The Importance Of Political Culture

“One cannot understand the politics of a country without first looking at its political culture” (Munroe, 1995). To understand the political tendencies in a nation, we must begin with public attitudes towards politics and their role within the political system, what one call a nation’s political culture. According to Trevor Munroe political culture is generally defined as the attitudes, feelings, ideas and values that people have about politics, government and their role and more generally about authority in all its various forms. Political culture may also be explained as the way in which the individuals within the social setting view their political system, the way in which they perceive it to function and the level of acceptance that

Political cultures are sustained or changed as people acquire their attitudes and values. The way political institutions function at least partially reflects the public’s attitudes, norms and expectations. According to Almond and Verba there are three basic types of political culture, parochial, subject and participant which can explain why people do, or do not participate in political processes. Parochial political culture is where citizens are only remotely aware of the presence of central government and live their lives near enough regardless of the decisions taken by the state. Subject political culture is where citizens are aware of central government, and are heavily subjected to its decisions with little scope for dissent. Finally, participant political culture is where citizens are able to influence the government in various ways and they are affected by

Political socialization is a universal process that is largely an uncontrolled and uncontrollable. All societies must find a way of passing on skills needed for people to perform political roles, varying from voting at an election to governing a country. Political socialization serves to replicate the status quo and as a result, political culture becomes a stabilizing force, providing a major barrier against planned change. Although the bulk of political socialization occurs during childhood, adults continue to be socialized. The process of political socialization is carried out through specific agents that can be divided into two groups; primary and secondary. Primary agents are informal and unstructured, whereas secondary agents are formal and organized. These agents teach us about their political opinions and the workings of the political system. The primary agents of political socialization are the family and the peer group. “Political scientists have long shown that family socialization is closely related to voting preference. Persons are very likely to vote for the party of their parents to the degree that both parents live together, vote and talk about politics”. (“politics in the Caribbean, voting behavior”, nd.) The family plays a major role as an agent for political socialization, because it has the earliest