‘Political process in a country is merely the manifestation of its_ political culture”. Elucidate. (2007)
Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba (The Civic Culture, 1963) defined political culture as the distribution among citizens of their orientations towards political objects. For Lucian W. Pye it is the set of attitudes and beliefs that give order and meaning to the political process. The statement is largely true, but “merely” overstates it: culture shapes the process, and the process in turn reshapes culture.
How Culture Produces Process
- Orientations. Citizens relate to the system through knowledge (cognitive), feeling (affective) and judgement (evaluative).
- Three types, three styles of politics.
- In a parochial culture the state barely registers.
- In a subject culture citizens receive outputs but do not shape inputs, so politics is administrative.
- In a participant culture voting, lobbying and protest drive the agenda.
- Civic culture is a mix. Participation keeps rulers responsive and deference lets them govern, so Britain and the United States were stable and alienated Italy was not.
- Robert D. Putnam (Making Democracy Work, 1993) supplies the strongest evidence. Italy’s regional governments were created in 1970 with identical powers, yet they performed very differently, and performance tracked centuries-old civic traditions and social capital: trust, reciprocity and horizontal networks.
Indian Illustrations
- Rajni Kothari‘s Congress system (1964) mirrored a culture of accommodation: a party of consensus at the centre, with parties of pressure around it.
- Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph (The Modernity of Tradition, 1967) showed caste associations turning traditional loyalties into instruments of electoral mobilisation.
- Culture still leaves its mark on process. In Pew’s 2023 survey, 67% of Indians approved of a strong leader unchecked by parliament or courts, up from 55% in 2017. That disposition fits personalised campaigns and a weak legislature.
Why “Merely” Overstates
- Reverse causation. Brian Barry (Sociologists, Economists and Democracy, 1970) argued that civic attitudes may result from stable democracy rather than cause it. The Civic Culture Revisited (1980), edited by Almond and Verba, recorded that British deference had eroded.
- Institutions make culture. Universal franchise was adopted in 1950 in a largely non-literate society. Repeated elections taught people that the vote works.
- Kothari (Caste in Indian Politics, 1970) concluded that caste was politicised by democracy, not that politics became casteist.
- Yogendra Yadav‘s second democratic upsurge of the 1990s saw Dalits, OBCs and the poor voting more than the privileged. Competition and reservation produced this shift, not an inherited culture.
- Rational choice and institutionalism. The same population behaves differently under different electoral rules and party systems.
- Marxist critique. For Antonio Gramsci, consent is manufactured through hegemony, so culture is an effect of power as much as a cause.
- Change. Ronald Inglehart showed values shifting towards post-materialism through generational replacement; culture moves.
- Leaders and contingency. The Emergency (1975–77) was a choice made by a leadership, not a cultural necessity. Its electoral reversal in 1977 strengthened democratic belief.
Conclusion
Political culture sets the grammar of a political process, but institutions, interests and leaders write its sentences. The relationship is reciprocal, and India is the proof: a democratic process introduced ahead of a democratic culture has done much to create one. The process manifests the culture, but not merely.