Chapter 11 — National Politics: Culture, Constitutions, Citizens

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Chapter Summary

In chapter 11 we look at the ways political systems deal with the constant struggle for power within a nation. Given that politics is such a struggle for power, which political patterns promote cooperation, advance accommodation, and handle conflicts in domestic politics?

Our hypothesis in chapters 11 and 12 is that successful political patterns require the following:

1. Agreement on certain constitutional fundamentals to facilitate consensus and trust. Political actors need to accept certain basic rules for how politics will work in their country.
2. Meaningful opportunities for expressing needs, interests, and desires to direct us to interest articulation. Political actors must be able to express themselves, and to articulate their needs.
3. Sound mechanisms for selecting priorities.
4. Concern with acceptable ways of legitimating public policy choices, which means articulating, and agreeing on, principles and mechanisms of political obligation. Why do people obey the law and accept public policy?
5. Government that can maintain freedom, law, and order; raise and spend revenue on behalf of agreed-on public purposes; and ensure necessary services and benefits.
6. Regular and effective controls on government.

This hypothesis is explored by focusing on political culture, constitutional arrangements, and the role of nongovernmental actors. Political culture refers to the distinguishing attitudes, habits, and behavior patterns that characterize a political community. Students of politics can observe important distinctions between what values and beliefs are central to a given society. In the United States, for instance, there is a great emphasis placed on individual freedom. Other cultures may be more concerned with collective equality or less enamored with the very idea of personal freedom.

A political culture is significantly influenced by a number of factors. These include the larger environment, as we saw in chapter 5. The climate, kinds of natural resources, and population all affect political culture. A nation’s historical experience and memory clearly shape its culture, as do its language, religion, art, literature, and social mores. Economics and geography also influence the cultural ethos. The cultural framework is important because it provides the fundamental agreement--and therefore the trust--without which politics cannot advance as a civilizing process. It provides sound rules for the political game. This agreement on fundamentals does not require, however, that all citizens agree on all aspects of life.

While political culture provides the backdrop against which politics is played, every society has certain specific rules to the political game. These rules are spelled out in the constitution of a country, and they provide the legal framework within which politics unfolds. Some of the key questions that we can ask of any constitution are:

1. Is the government limited or unlimited in its power?
2. If it is a democracy, is the government a representative democracy or a direct democracy?
3. Is there a separation of powers within the government, as in the United States, where power is divided among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government. Or is there a connection of powers, as in the United Kingdom?
4. Is the constitution a federal one--where there is a division of powers between the central and local governments--or is it a unitary one--where all power emanates from the center?
5. Does the government operate by majority rule or by some other method of decision making?

Chapter 11 concludes with a discussion of the ways various nongovernmental actors work within the cultural and constitutional arrangements that exist in any nation. If political culture and the constitution define the rules of the political game, then citizens, interest groups, political parties, and the media are the players who take part in that game.

Chapter Objectives

After reading chapter 11, you should be able to...

• define and explain the importance of political culture.
• discuss the basic issues at stake in any constitution.
• discuss the main roles played by such nongovernmental actors as citizens, interest groups, political parties, and the mass media.