Abstracts

• Published date: 01 September 1988
• Date: 01 September 1988
• DOI: 10.1177/106591298804100302
• Subject Matter: Articles

ABSTRACTS
DEFINING POLITICAL CULTURE. By Stephen Chilton.
Despite early hopes that political culture could yield a non-ethnocentric, em-
pirical solution to the micro-macro problem, the concept’s promise has not been
redeemed. Despite numerous empirical studies, repeated attempts at conceptu-
alization, and many theoretical critiques, conflicting definitions of political cul-
ture abound. This paper specifies, in the form of nine theoretical criteria, what
political culture conceptions should do; applies these criteria to five major earlier
conceptions; and demonstrates that none satisfy all criteria. A proposed concep-
tion of culture -
as those &dquo;ways of relating&dquo; that social actors adopt as a focus
of mutual orientation -
does satisfy all nine criteria. Culture is defined &dquo;bottom-
up,&dquo; as those who share a given way of relating, not &dquo;top-down,&dquo; as that which
is shared in some social grouping. Bottom-up approaches do not assume a soci-
ety’s cultural unity and thus contemplate possible conflicts between cultures. Be-
cause ways of relating have Piagetian cognitive structure, culture conflicts are
to some degree cognitive-structural conflicts. Because cognitive development con-
tinues well into adulthood, socialization studies must extend beyond childhood.
EQUALITY, SELF-GOVERNMENT AND DEMOCRACY: A CRITIQUE OF DAHL’S POLITICAL
EQUALITY. By Augustus DiZerega.
One
important school of democratic theory evaluates a polity’s degree of po-
litical democracy by how equally political resources are distributed among citizens.
Robert Dahl is a leading theorist in this tradition. Using Dahl’s work to illustrate
my
point, I argue that substantive equality is a poor standard by which to evalu-
ate political democracy. The substantive ideal does not appreciate the role polit-
ical learning plays; cannot account for political change; fails to appreciate
citizenship’s creative aspect; and underestimates civil liberties’ political impor-
tance. All...