ap gov chapter 4

AmericanPoliticalCulture

Political CultureThe Political System ★ The Economic System

Comparing America with Other NationsThe Political System ★ The Economic System ★The Civic Role of Religion

The Sources of Political CultureThe Culture War

Mistrust of Government

Political Tolerance

C H A P T E R

4

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The United States, Great Britain, and France are all western nations with well-established representative democracies. Millions of people in each country(maybe including you) have been tourists in one or both of the other two coun-

tries. Ask any American who has spent time in either country “what’s it like?” and youprobably will hear generalizations about the “culture”—“friendly” or “cold,” “very dif-ferent” or “surprisingly like home,” and so on.

But “culture” also counts when it comes to politics and government. Politicallyspeaking, there are at least three major differences among and between countries: con-stitutional, demographic, and cultural. Each difference is important, and the differ-ences tend to feed each other. Arguably, however, the cultural differences are not onlythe most consequential, but also often the trickiest to analyze. As we will see, that holdsnot only for cross-national differences between America and other countries, but alsowhen it comes to deciphering political divides within America itself.

★ Political CultureConstitutional differences tend to be fairly obvious and easy to summarize. Americaand France each have a written constitution, while Great Britain does not. The UnitedStates separates powers between three co-equal branches of its national government.By contrast, the United Kingdom has a parliamentary system in which the legislaturechooses a prime minister from within its own ranks. And France has a semi-presidentialor quasi-parliamentary system divided into three branches: the president selects aprime minister from the majority party in the lower house of the parliament, and theprime minister exercises most executive powers.

Demographic differences are also straightforward. America is a large land with over300 million citizens. The dominant language is English, but millions of people also speakSpanish. About one-sixth of its population is Hispanic. Over 80 percent of its adultsidentify themselves as Christians, but they are divided between Catholics (about aquarter) and over a dozen different Protestant denominations. By comparison, Franceand the United Kingdom are each home to about 60 million people and have small butgrowing immigrant and foreign-born sub-populations. Most French (over 80 percent)are Catholic; most British belong to the Church of England (Anglican, the official statereligion) or the Church of Scotland. But in neither country do many people go tochurch.

The differences among these three democracies go much deeper. Each country has adifferent political culture—a distinctive and patterned way of thinking about how po-litical and economic life ought to be carried out. Most Americans, British, and Frenchthink that democracy is good, favor majority rule, and believe in respecting minority

★

W H O G O V E R N S ?1. Do Americans trust their

government?2. Why do we accept great differences

in wealth and income?

★

T O W H A T E N D S ?1. Why does our government behave

differently than governments incountries with similar constitutions?

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rights. And few in each nation would say that a leaderwho loses office through ballots has any right what-soever to retake office by force. Even so, their politicalcultures differ. Cross-national surveys consistentlyfind that Americans are far more likely than theFrench or British to believe that everybody should beequal politically, but far less likely to think it impor-tant that everybody should be equal economically. Forexample, in one large survey, the French and Britishwere more than twice as likely as Americans to agreethat “it is government’s responsibility to take care ofthe very poor,” and under a third as likely as Ameri-cans to agree that “government should not guaranteeevery citizen food and basic shelter.”1

When it comes to ensuring political equality orequality before the law, Americans are more commit-ted from an early age. For instance, a classic studycompared how children aged ten to fourteen in theUnited States, Great Britain, and France responded toa series of questions about democracy and the law.They were asked to imagine the following:

One day the President (substitute the Queen inEngland, President of the Republic in France)was driving his car to a meeting. Because he waslate, he was driving very fast. The police stoppedthe car. Finish the story.2

The children from each country ended the story quitedifferently. French children declared that the presi-dent would not be reprimanded. British children saidthe queen would not be punished. But Americanchildren were most likely to say that the presidentwould be fined or ticketed, just like any other personshould be.

Cross-national differences wrought by politicalculture seem even sharper between America and suchcountries as Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and the Philip-pines. Why do these countries, whose constitutionsare very much like the American one, have so muchtrouble with corruption, military takeovers, and therise of demagogues? Each of these nations has hadperiods of democratic rule, but only for a short pe-riod of time, despite having an elected president, aseparately elected congress, and an independent judi-ciary, and promising personal freedom to its people.

Some have argued that democracy took root in theUnited States but not other countries that copied itsconstitution because America offered more abundantland and greater opportunities for people. No feudalaristocracy occupied the land, taxes remained low, and

when one place after another filled up, people keptpushing west to find new opportunities. America be-came a nation of small, independent farmers withrelatively few landless peasants or indentured servants.

However, as Alexis de Tocque-ville, the perceptive French ob-server of American politics, notedin the 1830s, much of SouthAmerica contains fertile land andrich resources, but democracy hasnot flourished there. The consti-tution and the physical advantagesof the land cannot by themselvesexplain the persistence of any nation’s democraticinstitutions. Nor can they account for the fact thatAmerican democracy survived a Civil War and thrivedas wave after wave of immigrants became citizens andmade the democracy more demographically diverse.

Political Culture 77

political cultureA distinctive andpatterned way ofthinking about howpolitical and economiclife ought to be carriedout.

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859) was a youngFrench aristocrat who came to the United States tostudy the American prison system. He wrote the bril-liant Democracy in America (2 vols., 1835–1840), a profound analysis of our political culture.

What can begin to account for such differences arethe customs of the people—what Tocqueville calledtheir “moral and intellectual characteristics,”3 and whatsocial scientists today call political culture.

Japan, like the United States, is a democracy. Butwhile America is an immigrant nation that has oftenfavored open immigration policies, Japan remains aJapanese nation in which immigration policies arehighly restrictive and foreign-born citizens are few.America, like Saudi Arabia, is a country in which mostpeople profess religious beliefs, and many peopleidentify themselves as orthodox believers. But Amer-ica’s Christian majority favors religious pluralism andchurch-state separation, while Saudi Arabia’s Muslimmajority supports laws that maintain Islam as the statereligion. In Germany, courts have held that non-Christian religious symbols and dress, but not Chris-tian ones, may be banned from schools and otherpublic places. In France, the government forbids wear-ing any religious garb in schools. In the United States,such rulings or restrictions would be unthinkable.

The Political System

There are at least five important elements in theAmerican view of the political system:

• Liberty: Americans are preoccupied with theirrights. They believe they should be free to dopretty much as they please, with some exceptions,so long as they don’t hurt other people.

• Equality: Americans believe everybody should havean equal vote and an equal chance to participateand succeed.

• Democracy: Americans think government officialsshould be accountable to the people.

• Civic duty: Americans generally feel people oughtto take community affairs seriously and help outwhen they can.4

• Individual responsibility: A characteristically Amer-ican view is that, barring some disability, individ-uals are responsible for their own actions andwell-being.

By vast majorities Americans believe that everycitizen should have an equal chance to influence gov-ernment policy and to hold public office, and theyoppose the idea of letting people have titles suchas “Lord” or “Duke,” as in England. By somewhatsmaller majorities they believe that people should beallowed to vote even if they can’t read or write or voteintelligently.5 Though Americans recognize that peo-ple differ in their abilities, they overwhelmingly agreewith the statement that “teaching children that allpeople are really equal recognizes that all people areequally worthy and deserve equal treatment.”6

At least three questions can be raised about thispolitical culture. First, how do we know that the Amer-ican people share these beliefs? For most of our his-tory there were no public opinion polls, and even afterthey became commonplace, they were rather crudetools for measuring the existence and meaning of com-plex, abstract ideas. There is in fact no way to provethat values such as those listed above are important toAmericans. But neither is there good reason for dis-missing the list out of hand. One can infer, as havemany scholars, the existence of certain values by aclose study of the kinds of books Americans read, thespeeches they hear, the slogans to which they respond,and the political choices they make, as well as by not-ing the observations of insightful foreign visitors. Per-sonality tests as well as opinion polls, particularly thoseasking similar questions in different countries, alsosupply useful evidence, some of which will be reviewedin the following paragraphs.

Second, if these values are important to Ameri-cans, how can we explain the existence in our societyof behavior that is obviously inconsistent with them?For example, if white Americans believe in equality ofopportunity, why did so many of them for so longdeny that equality to African Americans? That people

78 Chapter 4 American Political Culture

At the height of immigration to this country there was astriking emphasis on creating a shared political culture.Schoolchildren, whatever their national origin, were taughtto salute this country’s flag.

act contrary to their professed beliefs is an everydayfact of life: people believe in honesty, yet they stealfrom their employers and sometimes underreporttheir taxable income. Besides values, self-interest andsocial circumstances also shape behavior. GunnarMyrdal, a Swedish observer of American society, de-scribed race relations in this country as “an Americandilemma” resulting from the conflict between the“American creed” (a belief in equality of opportunity)and American behavior (denying African Americansfull citizenship).7 But the creed remains importantbecause it is a source of change: as more and morepeople become aware of the inconsistency betweentheir values and their behavior, that behavior slowlychanges.8 Race relations in this country would take avery different course if instead of an abstract butwidespread belief in equality there were an equallywidespread belief that one race is inherently inferiorto another. (No doubt some Americans believe that,but most do not.)

Third, if there is agreement among Americans oncertain political values, why has there been so muchpolitical conflict in our history? How could a peoplewho agree on such fundamentals fight a bloody civilwar, engage in violent labor-management disputes,take to the streets in riots and demonstrations, andsue each other in countless court battles? Conflict,even violent struggles, can occur over specific policieseven among those who share, at some level of abstrac-tion, common beliefs. Many political values may beirrelevant to specific controversies: there is no abstractvalue, for example, that would settle the question ofwhether steelworkers ought to organize unions. Moreimportant, much of our conflict has occurred preciselybecause we have strong beliefs that happen, as each ofus interprets them, to be in conflict. Equality of op-portunity seems an attractive idea, but sometimes itcan be pursued only by curtailing personal liberty,another attractive idea. The states went to war in 1861over one aspect of that conflict—the rights of slavesversus the rights of slaveowners.

Indeed, the Civil War illustrates the way certainfundamental beliefs about how a democratic regimeought to be organized have persisted despite bitterconflict over the policies adopted by particular gov-ernments. When the southern states seceded from theUnion, they formed not a wholly different govern-ment but one modeled, despite some important dif-ferences, on the U.S. Constitution. Even some of thelanguage of the Constitution was duplicated, suggest-

ing that the southern states believed not that a newform of government or a different political cultureought to be created but that the South was the truerepository of the existing constitutional and culturalorder.9

Perhaps the most frequently encountered evidencethat Americans believe themselves bound by commonvalues and common hopes has been the persistenceof the word Americanism in our political vocabulary.Throughout the nineteenth and most of the twenti-eth centuries Americanism and American way of lifewere familiar terms not only in Fourth of July speechesbut also in everyday discourse. For many years theHouse of Representatives had a committee called theHouse Un-American Activities Committee. There ishardly any example to be found abroad of such a wayof thinking: There is no “Britishism” or “Frenchism,”and when Britons and French people become wor-ried about subversion, they call it a problem of inter-nal security, not a manifestation of “un-British” or“un-French” activities.

The Economic System

Americans judge the economic system using many ofthe same standards by which they judge the politicalsystem, albeit with some very important differences.As it is in American politics, liberty is important inthe U.S. economy. Thus Americans support the ideaof a free-enterprise economic system, calling the na-tion’s economy “generally fair and efficient” and deny-ing that it “survives by keeping the poor down.”10

However, there are limits to how much freedom theythink should exist in the marketplace. People supportgovernment regulation of business in order to keepsome firms from becoming too powerful and to cor-rect specific abuses.11

Americans are more willing to tolerate economicinequality than political inequality. They believe inmaintaining “equality of opportunity” in the econ-omy but not “equality of results.” If everyone has anequal opportunity to get ahead, then it is all right forpeople with more ability to earn higher salaries andfor wages to be set based on how hard people workrather than on their economic needs.12 Hardly any-one is upset by the fact that Bill Gates, Warren Buffett,and Donald Trump are rich men. Although Americansare quite willing to support education and trainingprograms to help disadvantaged people get ahead,they are strongly opposed to anything that looks like

Political Culture 79

preferential treatment (for example, hiring quotas) inthe workplace.13

The leaders of very liberal political groups, such ascivil rights and feminist organizations, are more will-ing than the average American to support preferentialtreatment in the hiring and promoting of minoritiesand women. They do so because, unlike most citi-zens, they believe that whatever disadvantages mi-norities and women face are the result of failures ofthe economic system rather than the fault of individ-uals.14 Even so, these leaders strongly support the ideathat earnings should be based on ability and opposethe idea of having any top limit on what people canearn.15

This popular commitment to economic individu-alism and personal responsibility may help explainhow Americans think about particular public poli-cies, such as welfare and civil rights. Polls show thatAmericans are willing to help people “truly in need”(this includes the elderly and the disabled) but notthose deemed “able to take care of themselves” (thisincludes, in the public’s mind, people “on welfare”).Also, Americans dislike preferential hiring programsand the use of quotas to deal with racial inequality.

At the core of these policy attitudes is a widely (butnot universally) shared commitment to economic in-dividualism and personal responsibility. Some schol-

ars, among them Donald Kinder and David Sears,interpret these individualistic values as “symbolicracism”—a kind of plausible camouflage for anti-black attitudes.16 But other scholars, such as Paul M.Sniderman and Michael Gray Hagen, argue that theseviews are not a smoke screen for bigotry or insensi-tivity but a genuine commitment to the ethic of self-reliance.17 Since there are many Americans on bothsides of this issue, debates about welfare and civilrights tend to be especially intense. What is strikingabout the American political culture is that in thiscountry the individualist view of social policy is byfar the most popular.18

Views about specific economic policies change.Americans now are much more inclined than theyonce were to believe that the government should helpthe needy and regulate business. But the commit-ment to certain underlying principles has been re-markably enduring. In 1924 almost half of the highschool students in Muncie, Indiana, said that “it is en-tirely the fault of the man himself if he cannot suc-ceed” and disagreed with the view that differences inwealth showed that the system was unjust. Over half acentury later, the students in this same high schoolwere asked the same questions again, with the sameresults.19

★ Comparing America withOther NationsThe best way to learn what is distinctive about theAmerican political culture is to compare it with thatof other nations. This comparison shows that Ameri-cans have somewhat different beliefs about the polit-ical system, the economic system, and religion.

The Political System

Sweden has a well-developed democratic govern-ment, with a constitution, free speech, an elected leg-islature, competing political parties, and a reasonablyhonest and nonpartisan bureaucracy. But the Swedishpolitical culture is significantly different from ours; itis more deferential than participatory. Though al-most all adult Swedes vote in national elections, fewparticipate in politics in any other way. They defer tothe decisions of experts and specialists who work forthe government, rarely challenge governmental deci-sions in court, believe leaders and legislators ought to


In the 1950s Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin wasthe inspiration for the word “McCarthyism” after his highlypublicized attacks on alleged communists working in thefederal government.

decide issues on the basis of “what is best” more thanon “what the people want,” and value equality as muchas (or more than) liberty.20 Whereas Americans arecontentious, Swedes value harmony; while Americanstend to assert their rights, Swedes tend to observe theirobligations.

The contrast in political cultures is even greaterwhen one looks at a nation, such as Japan, with awholly different history and set of traditions. One studycompared the values expressed by a small number ofupper-status Japanese with those of some similarlysituated Americans. Whereas the Americans empha-sized the virtues of individualism, competition, andequality in their political, economic, and social rela-tions, the Japanese attached greater value to maintain-ing good relations with colleagues, having decisionsmade by groups, preserving social harmony, and dis-playing respect for hierarchy. The Americans weremore concerned than the Japanese with rules andwith treating others fairly but impersonally, with dueregard for their rights. The Japanese, on the other hand,stressed the importance of being sensitive to the per-sonal needs of others, avoiding conflict, and reachingdecisions through discussion rather than the applica-tion of rules.21 These cultural differences affect inprofound but hard-to-measure ways the workings ofthe political and economic systems of the two coun-tries, making them function quite differently despitethe fact that both are industrialized, capitalist nations.

It is easy to become carried away by the more ob-vious differences among national cultures and toovergeneralize from them. Thinking in stereotypesabout the typical American, the typical Swede, or thetypical Japanese is as risky as thinking of the typicalwhite or the typical black American. This can be es-pecially misleading in nations, such as the UnitedStates and Canada, that have been settled by a varietyof ethnic and religious groups (English-speaking ver-sus French-speaking Canadians, for example, or Jew-ish, Protestant, and Catholic Americans). But it isequally misleading to suppose that the operation of apolitical system can be understood entirely from thenation’s objective features—its laws, economy, orphysical terrain.

A classic study of political culture in five nationsfound that Americans, and to a lesser degree citizensof Great Britain, had a stronger sense of civic duty (abelief that one has an obligation to participate incivic and political affairs) and a stronger sense ofcivic competence (a belief that one can affect govern-

ment policies) than did the citizens of Germany, Italy,or Mexico. Over half of all Americans and a third ofall Britons believed that the average citizen ought to“be active in one’s community,” compared to only atenth in Italy and a fifth in Germany. Moreover,many more Americans and Britons than Germans,Italians, or Mexicans believed that they could “dosomething” about an unjust national law or local reg-ulation.22 A more recent study of citizen participa-tion in politics found that while America laggedbehind Austria, the Netherlands, Germany, and theUnited Kingdom in voter participation, when it cameto campaigning, attending political meetings, be-coming active in the local community, and contactinggovernment officials, Americans were as active—orsubstantially more active—than citizens elsewhere.23

Today the American people have less trust in gov-ernment than they once did. But even so, popularconfidence in political institutions remains higherhere than in many places abroad.In cross-national surveys con-ducted in the United States andsixteen other democracies,Americans expressed more con-fidence in public institutions(Congress/Parliament, the po-lice, the armed forces, the legalsystem, and the civil service)than did the citizens of all butfour other countries (Denmark,Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Norway), and greaterconfidence in private institutions (the church, major

Comparing America with Other Nations 81

The French parliament meets at Versailles Palace nearParis.

civic duty A beliefthat one has anobligation toparticipate in civicand political affairs.

civic competenceA belief that one canaffect governmentpolicies.

companies, the press, trade unions) than did the citi-zens of any other nation.24 In other cross-nationalsurveys, Americans were more likely than the Frenchor Germans to say they were “very patriotic.” Ofcourse, Americans know that their country has a lotof faults. But even the most disaffected voters believethe United States needs to change only certain poli-cies, not its system of government.25

The Economic System

The political culture of Sweden is not only more def-erential than ours but also more inclined to favorequality of results over equality of opportunity. Sid-ney Verba and Gary Orren compared the views ofSwedish and American trade union and political partyleaders on a variety of economic issues. In both coun-tries the leaders were chosen from either blue-collarunions or the major liberal political party (the Demo-crats in the United States, the Social Democrats inSweden).

The results are quite striking. By margins of fouror five to one the Swedish leaders were more likely tobelieve in giving workers equal pay than were theirAmerican counterparts. Moreover, by margins of atleast three to one, the Swedes were more likely than theAmericans to favor putting a top limit on incomes.26

Just what these differences in beliefs mean indollars-and-cents terms was revealed by the answersto another question. Each group was asked whatshould be the ratio between the income of an execu-tive and that of a menial worker (a dishwasher inSweden, an elevator operator in the United States).The Swedish leaders said the ratio should be a littleover two to one. That is, if the dishwasher earned $200a week, the executive should earn no more than $440to $480 a week. But the American leaders were readyto let the executive earn between $2,260 and $3,040per week when the elevator operator was earning $200.

Americans, compared to people in many othercountries, are more likely to think that freedom ismore important than equality and less likely to thinkthat hard work goes unrewarded or that the govern-ment should guarantee citizens a basic standard ofliving. These cultural differences make a difference inpolitics. In fact there is less income inequality in Swe-den than in the United States—the government seesto that.

The Civic Role of Religion

In the 1830s Tocqueville was amazed at how religiousAmericans were in comparison to his fellow Euro-peans. From the first days of the new Republic rightdown to the present, America has been among themost religious countries in the world. The averageAmerican is more likely than the average European tobelieve in God, to pray on a daily basis, and to ac-knowledge clear standards of right and wrong. 27

Religious people donate over three times as muchmoney to charity as do secular ones, even when theincomes of the two groups are the same, and they vol-unteer their time twice as often. And this is truewhether or not religious people go to church or syn-agogue regularly. Moreover, religious people are morelikely to give money and donate time to nonreligiousorganizations, such as the Red Cross, than are secularpeople.28 It is clear that religion in America has alarge effect on our culture.

It also affects our politics. The religious revivalistmovement of the late 1730s and early 1740s (knownas the First Great Awakening) transformed the politi-cal life of the American colonies. Religious ideas fueledthe break with England, which, in the words of theDeclaration of Independence, had violated “the lawsof nature and nature’s God.” Religious leaders werecentral to the struggle over slavery in the nineteenthcentury and the temperance movement of the earlytwentieth century.


The chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives leads aprayer.

Both liberals and conservatives have used the pul-pit to promote political change. The civil rights move-ment of the 1950s and 1960s was led mainly by blackreligious leaders, most prominently Martin LutherKing, Jr. In the 1980s a conservative religious groupknown as the Moral Majority advocated constitutionalamendments that would allow prayer in public schoolsand ban abortion. In the 1990s another conservativereligious group, the Christian Coalition, attracted anenormous amount of media attention and becamea prominent force in many national, state, and localelections.

Candidates for national office in most contempo-rary democracies mention religion rarely if they men-tion it at all. Not so in America. During the 2000presidential campaign, for example, both Democraticcandidate Al Gore and Republican candidate GeorgeW. Bush gave major speeches extolling the virtues ofreligion and advocating the right of religious organ-izations that deliver social services to receive govern-ment funding on the same basis as all other nonprofitorganizations.

The general feeling about religion became appar-ent when a federal appeals court in 2002 tried to banthe Pledge of Allegiance because it contained thephrase “under God.” There was an overwhelming andbipartisan condemnation of the ruling. To a degreethat would be almost unthinkable in many otherdemocracies, religious beliefs will probably continueto shape political culture in America for many gener-ations to come. The Supreme Court, by deciding thatthe man who brought the case was not entitled to doso, left the Pledge intact without deciding whether itwas constitutional.

★ The Sources of PoliticalCultureThat Americans bring a distinctive way of thinking totheir political life is easier to demonstrate than to ex-plain. But even a brief, and necessarily superficial, ef-fort to understand the sources of our political culturecan help make its significance clearer.

The American Revolution, as we discussed in Chap-ter 2, was essentially a war fought over liberty: an as-sertion by the colonists of what they took to be theirrights. Though the Constitution, produced elevenyears after the Revolution, had to deal with other is-sues as well, its animating spirit reflected the effort toreconcile personal liberty with the needs of social

control. These founding experiences, and the politi-cal disputes that followed, have given to Americanpolitical thought and culture a preoccupation withthe assertion and maintenance of rights. This tradi-tion has imbued the daily conduct of U.S. politicswith a kind of adversarial spirit quite foreign to thepolitical life of countries that did not undergo a liber-tarian revolution or that were formed out of an inter-est in other goals, such as social equality, nationalindependence, or ethnic supremacy.

The adversarial spirit of the American political cul-ture reflects not only our preoccupation with rightsbut also our long-standing distrust of authority andof people wielding power. The colonies’ experienceswith British rule was one source of that distrust. Butanother, older source was the religious belief of manyAmericans, which saw human nature as fundamen-tally depraved. To the colonists all of mankind suf-fered from original sin, symbolized by Adam and Eveeating the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden.Since no one was born innocent, no one could betrusted with power. Thus the Constitution had to bedesigned in such a way as to curb the darker side of hu-man nature. Otherwise everyone’s rights would be injeopardy.

The contentiousness of a people animated by asuspicion of government and devoted to individual-ism could easily have made democratic politics sotumultuous as to be impossible. After all one mustbe willing to trust others with power if there is to beany kind of democratic government, and sometimesthose others will be people not of one’s own choos-ing. The first great test case took place around 1800in a battle between the Federalists, led by JohnAdams and Alexander Hamilton, and the Democratic-Republicans, led by Thomas Jefferson and JamesMadison. The two factions deeply distrusted eachother: The Federalists had passed laws designed tosuppress Jeffersonian journalists; Jefferson suspectedthe Federalists were out to subvert the Constitution;and the Federalists believed Jefferson intended to sellout the country to France. But as we shall see inChapter 9, the threat of civil war never materialized,and the Jeffersonians came to power peacefully.Within a few years the role of an opposition party be-came legitimate, and people abandoned the idea ofmaking serious efforts to suppress their opponents.By happy circumstance people came to accept thatliberty and orderly political change could coexist.

The Constitution, by creating a federal system anddividing political authority among competing institu-

The Sources of Political Culture 83

tions, provided ample opportunity for widespread—though hardly universal—participation in politics.The election of Jefferson in 1800 produced no politi-cal catastrophe, and those who had predicted onewere, to a degree, discredited. But other, more funda-mental features of American life contributed to thesame end. One of the most important of these was re-ligious diversity.

The absence of an established or official religionfor the nation as a whole, reinforced by a constitu-tional prohibition of such an establishment and bythe migration to this country of people with differentreligious backgrounds, meant that religious diversitywas inevitable. Since there could be no orthodox orofficial religion, it became difficult for a correspond-ing political orthodoxy to emerge. Moreover, the con-flict between the Puritan tradition, with its emphasison faith and hard work, and the Catholic Church,with its devotion to the sacraments and priestly au-thority, provided a recurrent source of cleavage inAmerican public life. The differences in values be-tween these two groups showed up not only in theirreligious practices but also in areas involving the reg-ulation of manners and morals, and even in people’schoice of political party. For more than a century can-didates for state and national office were deeplydivided over whether the sale of liquor should beprohibited, a question that arose ultimately out ofcompeting religious doctrines.

Even though there was no established church, therewas certainly a dominant religious tradition—Protestantism, and especially Puritanism. The Protes-tant churches provided people with both a set ofbeliefs and an organizational experience that had pro-found effects on American political culture. Thosebeliefs encouraged, or even required, a life of per-sonal achievement as well as religious conviction: a

believer had an obligation to work,save money, obey the secular law,and do good works. Max Weber ex-plained the rise of capitalism inpart by what he called the Protes-tant ethic—what we now some-times call the work ethic.29 Suchvalues had political consequences,as people holding them were moti-

vated to engage in civic and communal action.Churches offered ready opportunities for develop-

ing and practicing civic and political skills. Since mostProtestant churches were organized along congrega-

tional lines—that is, the church was controlled byits members, who put up the building, hired thepreacher, and supervised the finances—they were, ineffect, miniature political systems, with leaders andcommittees, conflict and consensus. Developing a par-ticipatory political culture was undoubtedly madeeasier by the existence of a participatory religiousculture. Even some Catholic churches in early Amer-ica were under a degree of lay control. Parishionersowned the church property, negotiated with priests,and conducted church business.

All aspects of culture, including the political, arepreserved and transmitted to new generations primar-ily by the family. Though some believe that the weak-ening of the family unit has eroded the extent to whichit transmits anything, particularly culture, and hasenlarged the power of other sources of values—themass media and the world of friends and fashion,leisure and entertainment—there is still little doubtthat the ways in which we think about the world arelargely acquired within the family. In Chapter 7 weshall see that the family is the primary source of onekind of political attitude—identification with one oranother political party. Even more important, thefamily shapes in subtle ways how we think and act onpolitical matters. Erik Erikson, the psychologist, notedcertain traits that are more characteristic of Ameri-can than of European families—the greater freedomenjoyed by children, for example, and the larger meas-ure of equality among family members. These famil-ial characteristics promote a belief, carried throughlife, that every person has rights deserving protectionand that a variety of interests have a legitimate claimto consideration when decisions are made.30

The combined effect of religious and ethnic diver-sity, an individualistic philosophy, fragmented politi-cal authority, and the relatively egalitarian Americanfamily can be seen in the absence of a high degree ofclass consciousness among Americans. Class con-sciousness means thinking of oneself as a workerwhose interests are in opposition to those of manage-ment, or vice versa. In this country most people,whatever their jobs, think of themselves as “middleclass.”

Though the writings of Horatio Alger are nolonger popular, Americans still seem to believe in themessage of those stories—that the opportunity forsuccess is available to people who work hard. Thismay help explain why the United States is the onlylarge industrial democracy without a significant so-


class consciousnessA belief that you area member of aneconomic groupwhose interests areopposed to people inother such groups.

cialist party and why the nation has been slow toadopt certain welfare programs.

The Culture War

Almost all Americans share some elements of a com-mon political culture. Why, then, is there so muchcultural conflict in American politics? For many years,the most explosive political issues have included abor-tion, gay rights, drug use, school prayer, and pornog-raphy. Viewed from a Marxist perspective, politics inthe United States is utterly baffling: instead of twoeconomic classes engaged in a bitter struggle overwealth, we have two cultural classes locked in a warover values.

As first formulated by sociologist James DavisonHunter, the idea is that there are, broadly defined, twocultural classes in the United States: the orthodoxand the progressive. On the orthodox side are peoplewho believe that morality is as important as, or moreimportant than, self-expression and that moral rulesderive from the commands of God or the laws ofnature—commands and laws that are relatively clear,unchanging, and independent of individual prefer-ences. On the progressive side are people who thinkthat personal freedom is as important as, or more im-portant than, certain traditional moral rules and that

those rules must be evaluated in light of the circum-stances of modern life—circumstances that are quitecomplex, changeable, and dependent on individualpreferences.31

Most conspicuous among the orthodox are funda-mentalist Protestants and evangelical Christians, andso critics who dislike orthodox views often dismissthem as the fanatical expressions of “the ReligiousRight.” But many people who hold orthodox viewsare not fanatical or deeply religious or rightwing onmost issues: they simply have strong views aboutdrugs, pornography, and sexual morality. Similarly,the progressive side often includes members of liberalProtestant denominations (forexample, Episcopalians and Uni-tarians) and people with nostrong religious beliefs, and so their critics often denouncethem as immoral, anti-Christianradicals who have embraced theideology of secular humanism,the belief that moral standardsdo not require religious justifica-tion. But in all likelihood fewprogressives are immoral or anti-Christian, andmost do not regard secular humanism as theirdefining ideology.

The Sources of Political Culture 85

Protests and demonstrations are a common feature of American politics, as with this at-tack in Seattle on American membership in the World Trade Organization in November2001. Yet, despite disagreements Americans are a patriotic people, as seen in thisphoto of baseball fans waving flags and singing “God Bless America,” taken a few daysafter 9/11.

orthodox A beliefthat morality andreligion ought to be ofdecisive importance.

progressive A beliefthat personal freedomand solving socialproblems are moreimportant thanreligion.

Groups supporting and opposing the right to abor-tion have had many angry confrontations in recentyears. The latter have been arrested while attemptingto block access to abortion clinics; some clinics havebeen fire-bombed; and at least seven physicians havebeen killed. A controversy over what schoolchildrenshould be taught about homosexuals was responsi-ble, in part, for the firing of the head of the New YorkCity school system; in other states there have beenfierce arguments in state legislatures and before thecourts over whether gay and lesbian couples shouldbe allowed to marry or adopt children. Although mostAmericans want to keep heroin, cocaine, and otherdrugs illegal, a significant number of people want tolegalize (or at least decriminalize) their use. The Su-preme Court has ruled that children cannot pray inpublic schools, but this has not stopped many parentsand school authorities from trying to reinstate schoolprayer, or at least prayerlike moments of silence. Thediscovery that a federal agency, the National Endow-ment for the Arts, had given money to support exhi-bitions and performances that many people thoughtwere obscene led to a furious congressional struggleover the future of the agency.

The culture war differs from other political dis-putes (over such matters as taxes, business regula-tions, and foreign policy) in several ways: money isnot at stake, compromises are almost impossible toarrange, and the conflict is more profound. It is ani-mated by deep differences in people’s beliefs aboutprivate and public morality—that is, about the stan-dards that ought to govern individual behavior and

social arrangements. It is about what kind of countrywe ought to live in, not just about what kinds of poli-cies our government ought to adopt.

Two opposing views exist about the importance ofthe culture war. One view, developed by Morris Fior-ina and others, holds that politically the culture war isa myth. While political leaders are polarized, mostAmericans occupy a middle position. Journalists writeabout the split between “blue states” (those that voteDemocratic) and “red states” (those that vote Repub-lican), but in fact popular views across both kinds ofstates on many policy issues are similar.32

The other, rival view, developed by Alan Abramo-witz and others, holds that more and more people arechoosing their party affiliations on the basis of theparty’s position on important issues. Moreover, a grow-ing percentage of the public is politically engaged; thatis, they do more about politics than simply vote.33

Choosing between these two theories will taketime, as we watch what happens in future elections.But even now, popular attitudes about one issue—the war in Iraq—are already deeply polarized.

★ Mistrust of GovernmentThere is one aspect of public opinion that worriesmany people. Since the late 1950s there has been amore or less steady decline in the proportion ofAmericans who say they trust the government inWashington to do the right thing. In the past, pollsshowed that about three-quarters of Americans saidthey trusted Washington most of the time or justabout always. The percentage of people who say theytrust the government has on occasion gone up (forexample, when Ronald Reagan was president andagain just after the 9/11 terrorist attacks), but by andlarge trust has been absent since at least the mid-1960s (see Figure 4.1).

Before we get too upset about this, we should re-member that people are talking about governmentofficials, not the system of government. Americans aremuch more supportive of the country and its institu-tions than Europeans are of theirs. Even so, the de-cline in confidence in officials is striking. There are allsorts of explanations for why it has happened. In the1960s there was our unhappy war in Vietnam, in the1970s President Nixon had to resign because of hisinvolvement in the Watergate scandal, and in the 1990sPresident Clinton went through scandals that led tohis being impeached by the House of Representatives(but not convicted of that charge by the Senate), and


Musicians from the Clayton Brothers Quintet performduring an awards ceremony for the National Endowmentfor the Arts.

in 2004–2007 President Bush presided over a divisivewar in Iraq.

But there is another way of looking at the matter.Maybe in the 1950s we had an abnormally high levelof confidence in government, one that could never beexpected to last no matter what any president did. Af-ter all, when President Eisenhower took office in 1952,we had won a war against fascism, overcome the De-pression of the 1930s, possessed a near monopoly ofthe atom bomb, had a currency that was the envy ofthe world, and dominated international trade. More-over, in those days not much was expected out of Wash-ington. Hardly anybody thought that there should beimportant federal laws about civil rights, crime, ille-gal drugs, the environment, the role of women, high-way safety, or almost anything else one now finds onthe national agenda. Since nobody expected muchout of Washington, nobody was upset that they didn’tget much out of it.

The 1960s and 1970s changed all of that. Domes-tic turmoil, urban riots, a civil rights revolution, thewar in Vietnam, economic inflation, and a new con-cern for the environment dramatically increasedwhat we expected Washington to do. And since theseproblems are very difficult ones to solve, a lot ofpeople became convinced that our politicians couldn’tdo much.34

Those events also pushed the feelings Americanshad about their country—that is, their patriotism—

into the background. We liked the country, but thereweren’t many occasions when expressing that ap-proval seemed to make much sense. But on Septem-ber 11, 2001, when hijacked airliners were crashed byterrorists into the World Trade Center in New York Cityand the Pentagon in Washington, all of that changed.There was an extraordinary outburst of patriotic fer-vor, with flags displayed everywhere, fire and policeheroes widely celebrated, and strong national sup-port for our going to war in Afghanistan to find thekey terrorist, Osama bin Laden, and destroy the tyran-nical Taliban regime that he supported. By Novemberof that year about half of all Americans of both polit-ical parties said that they trusted Washington officialsto do what is right most of the time, the highest levelin many years.

Those who had hoped or predicted that this newlevel of support would last, not ebb and flow, havebeen disappointed. In October 2001, 57 percent ofAmericans (up from just 29 percent in July 2001) saidthey trusted the federal government to do what isright just about always or most of the time. But byMay 2002, only 40 percent expressed such trust in thefederal government, and 57 percent said they trustedWashington only some of the time or never.

Whether during momentary crises or in normalperiods, how much one trusts Washington or gov-ernment in general is affected by underlying atti-tudes toward representative democracy itself as well

Mistrust of Government 87

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How much of the time do you thinkyou can trust the government inWashington to do what is right—just about always, most of the time,or only some of the time?

Q U E S T I O N

Just about alwaysMost of the timeSome of the timeNone of the time

Note: Data not available for 1960 and 1962.

Figure 4.1 Trust in the Federal Government, 1958–2004

Source: University of Michigan, The American National Election Studies.

as by assumptions about whether one can have anyreal influence over what government does. For in-stance, surveys show that most Americans think gov-ernment is run by “a few big interests”and, in turn, thatelected officials pursue “personal interests” and “donot care what people like me think” (see Figure 4.2).

Today America’s democratic political culture ischallenged from within because so many citizens feelthat the political system is unlikely to respond to theirneeds and beliefs. Scholars debate and measure polit-ical efficacy, by which they mean a citizen’s capacityto understand and influence political events. Thissense of efficacy has two parts. One part is internalefficacy, the ability to understand and take part inpolitical affairs. Since the 1950s and 1960s, there hasnot been much dramatic change in the sense of inter-nal efficacy (personal competence). The other part is

external efficacy, the ability tomake the system respond to thecitizenry. Since the mid-1960sthere has been fairly steep andsteady decline in the sense of ex-ternal efficacy (see Figure 4.2).

Though Americans may feelless effective as citizens than theyonce did, their sense of efficacy re-mains much higher than it isamong Europeans. A poll takenin five nations found that the av-erage American scored signifi-cantly higher on the efficacy scalethan the average person in Aus-tria, Germany, Great Britain, orthe Netherlands. Moreover,Amer-

icans were much more likely than Europeans to say thatthey regularly discussed politics, signed petitions, andworked to solve community problems.35 ThoughAmericans are less likely to vote than Europeans, theyare more likely to do the harder chores that make updemocratic politics.

Because Americans are less likely than they oncewere to hold their leaders in high esteem, to have con-fidence in government policies, and to believe thesystem will be responsive to popular wishes, someobservers like to say that Americans today are more“alienated” from politics. Perhaps, but careful studiesof the subject have not yet been able, for example, todemonstrate any relationship between overall levels ofpublic trust in government or confidence in leaders,on the one hand, and the rates at which people comeout to vote, on the other. There is, however, some ev-idence that the less voters trust political institutionsand leaders, the more likely they are to support can-didates from the nonincumbent major party (in two-candidate races) and third-party candidates.36 If thisis so, it helps to explain why the incumbent party haslost, and third parties have strongly contested, five ofthe last ten presidential elections (1968–2004).

Finally, mistrust in government has been linked bysome analysts to wider declines in social and civic en-gagement. Most notably, political scientist Robert D.Putnam has argued that Americans, once a nation ofjoiners, are today increasingly “bowling alone,” social-izing with each other less, and generally doing less withand through religious institutions, charitable organi-zations, political parties, and government at all levels.37

The evidence for this across-the-board civic de-cline, however, is mixed. In 2006, Putnam himself


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Figure 4.2 External Political Efficacy Index, 1952–2004

Source: University of Michigan, The American National Election Studies.

political efficacy Abelief that you cantake part in politics(internal efficacy) orthat the governmentwill respond to thecitizenry (externalefficacy).

internal efficacy Theability to understandand take part inpolitics.

external efficacy Thewillingness of the stateto respond to thecitizenry.

and other experts constructed a “civic health index.”It included and averaged forty different indicators ofcivic health, including memberships in civic groups,online “chat,” trust in other people, connecting tofamily and friends, following the news, and trust ingovernment and other institutions. By this measure,America’s overall civic health declined between 1975and 1999, but rebounded for several years thereafter,and was only a few percentage points lower in 2005than it had been three decades earlier (see Figure 4.3).

★ Political ToleranceDemocratic politics depends crucially on citizens’ be-ing reasonably tolerant of the opinions and actions ofothers. If unpopular speakers were always shouteddown, if government efforts to censor newspaperswere usually met with popular support or even publicindifference, if peaceful demonstrations were regularlybroken up by hostile mobs, if the losing candidates inan election refused to allow their victorious opponentsto take office, then the essential elements of a demo-cratic political culture would be missing, and democ-racy would fail. Democracy does not require perfecttolerance; if it did, the passions of human naturewould make democracy forever impossible. But at aminimum citizens must have a political culture thatallows the discussion of ideas and the selection ofrulers in an atmosphere reasonably free of oppression.

Public opinion surveys show that the overwhelm-ing majority of Americans agree with concepts such

as freedom of speech, majority rule, and the right tocirculate petitions—at least in the abstract.38 But whenwe get down to concrete cases, a good many Ameri-cans are not very tolerant of groups they dislike. Sup-pose you must decide which groups will be permittedto espouse their causes at meetings held in your com-munity’s civic auditorium. Which of these groupswould you allow to run such a meeting?

1. Protestants holding a revival meeting

2. Right-to-life groups opposing abortion

3. People protesting a nuclear power plant

4. Feminists organizing a march for the Equal RightsAmendment

5. Gays organizing for homosexual rights

6. Atheists preaching against God

7. Students organizing a sit-in to shut down city hall

In general, Americans have become a bit more tol-erant and more willing to tolerate communists, peoplewho teach against churches and religions, advocatesof government ownership of industries, and peoplewho think that blacks are genetically inferior.39 Peo-ple are today more likely than in the past to say theyare willing to vote for an otherwise qualified personwho ran for president even if the candidate was aCatholic, a Jew, a woman, a black, or a homosexual.40

One person’s civic intolerance can be another per-son’s heartfelt display of civic concern. Most Ameri-cans believe that serious civic problems are rooted ina breakdown of moral values.41 Correctly or not,

Political Tolerance 89

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eFigure 4.3 The American Civic Health Index, 1975–2002

Source: America’s Civic Health Index: Broken Engagement (Washington, D.C.: National Citizenship Conference andSaguaro Seminar, September 2006), p. 6. Reprinted by permission of the National Conference of Citizenship.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

M E M O R A N D U M

To: Representative Olivia KuoFrom: J. P. Loria, chief of staffSubject: Charitable Choice Expansion

ActSection 104 of the 1996 federal welfarereform law encouraged states to utilize“faith-based organizations” asproviders of federal welfare services.Known as Charitable Choice, the lawprohibits participating organizationsfrom discriminating against beneficiaries onthe basis of religion but permits them to control “the definition, development,practice, and expression” of their religious convictions. The proposed act wouldexpand Charitable Choice to crime prevention and other areas.

Arguments for:

1. Over 90 percent of Americans believe in God, and 80 percent favor governmentfunding for faith-based social programs.

2. Local religious groups are the main nongovernmental providers of social servicesin poor urban neighborhoods. The primary beneficiaries of faith-based programsare needy neighborhood children who are not affiliated with any congregation.

3. So long as the religious organizations serve civic purposes and do not proselytize,the law is constitutional.

Arguments against:

1. Americans are a richly religious people precisely because we have never mixedchurch and state in this way.

2. Community-serving religious groups succeed because over 97 percent of theirfunding is private and they can flexibly respond to people’s needs withoutgovernment or other interference.

3. Constitutional or not, the law threatens to undermine both church and state:Children will have religion slid (if not jammed) down their throats, and religiousleaders will be tempted to compromise their convictions.

Your decision:

Favor expansion �� Oppose expansion ��


Religious Leaders Rally toExpand Federal Funding for“Charitable Choice”August 28 WASHINGTONYesterday an interfaith coalition of religious leaders conducted anall-day prayer vigil on Capitol Hill and called for increased federalfunding for antipoverty programs run by local religious congrega-tions . . .

Summary 91

most citizens worry that the nation is becoming tootolerant of behaviors that harm society, and theyfavor defending common moral standards over pro-tecting individual rights.

Nonetheless, this majority tolerance for manycauses should not blind us to the fact that for most ofus there is some group or cause from which we arewilling to withhold political liberties—even thoughwe endorse those liberties in the abstract.

If most people dislike one or another group stronglyenough to deny it certain political rights that weusually take for granted, how is it that such groups (andsuch rights) survive? The answer, in part, is that mostof us don’t act on our beliefs. We rarely take the trou-ble—or have the chance—to block another personfrom making a speech or teaching school. Some schol-ars have argued that among people who are in a posi-tion to deny other people rights—officeholders andpolitical activists, for example—the level of politicaltolerance is somewhat greater than among the public at large, but that claim has been strongly disputed.42

But another reason may be just as important. Mostof us are ready to deny some group its rights, but weusually can’t agree on which group that should be.Sometimes we can agree, and then the disliked groupmay be in for real trouble. There have been times(1919–1920, and again in the early 1950s) when so-cialists or communists were disliked by most people in

the United States. The government on each occasiontook strong actions against them. Today fewer peopleagree that these left-wing groups are a major domes-tic threat, and so their rights are now more secure.

Finally, the courts are sufficiently insulated frompublic opinion that they can act against majority sen-timents and enforce constitutional protections (seeChapter 16). Most of us are not willing to give allrights to all groups, but most of us are not judges.

These facts should be a sober reminder that polit-ical liberty cannot be taken for granted. Men andwomen are not, it would seem, born with an inclina-tion to live and let live, at least politically, and many—possibly most—never acquire that inclination. Libertymust be learned and protected. Happily the UnitedStates during much of its recent history has not beenconsumed by a revulsion for any one group that has been strong enough to place the group’s rights injeopardy.

Nor should any part of society pretend that it is al-ways more tolerant than another. In the 1950s, for ex-ample, ultraconservatives outside the universities wereattacking the rights of professors to say and teach cer-tain things. In the 1960s and 1970s ultra-liberal stu-dents and professors inside the universities wereattacking the rights of other students and professorsto say certain things.

★ S U M M A R Y ★

The American system of government is supported bya political culture that fosters a sense of civic duty,takes pride in the nation’s constitutional arrange-ments, and provides support for the exercise of es-sential civil liberties (albeit out of indifference ordiversity more than principle at times). In recentdecades mistrust of government officials (though notof the system itself) has increased, and confidence intheir responsiveness to popular feelings has declined.

Although Americans value liberty in both the po-litical system and the economy, they believe equalityis important in the political realm. In economic af-fairs they wish to see equality of opportunity but ac-cept inequality of results.

Not only is our culture generally supportive ofdemocratic rule, it also has certain distinctive fea-tures that make our way of governing different fromwhat one finds in other democracies. Americans are

preoccupied with their rights, and this fact, com-bined with a political system that (as we shall see) en-courages the vigorous exercise of rights and claims,gives to our political life an adversarial style. UnlikeSwedes or Japanese, we do not generally reach politi-cal decisions by consensus, and we often do not deferto the authority of administrative agencies. Americanpolitics, more than that of many other nations, is shotthrough at every stage with protracted conflict.

But as we shall learn in the next chapter, that con-flict is not easily described as always pitting liberalsagainst conservatives. Not only do we have a lot ofconflict, it is often messy conflict, a kind of politicalTower of Babel. Foreign observers sometimes ask howwe stand the confusion. The answer, of course, is thatwe have been doing it for over two hundred years.Maybe our Constitution is two centuries old not inspite of this confusion but because of it. We shall see.


RECONSIDERING WHO GOVERNS?

1. Do Americans trust their government?More than it sometimes appears. Compared tothe 1950s, we are much less likely to think that thegovernment does the right thing or cares what wethink. But when we look at our system of govern-ment—the Constitution and our political cul-ture—we are very pleased with it. Americans aremuch more patriotic than people in many otherdemocracies. And we display a great deal of sup-port for churches in large measure because we aremore religious than most Europeans.

2. Why do we accept great differences in wealth and income?We believe in equality of opportunity and notequality of result. Wealthy people may have morepolitical influence than ordinary folks, but if wethink that they earned their money through theirown efforts and if they follow legal rules, we haveno complaint about their wealth.

RECONSIDERING TO WHAT ENDS?

1. Why does our government behave differentlythan governments in countries with similar constitutions?Our political culture has imbued it with more tol-erance and a greater respect for orderly proce-dures and personal rights than can be found in

nations with constitutions like ours. We are will-ing to let whoever wins an election govern with-out putting up a fuss, and our military does notintervene.

WORLD WIDE WEB RESOURCES

Polling organizations that frequently measure aspectsof political culture:www.roper.comwww.gallup.com

U.S. Census Bureau: www.census.gov

SUGGESTED READINGS

Almond, Gabriel, and Sidney Verba. The Civic Culture. Princeton,N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1963. A survey of the politicalcultures of five nations—the United States, Germany, GreatBritain, Italy, and Mexico—as they were in 1959.

Brooks, Arthur C. Who Really Cares? New York: Basic Books, 2006.Fascinating study of who gives to charities in America and Europe.

Hartz, Louis. The Liberal Tradition in America. New York: Har-court Brace Jovanovich, 1955. A stimulating interpretation ofAmerican political thought since the Founding, emphasizingthe notion of a liberal consensus.

Lipset, Seymour Martin. The First New Nation. Rev. ed. New York:Norton, 1979. How the origins of American society gave riseto the partially competing values of equality and achievementand the ways in which these values shape political institutions.

McClosky, Herbert, and John Zaller. The American Ethos: PublicAttitudes Toward Capitalism and Democracy. Cambridge: Har-vard University Press, 1984. Study of the ways in which Amer-icans evaluate political and economic arrangements.

Nivola, Pietro S., and David W. Brady, eds. Red and Blue Nation?Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2006. Compares thearguments of those who do and do not believe that a culturewar exists.

Nye, Joseph S., Philip D. Zelikow, and David C. King. Why PeopleDon’t Trust Government. Cambridge: Harvard UniversityPress, 1997. An effort to explain distrust.

Putnam, Robert D. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival ofAmerican Community. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000. Animportant argument that American political culture has beenharmed by the decline in membership in organizations thatbring people together for communal activities.

Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. Edited by PhillipsBradley. 2 vols. New York: Knopf, 1951. First published in1835–1840, this was and remains the greatest single interpre-tation of American political culture.

Verba, Sidney, and Gary R. Orren. Equality in America: The Viewfrom the Top. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985. Eliteviews on political and economic equality.

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