Culture & Democracy

There may be many ways in which culture can affect political structure of one country or another, yet, arguably the most important way that a country’s culture affects democracy is through political socialization. According to

Alexis de Tocqueville and his book "Democracy", he defines culture as an ordered set of symbols, and in turn, political culture as a set of values and orientations through which one perceives and reacts to authority. The way that this set of values and orientations is gained by each person, is through the process of political socialization that begins since early childhood and produces "visible" results as a person becomes a mature individual.

While it is hard to draw a clear line of when political socialization is a completed process, mainly due to varying degrees of a each individual’s education, it is safe, however, to assume that a person is set in his ways close to the end of his life’s second decade. This assumption, by virtue of being only an educated guess and thus a broad generalization, but not a valid statistic of any kind, has its drawbacks. One must also take into account the fact that an average person’s mind and experience continue to grow and develop way beyond the age of twenty, thus giving a possibility of weighing the advantages and disadvantages of one’s thinking on a particular issue and its alteration. This holds true for most people, provided that they are free-thinking individuals, whose thought process has not been heavily influenced by unnecessary dogmas and hindered by agents of political socialization early on in their lives. This brings us to our next topic.

Parents, school and church are all important agents of political socialization for anybody. Statistical studies have been done and have long since become common knowledge that a child of Democrats is likely to vote

Democrat, respectively, a child of Republicans is more likely to vote Republican, although both of said people are free to choose a different way to vote. For many individuals school and church are second homes. Both institutions shape individuals in one way or another, producing different results. While a liberal school may produce free-thinking, progressive and well-educated individuals, another may shell out obedient soldier-like "good citizens" that are ready to follow their leader through rain and fire i...

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..., also resulted in a more democratic society by producing coup d’etats. At the time it was unlikely for the newly-formed democratic society to revert to monarchical rule. This proves that people, whose political socialization included largely democratic ideals will always select democracy over any form of authoritarian rule. It has been said that parties reflect societies they represent.

Modern parties have become instruments of democracy and can be found in most countries around the world. It has been also since long recognized that in most cases a person determines his adherence to a party through the process of the political socialization, thus a majority of the democracies must be thankful to democratic way of political socialization and political culture. It is not by accident that one’s education begins early. Medical expertise turned public knowledge, certifies that a young brain is like a sponge. Things learned at an early age are more likely to reside in a person’s long-term memory. As a parallel, democratic ideals instilled since childhood via political socialization are bound to produce democracies through freedom-loving citizens. "Vox populi vox Dei!"

(lat.)