Political culture of the United Kingdom

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The political culture of the United Kingdom was described by the political scientists Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba (1963) as a deferential civic culture. In the United Kingdom, factors such as class and regionalism [1] and the nation's history such as the legacy of the British Empire impact on political culture.

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Factors which have shaped British political culture

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Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, it tends to promote the interests of a particular nation, especially with the aim of gaining and maintaining the nation's sovereignty (self-governance) over its homeland to create a nation-state. It holds that each nation should govern itself, free from outside interference (self-determination), that a nation is a natural and ideal basis for a polity, and that the nation is the only rightful source of political power. It further aims to build and maintain a single national identity, based on a combination of shared social characteristics such as culture, ethnicity, geographic location, language, politics, religion, traditions and belief in a shared singular history, and to promote national unity or solidarity. Nationalism, therefore, seeks to preserve and foster a nation's traditional culture. There are various definitions of a "nation", which leads to different types of nationalism. The two main divergent forms are ethnic nationalism and civic nationalism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Civil society</span> Third sector of society, distinct from government and business

Civil society can be understood as the "third sector" of society, distinct from government and business, and including the family and the private sphere. By other authors, civil society is used in the sense of 1) the aggregate of non-governmental organizations and institutions that advance the interests and will of citizens or 2) individuals and organizations in a society which are independent of the government.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American nationalism</span> Nationalism in support of the collective identity of the United States

American nationalism is a form of civic, ethnic, cultural or economic influences found in the United States. Essentially, it indicates the aspects that characterize and distinguish the United States as an autonomous political community. The term often explains efforts to reinforce its national identity and self-determination within its national and international affairs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Political culture</span> Set of attitudes and beliefs that give order and meaning to a political process

Political culture describes how culture impacts politics. Every political system is embedded in a particular political culture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Whiggism</span> Political philosophy

Whiggism is a political philosophy that grew out of the Parliamentarian faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (1639–1651). The Whigs' key policy positions were the supremacy of Parliament, tolerance of Protestant dissenters, and opposition to a "Papist" on the throne, especially James II or one of his descendants. It is associated with early conservative liberalism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Edward Merriam</span> American political scientist (1874–1953)

Charles Edward Merriam Jr. (1874–1953) was an American professor of political science at the University of Chicago, founder of the behavioral approach to political science, a trainer of many graduate students, a prominent intellectual in the Progressive Movement, and an advisor to several US Presidents. Upon his death, The New York Times called him "one of the outstanding political scientists in the country".

Democratic consolidation is the process by which a new democracy matures, in a way that it becomes unlikely to revert to authoritarianism without an external shock, and is regarded as the only available system of government within a country. A country can be described as consolidated when the current democratic system becomes “the only game in town”, meaning no one in the country is trying to act outside of the set institutions. This is the case when: no significant political group seriously attempts to overthrow the democratic regime, the democratic system is regarded as the most appropriate way to govern by the vast majority of the public, and all political actors are accustomed to the fact that conflicts are resolved through established political and constitutional rules.

Civic nationalism, also known as democratic nationalism and liberal nationalism, is a form of nationalism that adheres to traditional liberal values of freedom, tolerance, equality, individual rights and is not based on ethnocentrism. Civic nationalists often defend the value of national identity by saying that individuals need it as an upper identity in order to lead meaningful, autonomous lives and that democratic polities need national identity to function properly.

Lucian W. Pye was an American political scientist, sinologist and comparative politics expert considered one of the leading China scholars in the United States. Educated at Carleton College and Yale University, Pye chose to focus on the characteristics of specific cultures in forming theories of political development of modernization of Third World nations, rather than seeking universal and overarching theories like most political scientists. As a result, he became regarded as one of the foremost contemporary practitioners and proponents of the concept of political culture and political psychology. Pye was a teacher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for 35 years and served on several Asia-related research and policy organizations. He wrote or edited books and served as advisor to Democratic presidential candidates, including John F. Kennedy. Pye died of pneumonia at age 86.

Sidney Verba was an American political scientist, librarian and library administrator. His academic interests were mainly American and comparative politics. He was the Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor at Harvard University and also served Harvard as the director of the Harvard University Library from 1984 to 2007.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gabriel Almond</span> American political scientist (1911–2002)

Gabriel Abraham Almond was an American political scientist best known for his pioneering work on comparative politics, political development, and political culture.

Voluntarism, sometimes referred to as voluntary action, is the principle that individuals are free to choose goals and how to achieve them within the bounds of certain societal and cultural constraints, as opposed to actions that are coerced or predetermined. The term "voluntarism" is derived from Latin word "voluntary," which means 'will'. The term voluntary association is variously defined. Voluntary organizations are known by several other names : Non-Governmental Organisations(NGOS), private voluntary organizations(PVOS) and so on depending on the geographic area and time period of reference. In general these organizations, regardless of terminology used, have certain characteristics; that they are non-government and non profit, that they are voluntary. The term NGO has become popular in the 1980s and 1990s and is extensively used in the field of development, where as the term "voluntary organization" had been used widely for social welfare and charity organizations. But these two terms are used interchangeably as both denote the same characteristics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">British people</span> People from the UK and its territories

British people or Britons, also known colloquially as Brits, are the citizens of the United Kingdom, the British Overseas Territories, and the Crown dependencies. British nationality law governs modern British citizenship and nationality, which can be acquired, for instance, by descent from British nationals. When used in a historical context, "British" or "Britons" can refer to the Ancient Britons, the indigenous inhabitants of Great Britain and Brittany, whose surviving members are the modern Welsh people, Cornish people, and Bretons. It also refers to citizens of the former British Empire, who settled in the country prior to 1973, and hold neither UK citizenship nor nationality.

Norman H. Nie was an American social scientist, university professor, inventor, and pioneering technology entrepreneur, known for being one of the developers of the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1943, Nie was educated at the University of the Americas in Mexico City, Washington University in St. Louis and Stanford University, where he received a Ph.D. in political science in 1971. He died on April 2, 2015, of lung cancer.

A civic culture or civic political culture is a political culture characterized by "acceptance of the authority of the state" and "a belief in participation in civic duties". The term was first used in Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba's book, The Civic Culture. Civic political culture is a mixture of other political cultures namely parochial, subject and participant political cultures. Almond and Verba characterised Britain as having a civic political culture. In "Is Britain Still a Civic Culture?" Patrick Seyd and Paul Whiteley discuss the extent to which Britain can still be regarded as having a civic political culture. The term civic culture is used to identify the political culture characteristics that explain the stability of a democratic society's political structure.

<i>The Civic Culture</i>

The Civic Culture or The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations is a 1963 political science book by Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba. The book is credited with popularizing the political culture sub-field and is considered to be the first systematic study in this field.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Civic Gospel</span>

The Civic Gospel was a philosophy of municipal activism and improvement that emerged in Birmingham, England, in the mid-19th century. Tracing its origins to the teaching of independent nonconformist preacher George Dawson, who declared that "a town is a solemn organism through which shall flow, and in which shall be shaped, all the highest, loftiest and truest ends of man's moral nature", it reached its culmination in the mayoralty of Joseph Chamberlain between 1873 and 1876. After Dawson's death in 1876 it was the Congregationalist pastor R. W. Dale who took on the role as the movement's leading nonconformist spokesman. Other major proponents included the Baptist Charles Vince and the Unitarian H. W. Crosskey.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry E. Brady</span> American political scientist

Henry E. Brady is an American political scientist specializing in methodology and its application in a diverse array of political fields. He is Dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy at University of California, Berkeley and holds the Class of 1941 Monroe Deutsch Professor of Political Science and Public Policy. He was elected President of the American Political Science Association, 2009–2010, giving a presidential address entitled "The Art of Political Science: Spatial Diagrams as Iconic and Revelatory." He has published academic works on diverse topics, co-authoring with colleagues at a variety of institutions and ranks, as well as many solo authored works. His principal areas of research are on political behavior in the United States, Canada, and the former Soviet Union, public policy and methodological work on scaling and dimensional analysis. When he became President of the American Political Science Association, a number of his colleagues and co-authors contributed to his presidential biography entitled "Henry Brady, Big Scientist," discussing his work and the fields to which he has contributed and has also shaped.

Kay Lehman Schlozman is an American political scientist, currently the J. Joseph Moakley Professor of Political Science at Boston College. Schlozman has made fundamental advancements to the study of participation in American politics, and was a pioneer in the field of gender and politics. Her contributions include the theory of civic voluntarism, several landmark studies on the relationship between access to resources and different types of political participation, and related investigations into the nature of civic culture. Schlozman has one of the highest citation counts of any political scientist, including being among the top 50 most cited active political scientists and top 10 most cited women in the discipline. She worked closely with Sidney Verba for nearly 50 years, first as his student and then as his collaborator.

Harry H. Eckstein was an American political scientist. He was an influential scholar of comparative politics and political culture, as well as qualitative research methods.

References

  1. British Political Culture

Further reading