Defining Political Culture

• Author: Stephen Chilton
• Published date: 01 September 1988
• Date: 01 September 1988
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/106591298804100303
• Subject Matter: Articles

DEFINING POLITICAL CULTURE
STEPHEN CHILTON
University of Minnesota — Duluth
OLITICAL
CULTURE&dquo; is potentially a powerful, unifying concept
of political science. When it was first proposed by Gabriel Almond
JL (1956) and subsequently employed in The Civic Culture
(Almond and Verba 1963), the term promised to solve in a scientific, cross-
culturally valid way the micro-macro problem: the classic problem of
specifying how people affect their political system, and vice-versa.’ &dquo;Cul-
ture&dquo; (and thus political culture) was understood to transcend the in-
dividual, but not to the extent that it negated individual action entirely.
True, individuals were socialized into their culture, but they also produced
and reproduced it. Culture was also understood to constrain political sys-
tems, without being identical to them: only certain systems could &dquo;fit&dquo;
a given culture,2 but the unintended consequences of institutions might
alter the culture that created them. The success of anthropologists in
studying culture assured political scientists that, properly defined, &dquo;po-
litical culture&dquo; could be studied in all societies. Although formalizing and
operationalizing the concept might require new methods, new data, and
new theories, the concept itself seemed unproblematic.
1. POLITICAL CULTURE HAS THEORETICAL PROBLEMS
Despite its surface simplicity, political culture has presented surpris-
ingly complex conceptual problems. Almond’s (1956: 396) initial formu-
lation defined political culture as the &dquo;particular pattern of orientations
to political action.&dquo; Almond and Verba (1963) revised this definition to
Received: May 14, 1987
First Revision Received: October 20, 1987
_
Accepted for Publication: October 26, 1987
NOTE: This research was supported in part by a grant from the College of Arts & Sciences
Research Center, New Mexico State University, and in part by the hospitality of the
Political Science Department, University of Illinois. An earlier version of this paper
was delivered at the 1986 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Associa-
tion, Chicago. Portions of Sections 5, 7, and 8 are adapted from Stephen Chilton, Defin-
ing Political Development (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1988), by permission
of the publisher. Professors Leonard Champney, Lynn Deming, Stephen Douglas, Sie-
grun Fox, Craig Grau, John Kress, Beth Lau, Dean Mann, Richard Merritt, Edward Por-
tis, Lucian Pye, Steve Ropp, Manfred Wenner, Gadi Wolfsfeld and several anonymous
journal reviewers gave this paper close, critical readings that sparked important im-
provements. Any deficiencies in the paper remain mine.
1
"Political culture may provide us with a valuable conceptual tool by means of which we
can bridge the ’micro-macro’ gap in political theory.... Political culture by revealing
the patterns of orientations to political action helps us connect individual tendencies
to system characteristics" (Almond and Powell 1966: 51-52).
2
Almond (1956: 396) speaks of this constraint as an "embedding." See also Almond and
Powell’s (1966: 21-25) discussion of the relationship between structure and culture.

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420
the &dquo;distribution of patterns of orientation&dquo; -
a more individual-level
definition. Since those formulations, many theoretical works have noted
problems in defining, measuring, and testing hypotheses in political cul-
ture. This stream of criticisms parallels and to some extent overlaps a
second stream of new definitions of the concept. These new definitions
do not retire older ones; they only jostle them for attention. Such a
proliferation of definitions is natural for an important, widely used con-
cept like political culture, but thirty years of definitions and theoretical
criticisms have now passed without the earlier promise of the concept
being redeemed. Political culture remains a suggestive rather than a scien-
tific concept.
The problem is twofold: social scientists seek both consensus over
the term’s meaning and redemption of the term’s promise. Consensus
can be achieved by fiat, by predominant usage, and by analysis. But con-
sensus by fiat is not possible, because social scientists acknowledge no
philosophical Leviathan. Even if they did, such a Leviathan would not
necessarily create a definition possessing the theoretical characteristics
that social scientists expect of it. Consensus by predominant usage is also
not possible. Political culture is currently in a state where the leading
approach (that of Almond and Verba 1963) has only a modest plurality
and may have that only because of its methodological ease.3 In any case,
the predominance of a definition does not guarantee its usefulness.
An analytical approach may be able to create both consensus and use-
fulness, however. This essay takes such an approach. First, it sets forth
nine criteria for political culture conceptions. Analysts of political cul-
ture, whether theoreticians or empirical researchers, have long shared
common
expectations of the concept, despite imperfect satisfaction of
those expectations by the analysts’ conceptions. Even when such expec-
tations have seemed impossible to fulfill, the many critiques of previous
conceptions have clarified them. The nine criteria should, then, provide
a common
starting point for evaluating alternative conceptions. In addi-
tion, if the criteria indeed represent theoretically central problems, their
satisfaction should yield a useful conception. Given widespread agree-
ment on theoretically central issues, an analytic approach could create
consensus on a definition that redeems political culture’s theoretical
promise.
Second, this essay evaluates two major previous conceptions against
these criteria. Neither conception satisfies all nine criteria, although
Lowell Dittmer’s &dquo;symbol system&dquo; approach is able to satisfy seven of
the nine.
Third, looking at social behavior from the perspective of symbolic
interactionism, the essay proposes a new conception of political culture
in terms of patterns of meaningful action (&dquo;ways of relating&dquo;) that are
3
"Such a definition is convenient for those interested in comparing and measuring the po-
litical cultures of different societies via the survey method; but it suffers from allow-
ing one’s methodological preference to define one’s theoretical formulations" (Lehman
1972: 362).

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421
ambiguously encapsulated in symbols. The proposed conception employs
the Piagetian cognitive structure of these patterns to satisfy the two criteria
not satisfied by Dittmer’s conception, while otherwise retaining its
strengths.
Finally, the essay examines its proposed conception’s consequences
for research. Data gathering methods change when studying relationships
instead of symbols. Since cognitive development does not appear to stop
until well into adulthood, socialization studies must be both greatly ex-
tended and refocussed to detect cognitive-structural changes. Hypothe-
ses about cognitive structure can require different forms than, say, those
about group distributions of individual orientations, and such hypothe-
ses must be tested in a different manner.
Following earlier theoretical works, this essay concentrates on the
&dquo;culture&dquo; portion of the term &dquo;political culture.&dquo; &dquo;Culture&dquo; is the wider
concept and so logically must be clarified before the more specific prob-
lems of defining &dquo;political culture&dquo; can be resolved. Accordingly, pend-
ing resolution of our current difficulties with &dquo;culture,&dquo; I adopt a broad
view of &dquo;the political. &dquo;4 I shall return to this issue in Section 8.
2. NINE CRITERIA FOR POLITICAL CULTURE CONCEPTIONS
The analytical approach has two different logics: an internal logic,
concerning the validity of the set of criteria chosen, and an external logic,
concerning the validity of the criteria individually. From the point of view
of internal logic, we require very little of the set of criteria beyond non-
self-contradiction. We
need not justify our selection of any particular set
of criteria, as long as the reader is persuaded of the individual validity
of some of the criteria, thus allowing evaluation of alternative concep-
tions of culture.5 The internal logic also does not require criteria exclu-
sive of one another: it requires only criteria of sufficient variety to evaluate
alternative conceptions. Finally, the internal logic can admit the possi-
bility of additional criteria as yet undiscovered. I do not believe I neglect
any important criteria, but of course others may advance new, generally
accepted criteria to evaluate the conception developed here. By the in-
ternal logic, conceptions either satisfy or do not satisfy the set of criteria
as a whole: no attempt is made to score conceptions for partial correct-
ness, particularly when this paper will propose a conception satisfying
all criteria.
The external logic of the analytic approach requires that each criterion
express firm, widely shared, theoretical expectations of what a political
culture conception should do. Broadly, the criteria arise from three
general concerns: that political culture offer distinctively new forms of
analysis (criteria 1, 2, and 5), particularly those appropriate to the micro-
macro problem ( and 2); that the concept not be limited to specific cul-
4

I do restrict my discussion to "social culture" (how people relate to one another) as op-
posed to "physical culture" (how people relate to their physical world).
5
Of...