Читать книгу Political Science For Dummies - Marcus A. Stadelmann - Страница 60

Political cultures do change over time. However, changes come slowly because people are set in their ways and refuse to change their attitudes and behavior.

A good example of a political culture slowly changing involves racial intermarriage in the U.S. Until the 1960s, a majority of all Americans, including African Americans, opposed racial intermarriage. This attitude began to slowly change in the 1960s, and it took another half a century for most Americans to consider racial intermarriage acceptable.

Political cultures aren’t static and can change over time. The easiest way for a political culture to change is to face a major crisis. Economic crises have changed cultural attitudes toward governments. For example, the Great Depression beginning in 1929 led to a support of government intervention in the economy in the form of a welfare state. At the same time, the economic crisis of 2007/2008 resulted in many Americans losing trust in their government and becoming more cynical in nature.

In other societies, the same can happen. In Japan, for example, decades of no or low economic growth have changed a culture that was very supportive and proud of its form of government. The average Japanese today is more cynical and less likely to be proud of government. Political scandals and wars can have similar effects. Watergate, for example, made American culture more negative toward government, and the invasion of Iraq in 2003 had a similar effect.