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Political culture refers to the general political orientation or disposition of a nation—the shared values and beliefs about the nature of the political world that give us a common language in which to discuss and debate political ideas. Values are ideals or principles that most people agree are important, even though they may disagree on exactly how the value—such as “equality” or “freedom”—ought to be defined. Note that statements about values and beliefs are not descriptive of how the world actually is but rather are prescriptive, or normative, statements about how the value-holders believe the world ought to be. Our culture consists of deep-seated, collectively held ideas about how life should be lived. Normative statements aren’t true or false but depend for their worth on the arguments made to back them up. Often we take our own culture (that is, our common beliefs about how the world should work) so much for granted that we aren’t even aware of it. For that reason, it is often easier to see our own political culture by contrasting it to another.

political culture the broad pattern of ideas, beliefs, and values that a population holds about citizens and government

values central ideas, principles, or standards that most people agree are important

normative a term used to describe beliefs or values about how things should be or what people ought to do rather than what actually is

Free Speech, Even When It’s Ugly Americans don’t agree on much, but they do cherish their right to disagree: most citizens have little tolerance for censorship and expect the government to protect even the most offensive speech. Here, a police officer flanks a marcher at a Ku Klux Klan rally in South Carolina in 2015.

REUTERS/Chris Keane

Political culture is handed down from generation to generation, through families, schools, communities, literature, churches and synagogues, and so on, helping to provide stability for the nation by ensuring that a majority of citizens are well grounded in and committed to the basic values that sustain it. We talk about the process through which values are transferred in Chapter 10, “Public Opinion.”

Although political culture is shared, some individuals certainly find themselves at odds with it. When we say, “Americans think . . . ,” we mean that most Americans hold those views, not that there is unanimous agreement on them. To the extent that we are increasingly politically polarized—that is, to the extent that our political differences get farther apart—the political culture itself may begin to break down and we may lose the common language that enables us to settle those differences through conventional political means. The 2016 election campaign showed us just how fragile the cultural ties that bind us can be when our differences are stoked and the legitimacy of our system is challenged.

In American political culture, our expectations of government focus on rules and processes rather than on results. For example, we think government should guarantee a fair playing field but not guarantee equal outcomes for all the players. In addition, we believe that individuals are responsible for their own welfare and that what is good for them is good for society as a whole. Our insistence on fair rules is the same emphasis on procedural guarantees we saw in our earlier discussion of capitalism, whereas the belief in the primacy of the individual citizen is called individualism. American culture is not wholly procedural and individualistic—indeed, differences on these matters constitute some of the major partisan divisions in American politics—but it tends to be more so than is the case in most other nations.

individualism the belief that what is good for society is based on what is good for individuals

When we say that American political culture is procedural, we mean that Americans generally think government should guarantee fair processes—such as a free market to distribute goods, majority rule to make decisions, and due process to determine guilt and innocence—rather than specific outcomes. By contrast, people in the social democratic countries of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark typically believe that government should actively seek to realize the values of equality—perhaps to guarantee a certain quality of life for all citizens or to increase equality of income. American politics does set some substantive goals for public policy, but Americans are generally more comfortable ensuring that things are done in a fair and proper way, and trusting that the outcomes will be good ones because the rules are fair. Although the American government gets involved in social programs and welfare, and took a big step in a substantive direction with passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, it aims more at helping individuals get on their feet so that they can participate in the market (fair procedures) rather than at cleaning up slums or eliminating poverty (substantive goals).The individualistic nature of American political culture means that individuals, not government or society, are seen as responsible for their own well-being. This notion contrasts with a collectivist social democratic point of view, which holds that what is good for society may not be the same as what is in the interest of individuals. Thus our politics revolves around the belief that individuals are usually the best judges of what is good for themselves; we assume that what is good for society will automatically follow. American government rarely asks citizens to make major economic sacrifices for the public good, although individuals often do so privately and voluntarily. Where Americans are asked to make economic sacrifices, like paying taxes, they are unpopular and more modest than in most other countries. A collective interest that supersedes individual interests is generally invoked in the United States only in times of war or national crisis. This echoes the two American notions of self-interested and collectivist citizenship we discussed earlier. Collectivist citizenship is rarer in the United States precisely because we’re such an individualistic culture.

Should it be possible to lose one’s citizenship under any circumstances?

We can see our American procedural and individualistic perspective when we examine the different meanings of three core American values: democracy, freedom, and equality.