Political Culture, Social Capital and Democracy

Transcription

1 Political Culture, Social Capital and Democracy Stephen Fisher Political Culture Social Capital Evidence for the effects of Political Culture and Social Capital on Democracy Conclusion

2 Political Culture Defined Political Culture refers to the pattern of beliefs and assumptions ordinary people have towards the world, as these pertain to politics. (Tepperman) Not the same as ideology, but more diffuse and less goal directed. Relatively stable over time and reproduced by political socialization. Long thought to be important for the functioning of states. E.g. Gibbon thought the main reason for fall of the Roman empire was a decline in civic virtue.

3 Typology of Political Culture from The Civic Culture (Almond and Verba, 1963) I Political culture is made up of cognitive, affective and evaluative orientations towards the political system. Three basic kinds of political culture Parochial: No cognitive orientations toward the political system Subject: Cognitive orientations toward the output aspects of the system Participant: Cognitive orientations toward both the input and output aspects of the system These cultures are congruent with traditional, authoritarian and democratic systems respectively. Congruence is indicated by positive affective and evaluative orientations in the appropriate areas: there is a scale from alienation, through apathy to allegiance. The Civic Culture is an allegiant participant political culture.

4 Typology of Political Culture from The Civic Culture (Almond and Verba, 1963) II Pioneering work in cross-national survey research on five countries characterized them as: Italy: Alienated Mexico: Alienated and Aspiration Germany: Political detachment and subject competence US: Participant Civic Culture Britain: Deferential Civic Culture Falls short of making a claim that political culture causes democratic stability, but says... A stable and effective democratic government... depends upon the orientations that people have to the political process upon the political culture.

5 American Exceptionalism Almond and Verba s results concur with a tradition pointing to a existence of a particularly democratic political culture in the US. Other examples include: Alexis de Tocqueville (Democracy in America) - Democracy in America is successful because of a participatory culture and a belief in equality. Seymour Martin Lipset (Continental Divide, 1963) Canadian culture is more statist, deferential to leaders, collectivist and conservative US is more independent, distrustful of government, individualistic, liberal and progressive. Reasons for the difference are historical American Revolution led to a migration of British loyalists northward and a divergence in political history.

6 Trends in Political Culture Norris (Critical Citizens, 1999) argues that there has been declining trust in government and people are less satisfied with the way democracy works in their country in developed countries in recent decades. But people still think that democracy is the best form of government. And Norris (2011) argues that there is really no systematic trend in satisfaction with democracy

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8 An Example: Do Politicians Care? People less likely to think politicians care: Dalton (2014) USA Canada W. Germany Sweden Source: ANES, GES, Sofres, and CES.

9 Declining confidence Changes in in parliaments Trust in Parliament in affluent societies: Dalton and in Welzel Affluent (2014) Democracies (WVS) 80 Confidence - - Time 2 (circa 2010) Iceland Sweden Norway Denmark W. Germany Belgium Canada France Italy UK Dutch Australia Ireland Japan USA Confidence -- Time 1 (circa 1980) Source: WVS 1981 and wave 6 (2010) or 5 (2005). Political trust matters in party because it affects policy support across various domains (Hetherington and Husser, AJPS, 2012)

10 Correlates of political culture; back to Norris Norris argues that institutional confidence is influenced by, extent of political rights and civil liberties electoral system centralization of the state economic development being a supporter of the governing party some socio-demographic characteristics

11 Dalton and Welzel (2014) The Civic Culture Transformed: From Allegiant to Assertive Citizens

12 Does civic culture underpin civic participation? John et al. (Pol Stud, 2011) consider whether different forms of civic participation are linked to the kinds of social attitudes expected by civic culture theory. The following table shows that: People who lobby their politicians (individually or collectively) are less trusting of institutions and less likely to think those in their neighbourhood would act to solve a social problem (low neighbourhood social norms). Fondness for and identification with your neighbourhood increases participation. i.e. you are more likely to do something about a local problem if you care about your neighbourhood and think your neighbours and local government are unlikely to do anything about it. This is somewhat at odds with civic culture theory but makes sense.

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14 Social Capital Concept goes back to Coleman and Bourdieu. According to Putnam (Bowling Alone), Social Capital... is defined as The features of social life networks, norms, and trust that enable participants to act together more effectively to pursue shared objectives. is an important factor influencing the quality of democracy, economic performance, health, etc. comes in different varieties Bonding: within groups Bridging: between groups is not always a good thing e.g. power elites have high levels of social capital is measured by a mixture of public engagement (e.g. voting, political action) inter-personal association (e.g. socializing, volunteering) inter-personal trust Note that there is an important debate as to whether trust is supposed to flow from associational membership. The reverse causal direction seems more plausible though.

15 Trends in Social Capital Putnam argues that social capital has been declining in the US mainly due to the demise of the peculiarly civic war-time generation, but also TV and some other factors. Andersen et al. (ASR, 2006) consider time spent in civic association activity (e.g. community, political, church or trade union meetings). Stable or increasing in Canada, NL and UK. Decreasing among US women but not US men, even after controlling for social characteristics and time in other activities. Maybe due to decline in state support. Casts doubt on the generational replacement argument for social capital decline in US.

16 Declining trust in individuals and institutions in the US: Paxton (APSR, 1999) Based on data from 1974 to 1994

17 No trend in levels of social interaction in the US: Paxton (APSR, 1999) Based on data from 1974 to 1994

18 Age, Period and Cohort effects on Social Capital in the US: Schwadel and Stout (2012) I 1. informal association with neighbors declined across periods while informal association with friends outside of the neighborhood increased across birth cohorts 2. formal association was comparatively stable with the exception of relatively high levels of formal association among the early 1920s and early 1930s birth cohorts 3. trust declined considerably across both periods and cohorts, though the oldest cohorts are less trusting than those born in the 1920s through the 1940s So a complex pattern, and not the systematic decline across cohorts suggested by Putnam. Nonetheless still some worrying trends for social capital theorists.

19 242 Social Forces 91(1) Figure 1: Estimated Age, Period and Cohort Effects on Frequency of Evenings With Neighbors, Frequency of Evenings With Friends Outside the Neighborhood and Frequency of Evenings With Relatives Evenings With Evenings With Evenings With (a) Age (b) Period (c) Cohort neighbors friends relatives neighbors friends relatives neighbors friends relatives Downloaded from at Radcliffe Science Library, Bodleian Library on August 29, 2012 Note: Figure graphs results in Table 1. Height of each chart equivalent to 1.0 standard deviations in the measure of evenings with neighbors, 1.3 standard deviations in the measure of evenings with friends, and 1.2 standard deviations in the measure of evenings with relatives.

20 Figure 2: Estimated Age, Period and Cohort Effects on View That People Are Helpful, People Are Fair and People Can Be Trusted Probability Probability Probability (a) Age (b) Period (c) Cohort people helpful people fair people can be trusted people helpful people fair people can be trusted people helpful people fair people can be trusted Downloaded from at Radcliffe Science Library, Bodleian Library on August 29, 2012 Note: Figure graphs results in Table 2.

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22 International Trends in Social Capital (Cabinet Office PIU/Strategy Unit report, late 1990s) Declining: US; Australia. Stable or ambiguous: UK (high); NL; Sweden; France (low). Increasing: Japan; Germany (from low base). Hall (BJPS, 1999) shows that in Britain while there has been no decline in associational membership there has been a decline in trust since the 1950s.

23 Group membership: quality not quantity Skocpol (2003) and Putnam (2002) argue that important change is from membership of democratic organizations to cheque book membership. Theiss-Morse and Hibbing (AnRevPolSci 2005) argue that membership of voluntary organisations is a poor foundation for good citizenship because: People join homogeneous groups Civic participation does not lead to political participation Not all groups promote democratic values Groups don t teach what good citizens need to know: democracy is messy, inefficient and conflict-ridden

24 Effects of Political Culture and Social Capital General Hypothesis: Culture/social capital influences political and social outcomes, especially the quality of democracy, governance, or economic performance. Those who believe in the importance of culture/social capital do not all agree on what aspects of culture are relevant and what outcomes they influence and how. General Problem: Which is the correct causal direction? Some want to argue both ways e.g. culture influences growth and growth influences culture.

25 Effects on Democracy: Muller and Seligson (APSR, 1994) Muller and Seligson develop a more complex model that is summarized by the figure below. Note the temporal ordering and that the absence of an arrow means there was insufficient evidence for an association. So main conclusions are: Support for gradual reform (as opposed to the status-quo or revolution) is correlated with the level of democracy, i.e. political culture is relevant The democratic stability has an impact on inter-personal trust Otherwise no evidence for association between culture and democracy in either direction. (Fig 4).

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27 Effects of Social Capital on Democracy: Paxton Paxton (ASR, 2002) finds evidence from her cross-lagged panel study that social capital influences the quality of democracy and democracy influences social capital.

28 Norris (2011) Democratic Deficit I

29 Norris (2011) Democratic Deficit II Central Argument: 1. Trendless fluctuations in system support (not decline) 2. Satisfaction with democratic performance generally lower than democratic aspirations (the Democratic Deficit) 3. Gap is due to: growing public expecations (from education) negative media coverage falling government performance 4. but it is ameliorated by income and social trust 5. the democratic deficit reduces political participation (contrary to John et al. (2011)) and voluntary law compliance (i.e. more alienation than radicalisation). 6. democratic aspirations increase democratisation

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33 Remarks on Norris (2011) Democratic Deficit Table 11.3 uses temporal ordering but does not control for prior levels of democracy The dependent variable is referred to as democractization but is a measure of the average level of democracy between , rather than a measure of change So the correlations could be due to endogeneity problems

34 Dalton and Welzel (2014): Assertive not allegiant culture improves democracy Note different dependent variable from Norris and no economic controls in Lagged DV model

35 Satisfaction with Democracy in rich countries I C 2016 European Consortium for Political Research percentage of observations percentage of observations Left/Right policy distance Social Lifestyle policy distance predicted satisfaction predicted satisfaction percentage of observations percentage of observations Redistribution policy distance Immigration policy distance predicted satisfaction predicted satisfaction percentage of observations percentage of observations European Integration policy distance Environmental Protection policy distance predicted satisfaction predicted satisfaction 504 CHRISTIAN STECKER & MARKUS TAUSENDPFUND Figure 5. Satisfaction with democracy as conditional relationship between policy distances and interest in politics. Notes: Black lines represent predicted values. Grey lines represent 95 per cent confidence intervals. Source: Stecker and Tausendpfund, EJPR Level of interest matters more than degree of representation.

36 Satisfaction with Democracy in rich countries II Reher shows that as well as policy matching voters preferences (policy representation), people also care about whether elites (politicians and the media) are talking about what the voters care about (priority congruence). 168 STEFANIE REHER Figure 1. Relationship between the quality and age of democracy and the effect of priority congruence on satisfaction with democracy. Source: Reher, Notes: EJPRThe effects of priority congruence are log-odds coefficients from within-country ordered logistic regressions (cf. Appendix B). Both policy congruence and perceptions of responsiveness higher in older better quality democracies. coefficients from all 27 countries. Although we cannot strictly compare the coefficients and their standard errors across countries, this figure provides a first indication of how the strength of the congruence-satisfaction link varies and whether this is related to the quality and age of democracy. We see that priority congruence and satisfaction are positively

37 Conclusion Political Culture is about attitudes and orientations towards the political system Social Capital is about social interaction and trust They are different but there is evidence that Social Capital affects Political Culture There is debate about whether (the positive aspects) of both are declining There are claims that (certain kinds of) each lead to better quality democracy, but they are difficult to test rigorously