Week 9 - Political Culture

"Canadian are the only people who regularly pull themselves up by the roots to see whether they are still growing."

Political Culture - what is political culture – Define political culture

- consists of the characteristics, values and beliefs and behaviour of a society’s members in regards to politics.

It also describes a people’s orientation to politics – the study of those orientations is the study of political culture

It is essentially psychological referring to what people think about politics their beliefs, values and emotions

As a concept it is focused on the attitudes, beliefs and rules that guide a political system

Determined by history of the system and the experiences of its members

Refers to the overall pattern formed by a population’s political beliefs, attitudes and values

Used to characterize differences between political systems and to analyze how people behave in those systems

E.g. – Canada – Peace, Order and Good Government

U.S. – Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Attenuated liberalism à liberal individualism combined with a sense of collectivity

Life liberty and the pursuit of happiness vs. peace, order and good government

Commitment to democracy

Popular sovereignty

Political equality

Political freedom

Majority rule

- reflected in discussions on distinct society – willingness to accept group rights in terms of restorative justice, but not so comfortable on the issue of entitlements and the possibility of "more equality."

- willingness to defer for the needs of a collective whole

Expectations of government - Peace, Order, and Good government

Political Community:

- Grant – communitarianism – Canadian political tradition that rejected the individualism of American-style liberalism. Roots in the conservative ideas and the British connection, which helped to keep alive a benign view of government as an agent for pursing the common good.

- Pessimistic that it would eventually be crushed by American liberalism and technology

- Red Toryism – conservativism that believes that the government has a responsibility to act as an agent of the common good and that this responsibility goes beyond maintaining law and order.

- Taylor – collectivism-left wing perspective

- Agrees with Grant that collectivism is an important feature of Canada’s political tradition

- Understanding that human freedom and dignity are only possible in the context of communal relations that allow for the public recognition of group identities and that are based on equal respect for these different identity groups.

- Key to Canadian unity lies in finding constitutional arrangements that enable different groups of Canadians to feel that they belong to Canada and are recognized as constituent elements of Canadian society.

Ideologies -

- 3 strands of Canadian political culture

- liberalism - whiggism,

- conservativism – toryism

- socialism – prairie populism

- the development of Canadian political culture

Hartz – Horowitz

North America like other societies founded by European settlement is a fragments society

Based on the cultural baggage of European immigrants who did not bring represent all the elements of the society they had left

Institutions and myths set up and passed on by the founding peoples perpetuated those beliefs and values.

French – pre-colonial fragment – feudal strain from France. Therefore feudal Catholicism dominated rival ideologies in Quebec

English – loyalist fragment – similar to its liberal American counterpart but attenuated by the Loyalist immigration at the time of the revolutionary war

European immigration

Deference – religious – conservative bases but also the Westminster Tradition of Parliamentary Sovereignty which attenuates popular sovereignty ß monarchal feudal tradition

Dyck’s second aspect of political culture involves beliefs regarding the role of the state – how large a part Canadians want government to play in their lives and the kinds of policies it should adopt. Another variable consists of orientations to the decision-making apparatus. Are people aware of it, and to what extent do they want to control it? How do Canadians feel , in general, about the police, the bureaucracy, the courts and the politicians? Do citizen’s trust them? Alternatively, do people feel that their participation in the political system can make any difference? And to what extent do they participate? Patterns of actual participation can be considered part of political culture.

Civic Culture

The Communication of Culture

- socialization – study of political culture focuses on the content of culture, but also on its transmission

- study of what, when and how people learn about politics

- process by which people acquire their understanding of politics and their place within it

- Institutions of transmission – family, church, peer group, education, mass media, work place

- Two view on process of political socialization – early influences, later influences

Changing values:

"We have seen that an overarching political culture unites the diverse Canadian population, providing a degree of national unity. Since Confederation in 1867, strands of national, ethno-linguistic and regional cultures in Canada have become layered and intertwined creating the political culture of a relatively prosperous and peaceful country. At the same time, however, differences between these three cultural strands have created tensions in the body politic, contributing to societal cleavages and providing the environment for Canadian politics."

Decline in trust of political institution

Neil Nevitte in the Decline of Deference suggests that Canadian values and characteristics are changing over time – often in line with other industrialized states.

Peter C. Newman in Canadian Revolution argues that historically the elitist tenor of Canadian life collapsed during the years 1985-95 under the pressure of developments in Canada and in the world at large. à rise of the new populism.

US influence and fragments

Are we becoming culturally American?

Charter

Culture – more American

More critical

"Eg. The Canadian education system, pressured form without by American cultural influences and fragmented from within by regional and ethnic interests and strives in an ad hoc and diffused way to impart to students an awareness of a common heritage and instill national pride. Lack of centralized control makes this goal difficult, if not impossible to achieve."

Identity and the roots of disunity

Identities are ideas that link individuals to larger groups

A state of mind, a sense of belonging to a community that is defined by its language ethnic character, religious, history, regional location, gender experiences, belief system, o in most cases a combination of several of these factors

Shared identity is based on a perception of having common interests

Identities acquire political consequences when the members of a group, the ‘identity bearers,’ believe they experience some deprivation or injustice because of their social-cultural identity and when ‘a critical mass’ of the groups membership can be persuaded to take political action based on their self-identification.

- fragments

- reflection and confirmation in federalism

- Charter

Post-materialism