful or minimum expenditure of resources. Legitimacy refers to those aspects of a polity that are believed to be supported by the underlying values of its citizenry particularly as embodied in its constitutional system. Both represent tendencies found in every civil society that are given meaning by each society's culture (general and political).
In the United States, for example, efficiency is measured in predominantly commercial terms as befits a civil society which The Federalist correctly described as a commercial republic. Commerce, in American, embodies the exchange of goods, services, and ideas. A cardinal feature of American civilization, a good case can be made that the federal republic was found to advance and protect commerce and that it has adhered quite closely to that original purpose. Commerce is particularly valued because it is an efficient means of organizing, harnessing, and diffusing power in light of America values. Americans characteristically rely upon various kinds of marketplaces (the economic marketplace, the "marketplace of ideas") to protect and foster freedom as well as to foster property and enterprise. American have changed their conventional definition of what is efficient as the organization of their commercial enterprises has changed. So in the eighteenth century, efficiency meant, first and foremost, the efficiency of competition among relative equals, reflecting the economic system of the time, which rested upon so many small enterprises. In the twentieth century it has come to mean the hierarchical organization of enterprise reflecting an economic system which rest upon complex bureaucratic corporations. In sum, both efficiency and commerce are primarily related to the concerns of power and its management.
The countries that were the heartlands of the Protestant Reformation are those that are most likely to be moralistic today: Switzerland, the Netherlands, Scotland, and the United States come to mind. Countries like France, Argentina, and Chile come to mind as being predominantly individualistic; and countries like Japan, Mexico, and Turkey as traditionalistic. To find whole countries that are traditional, one has to look hard these days. We imagine that Bhutan and Sikkim would qualify, as well as some states in Africa.
5. Orientation to Political Economy
Here we find five subcategories: those who are oriented to a state-controlled political economy as in Cuba and China; those oriented toward a state-dominated but not totally controlled economy as in Japan and Sweden. Often, state-dominated economies are confused with corporatist ones where the great economic interests together dominate the state and use it as an instrument to control the economy. Brazil and Germany fit into this model. The fourth category is where the political economy of the state is seen to have a commonwealth orientation; that is to say, state involvement is only to strengthen those forces making for individual prosperity and cooperative social and economic relations. Many welfare states were developed with this principle in mind. It is certainly true in the United States and Canada. Finally, there is the market orientation in which market forces are the mechanisms of choice for economic activity and the role of the state is essentially to establish and enforce the rules and to maintain equal access to the marketplace. In the age of the welfare state it is hard to find any state that purely adheres to the market model. The United States is a good example of a synthesis between marketplace and commonwealth. The same can be said of Canada and Australia. Other countries combine marketplace, commonwealth, and corporatist models as in Germany.
We argue that globalization is not simply about economic change but about the spread of these political cultural orientations and the development of combinations that make the economic changes effective. For example, until a year ago it was widely held that market capitalism could flourish regardless of the political regime or political culture of a particular place. The example given was East Asia where countries that did not share the civic republican or even the statist republican attributes of the Western democracies seemed to be flourishing after they embraced market economics. Then came the East Asian economic crisis and it soon became apparent that the continued existence of cronyism and clientalism in those countries distorted the marketplace in fatal ways. Both cronyism and clientalism rested upon the absence of a satisfactory civic republican base or even a less than ideal statist republican on as Taiwan, which had begun to develop such a base, emerged from the crisis relatively unscathed. Elsewhere in East Asia, efforts began to be made to introduce a greater degree of republicanism and to eliminate or reduce the cronyism and clientalism as it has existed.
The truth is that globalization involves the spread of both the market and norms of the marketplace plus the religious and civic values and human rights norms as they have developed in northern Europe and North America along with appropriate institutions and behavior. Continuing in broad strokes, those norms tend to be Protestant-originated, civic republican, commonwealth in expectation, and marketplace-oriented. While closer examination of those countries will reveal many different cultural areas within them, this broad-based generalization will hold for them.
The World's Great Regions
With reference to globalization, we can identify nine regions within the world. One, North America and the New World, consisting essentially of those countries settled by emigrants from the British Isles and northwest Europe, including Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand. The orientation to political organization in this region is covenantal, its orientation to civil society is civic republican and to the polity, participatory populist. Its orientation toward political action is a combination of moralistic and individualistic, and to the political economy a combination of marketplace and commonwealth.
The second great region consists essentially of the Protestant or predominantly Protestant countries of Northern Europe such as the Scandinavian countries, Germany, and the Netherlands. Their orientation to political organization is a combination of covenantal and hierarchical, to civil society, statist republican, to the polity, participatory elitist, to political action, a combination of moralistic and traditionalistic, and to the political economy a combination of state-involved, corporatist, and market.
The third region consists of Southern Europe, principally the Catholic countries of Europe west of the former Iron Curtain plus the Czech Republic. Their orientation to political organization is a combination of hierarchical and organic, to civil society, statist republican, to the polity, participatory elitist, its orientation to political action is a combination of individualistic and traditionalistic, and to the political economy a combination of state-involved, corporatist, and market.
The fourth region is Eastern Europe, sometimes referred to as Eurasia. This includes Russia and the former Soviet Union as well as the states that were formerly part of the Soviet empire. It is a combination of organic and hierarchical in its orientation to political organization. Its orientation to civil society is a combination of statist and subject, to the polity, leader-oriented populist. Their orientation to political action is a combination of traditionalistic and individualistic and to the political economy, state-dominated and corporatist.
The fifth region is Latin America. Its orientation to political organization is a combination of hierarchical and organic, to civil society, corporatist: to polity, elitist and leader-oriented populist; to political action, a combination of individualistic and traditionalistic, and to the political economy, state-involved and corporatist, with a serious market orientation just beginning to emerge.
The sixth region encompasses the Middle East and North Africa from Afghanistan to Morocco, essentially the heartland of the Muslim and Arab world. Its orientation to political organization is a combination of organic and hierarchical; to civil society, statist and subject; to the polity, leader-oriented populist; the political action, a combination of traditional and traditionalistic, and to the political economy a combination of state-controlled and corporatist. In many respects it is the region farthest removed from the Northern European-New World model, that is at the same time not simply a relic of traditional society.
The seventh region is South Asia. Its orientation to political organization is a combination of hierarchical and organic, to civil society a combination of statist, subject, and tribal, to the polity, participatory elitist, to political action a combination of traditionalistic and traditional, and to the political economy, a combination of state-involved and corporatist. The region includes the states of the Indian subcontinent and offshore areas.
An eighth region is East Asia whose orientation to political organization is hierarchical, to civil society a combination of statist and subject, to the polity, elitist, to political action a combination of traditional and individualistic, and its political economy a combination of state-controlled and corporatist. The countries in this region include those of Southeast and Northeast Asia.
Finally there is Africa whose orientation to political organization is a combination of hierarchical and organic, to civil society, subject and tribal, to polity, elitist, to political culture, a combination of traditional and traditionalistic, and to political economy, state-involved. The Africa in question is that south of the Sahara. It remains in many respects the last bastion of the traditional world which, unlike the Middle East and North Africa, does not oppose the Northern European New World norms of globalization so much as they just remain substantially outside of it, albeit less and less as globalization spreads.
What is Changing and What is Not
While we remain attentive to the differences between culture and style which confront those looking at political culture constantly, we will still suggest that as part of the epochal changes that are occurring in the postwar world, political culture is also changing. We would suggest that these changes can be understood as equally epochal, at least in the sense that they occur only at the beginning or perhaps at critical points within the epoch and are parallel to the changes that took place in the seventeenth century between premodern and modern political cultures.
We would suggest that although these changes show signs of being borne universally on the wings of globalization, they also develop differentially, in the context of the political cultural pentagon outlined above. We also suggest that this differential pattern of change is being led and even driven by the Northern European-North American market/moralistic model in critical ways.
In the last analysis, globalization occurs whether we wish it or not. Like every other human phenomenon, it has its plusses and minuses. The quality of globalization depends upon the culture and particularly the political culture it fosters, especially upon the norms and moral principles upon which that political culture is based. These, in turn, have their roots in the distant past, going back to classic Greece and Rome, even before that to the Bible, and even before that in some respects to ancient Mesopotamian civilization of 4-5,000 years ago. It was there in early Mesopotamian civilization that we find the first recorded use of the language of law and justice, covenant, covenant partnership, and freedom, concepts which were refined in the Bible 1,500 years later, to become the comprehensive foundations of Western civilization, which, having passed through 3,000 years of subsequent refinements, have now emerged as the driving forces of globalization. In its economic form, globalization promises money, power, and empowerment. The issues of political culture raise the question, for what?
Notes
1. The Jew and the Lotus.
2. Huntington, Barber, Friedman.
3. Almond's 1950 article.
4. Alex Inkeles and D. J. Levinson, "National Character," in The Handbook of Social Psychology, ed. G. Lindzey and E. Aronson, 2nd ed. Vol. 4 (Chicago: Aldine, 1964).
5. Daniel J. Elazar, American Federalism: A View From the States (T.Y. Crowell, 1966).
6.
7. See Gabriel Almond, Comparative Political Systems," Journal of Politics 18 (August 1956): 396. See also Lucian W. Pye and Sidney Verba, eds., Political Cultural and Political Development (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965); Donald J. Devine, The Political Culture of the United States (Boston: Little Brown, 1972); Raymond D. Gastil, Cultural Regions of the United States, (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1975); Aaron Wildavsky, Cultural Theory (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990); and Edward K. Hamilton, ed., America's Global Interests: A New Agenda (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989).
8. Almond, "Comparative Political Systems," p. 396.
9. Alex Inkeles and D. J. Levinson, "National Character," in The Handbook of Social Psychology, ed. G. Lindzey and E. Aronson, 2nd ed. Vol. 4 (Chicago: Aldine, 1964).
10. See for example, Gabriel A. Almond, "Comparative Political Systems," Journal of Politics 18 (August 1956): 391-409; Lucien Pye, "Political Culture," in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan and Free Press, 1968), 12:218-25; Lucien Pye, "Culture and Political Science: Problems in the Evaluation of the Concept of Political Culture," Social Science Quarterly 53 (September 1972): 285-96; Lucien Pye and Sidney Verba, eds., Political Culture and Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965); Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture (Boston: Little Brown, 1963).
