The Debate about Political Culture

Last year the blog had three posts on this issue – identifying a range of material I needed to get my head around and which is summarised in the table of the previous post. The balance of argument was clearly in favour of those who considered that national political cultures exist. But then, last week, I came across a management thinker (Brendan McSweeney) who disputed this and had, for the past 15 years at least, been conducting a strong critique of the work of Geert Hofstede (1928-2020) who surveyed IBM personnel in various parts of the world in the 1960s and  then started to generalise his findings and suggest certain national characteristics.

Hofstede and his younger Netherlands colleague Frans Trompenaars were the focus of the critique – but not others such as the World Values team whose work has enjoyed a high profile in the last 30 years, or individuals such as Howard Wiarda, Lawrence Harrison or Richard Lewis (although the latter may have been judged to be too pop management to be worthy of critique) 

Time clearly for one of my tables in which I list and summarise the key texts in a particular field. I’ll start with the books which vary tremendously in accessibility – with one 2014 intellectual history standing out as quite exceptional in its comprehensiveness – not just of disciplinary fields but in its summary of popular texts about such nations as the Italians, Japanese, Russians and Spaniards. That is Howard Wiarda’s Political Culture, political science and identity politics – an uneasy alliance which so impressed me that I wanted to have a conversation with him – only to learn that he, very sadly, died in 2015. And other key figures have also passed away recently – Lawrence Harrison also in 2015, Geert Hofstede in 2020 and Ronald Inglehart less than a year ago.

In the spirit of Wiarda’s book, my table includes titles which appealed to both the general reading public and more specialised readers and even includes a few titles which reflect the “zeitgeist” such as Peter Gay and Daniel Rodgers. There are 30 books in the list so I’ll start with the first ten 

Book Title	Takeaway
On Germany; Madame de Stael (1813)	The link gives excerpts from the first of what is a 3 volume analysis of the customs, literature, philosophy and religion of the country as it was at the beginning of the 19th century. That’s a remarkable 1000 pages and more!
Democracy in America; Alexis de Tocqueville (1835)	A book which resonates still - after almost 200 years. Amazing insights
Englishmen, Frenchmen, Spaniards – an exercise in comparative psychology; Salvador de Madariaga (1931)	An early effort in the comparative field
The Chrysanthemum and the Sword Ruth Benedict 1948	Benedict was one of the founders of US anthropology and is one of many Westerners to try to penetrate the Japanese soul
The Authoritarian Personality Theodor Adorno 1950	Adorno moved his Frankfurt school from Nazi Germany to New York and used the surveys the School had done of workers of the period to try to understand how Nazism had taken root
Democracy and Dictatorship – their psychology and patterns of life  Zevedei Barbu 1956	Barbu was Romanian and my political sociology tutor at Glasgow University in the early 1960s. The book has 3 parts – starting with the “democratic personality”; then looking at “the psychology of Nazism” where he has comments on Adorno; and finally “the psychology of communism”
The Civil Culture – political attitudes and democracy in five nations; Almond and Verba (1963)	The first real comparative studies of political culture – by US political scientists
The Italians Luigi Barzini 1965	One of the early best-sellers
Beyond Culture Edward T Hall (1976)	Hall was another US anthropologist but his writing shows great sensitivity and draws on wide reading in other fields
Hidden Differences – doing business with the Japanese Edward and Mildred Hall 1990	A short guidebook to doing business with the Japanese which starts with a summary of the general approach used by Hall

National Traits??

If you really want to upset the “politically correct” mob, bring up the subject of political culture and show that you actually believe that each nation has distinctive cultural traits. It’s become a forbidden subject in such company - which is strange given how far back the concept goes. Because I’ve lived and worked these past 30 years in ten different countries (with 8 years in different parts of Central Asia) I’ve become fascinated by two fundamental questions –

·       Do people in different countries have distinctive and predictable patterns of behaviour?

·       Are the “path-dependent” theorists correct in suggesting that history makes it very difficult for such patterns of behaviour to change? 

We live in a globalised age in which social values have been shifting and becoming more homogeneous and yet the past couple of decades have seen the resurgence of nationalism. Indeed each nation now seems to be divided into two tribes – the “somewheres” and the “anywheres” – depending on the freedom people felt they had to select the professions and locations of their choice.

Last year I did a series of posts on the variety of confusing terms which have cropped up in recent decades which suggest that most of us can be classified into a small number of ways of understanding the world. Some of these are descriptive – simply statements of fact. Others are prescriptive and ideological – ways in which we both understand and act. I’ve selected 5 terms – political culture, national culture, world values and cultural theory. I hope readers find the table useful…. 

Term used	Meaning	Trajectory	Typical referents
“Political Culture”	A term used by political scientists which can be traced to de Tocqueville but whose modern origin is generally attributed to the 1950s and “The Civic Culture” by Gabriel Almond The best intellectual history of the whole debate is Political Culture, political science and identity politics – an uneasy alliance; Howard Wiarda (2014) which looks back over a century of interdisciplinary argument	In the 1940s and 1950s “culture” figured in the work of many American scholars as they tried to understand the challenge of modernisation faced by many societies but was then supplanted by the “rationality” of the economists   with  Culture Matters – how culture shapes social progress (2000) being a seminal work, criticised for really meaning “Western Culture matters”	Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, Edward Banfield, Gabriel Almond, SM Lipset  Lawrence Harrison Samuel Huntington  Howard Wiala  Brendan McSweeney is th arch critic of the school
“National Culture”	An indeterminate term	social psychologist Geert Hofstede started work in the 1960s with IBM on cultural differences – taken up by Frans Trompenaars It also figured in the discussions about “transitology” in the 1990s	Geert Hofstede   Frans Trompenaars
“World values”	Clusters of VALUES eg “traditional”, “modern” and “postmodern” used by technocrats to classify societies   Cultural Evolution – people’s motivations are changing, and reshaping the world ; Ronald Inglehart (2018) this article summarise that work.	This stream of work began in 1981 and resurrected the debate on political culture eg The renaissance of political culture Ronald Inglehart (1988) A World of Three Cultures – honour, achievement and joy; M Basanez (2016) a beautifully-written book by a Mexican academic which seems to have exactly the outsider’s take on the subject I need. And one of the early chapters is a literature review – which has no mention of Wiarda !	political scientists and psychologists particularly Ronald Inglehart
“World views”	collection of quasi- philosophical/religious BELIEFS which seem to give us our respective identities	Series of notes on the subject a very useful overview in 12 pages an excerpt from “World Views – from fragmentation to integration” book. the full book here	Kant Wittgenstein   Jeremy Lent
“Cultural theory”	Otherwise known as “grid-group” theory which suggests that mots of us can be classified into 4-5 worldviews	Anthropologist Mary Douglas first developed the “grid-group” approach in the 1970s which was then taken up by policy analyst Wildavsky and political scientist Thompson	Mary Douglas Aaron Wildavsky Michael Thompson

Cultural Values, cultural theory and Cultural Wars

“Whenever I hear the word “culture” I reach for my gun” is a quip attributed generally to Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s intellectual propaganda chief - although it actually comes from a play produced by a minor Nazi for Hitler’s 44^th birthday. The martial association is understandable given the nature of “political culture”.

The last post left me aware of a confusion in the use of phrases such as worldview, cultural values and world values – and a compulsion to track down the intellectual sources behind the words. This was no easy task since the field is a rich one – inhabited by specialist academics with jargon and a dense writing style. 

Although the post is short, its complexity is reflected in the fact that it’s taken a full day to compose 

And one of my tables has helped clarify my thoughts – although left questions which will require a proper study of the books I’ve been able to find. This, therefore, should be treated as very much a first attempt 

Term used	Meaning	Origin	Typical referents
“Worldviews”	collection of quasi- philosophical/religious BELIEFS which seem to give us our respective identities		Kant Wittgenstein
“Political Culture”	A term used by political scientists which can be traced to de Tocqueville but whose modern origin is generally attributed to the 1950s and Gabriel Almond	In the 1940s and 1950s “culture” figured in the work of many American scholars as they tried to understand the challenge of modernisation faced by many societies but was then supplanted by the “rationality” of the economists Lawrence Harrison and Samuel Huntington took the theme up again in late 1980s – with  Culture Matters – how culture shapes social progress (2000) being a seminal work, criticised for really meaning Western Culture matters	Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, Edward Banfield, Gabriel Almond, SM Lipset     Lawrence Harrison Samuel Huntington
“World values”	Clusters of VALUES eg “traditional”, “modern” and “postmodern” which have been used by technocrats to make various types of social intervention	This stream of work began in 1981	political scientists and psychologists particularly Ronald Inglehart
“Cultural values”	An indeterminate term	social psychologist Geert Hofstede started work in the 1960s with IBM on cultural differences – taken up by Frans Trompenaars It also figured in the discussions about “transitology” in the 1990s	Geert Hofstede Frans Trompenaars
“Cultural theory”	Otherwise known as “grid-group” theory, best summarised here	Anthropologist Mary Douglas first developed the “grid-group” approach which was then taken up by policy analyst Wildavsky and political scientist Thompson	Mary Douglas Aaron Wildavsky Michael Thompson

Key Recommended Reading

-       Cultural Evolution – people’s motivations are changing, and reshaping the world; Ronald Inglehart (2018) One of the clearest statements of the third school

-       A World of Three Cultures – honour, achievement and joy; M Basanez (2016) ) a beautifully-written book by a Mexican academic which seems to have exactly the outsider’s take on the subject I need

-       The Central Liberal Truth – how politics can change a culture and save it from itself; Lawrence Harrison (2006) A very clear analysis from a school rather in disgrace at the moment for its continued belief in western progress

-       Developing Cultures - Essays on Cultural Change Lawrence Harrison and Jerome Kagan (2006)

-       Culture Matters – how culture shapes social progress; ed L Harrison and S Huntington (2000) For my money, this is one of the most interesting books – although some of the authors are no longer considered to be politically correct. At least they feel able to say exactly what they feel!

-       Value Change in Global Perspective P Abramson and R Inglehart (1995)

Mapping values and world views

We need to pay more attention to our mind - and to the different patterns of meaning we create in our efforts to make sense of the world.

In my youth, I was aware of a tripartite division – conservatives, socialists and liberals. Not for me the Manichean approach of insider/outsider or left/right. There was always a third way – be it green or ecological.

 The blog has, of course, had regular posts about cultural values – discussing the work of people such as de Hofstede; Ronald Inglehart; FransTrompenaars; Richard Lewis (of When Cultures Collide fame) and Richard Nesbitt – a body of writing which emphasises the distinctiveness of national values most graphically illustrated in the Inglehart cultural map of the world and best explained in this brochure. It was, of course, multinational companies who funded a lot of this work as they tried to understand how they could weld different nationalities into coherent and effective teams. Those were the days when a body of literature called “path dependency” was raising important questions about how “sticky” cultural values were…viz how difficult national behavioural traits are to change

It was only in 2000, however, that I became aware of the four dimensions of grid-group theory which anthropologist Mary Douglas introduced - consisting of four very different “world views” (what she calls hierarchist, egalitarian, individualist and fatalist) which came to be known as “Cultural Theory”. I came across Mary Douglas’ theory only in 2000, thanks to public admin theorist Chris Hood’s “The Art of the State” which uses her typology brilliantly to help us understand the strengths, weaknesses and risks of these various world views. 

It’s interesting that many people now assume that this exhausts the number of world views. One book-length study compares and contrasts these various models “Way of life theory – the underlying structure of world views, social relations and lifestyles” – a rather disjointed dissertation by Michael Edward Pepperday (2009) an introduction to which is here.

But I’m just learning that I’ve been missing some important perspectives. A Futurist called Andy Hines has just sent me a copy of what is (despite the title) a quite fascinating book he wrote in 2011 - Consumer Shift - how changing values are reshaping the consumer landscape which is actually much more about values and world views than it is about consumers….

This reflects a lot of work which companies had been funding to try to get into the minds of their consumers - but which international charities suddenly realised a decade or so ago could also be used to prise money out of all of us for their (more altruistic) purposes (see below) – a politicisation of which Adam Curtis' documentaries have made us much more aware.

Hines’ book in turn took me to Spiral Dynamics – mastering values, leadership, change; produced by Don Beck and Chris Cowan in 1996 which the link explains was inspired by the work of their teacher - an American psychologist, Clare Graves. Both books have crucial explorations of the very different levels of explanation needed for discussions of behaviour and the values which underpin it. 

And lead into recent books by Jeremy Lent - the earliest of which is “The Patterning Instinct – a cultural history of man’s search for meaning” which 

is filled with details about how the brain works, how patterns of thought arise, how these shared symbols (language, art, religion, science) give rise to cultural metaphors such as “Nature as Machine” and “Conquering Nature,” and how these worldviews in turn lead to historical change. However, different cultures have different metaphors, and it is our culture, according to Lent, western (now global) culture, which is largely to blame for the damaging ways in which our root metaphors have manifested themselves on the planet.

I get the sense that psychologists, sociologists, political scientists and anthropologists have approached the question of cultural values completely separately and at different times - making few attempts to engage one another in discussion? It's such a critical issue that it's time they reached out to one another.....

Further Reading

-       The Web of Meaning; Jeremy Lent (2021) an important follow up to his 2017 book

-       Britain’s Choice – common ground and divisions in 2020s Britain (More in Common 2020) a detailed picture of the british people and their values these days

-       Cultural Evolution – people’s motivations are changing, and reshaping the world ; Ronald Inglehart (2018) Inglehart, a political scientist, has been at the heart of discussion about cultural values for the past 50 years – and the book and this article summarise that work.

-       The Patterning Instinct; Jeremy Lent (2017) how worldviews develop and can change history

-       Grid, group and grade – challenges in operationalising cultural theory for cross-national research (2014) is a very academic article although its comparative diagrams are instructive

-       “A Cultural Theory of Politics” (2011) a short article which shows how the grid-group approach has been used in a range of disciplines

-       Common Cause – the case for working with our cultural values (2010) a useful little manual for charities

-       Finding Frames – new ways to engage the UK public (2010) ditto

-       Wicked Problems and Clumsy Solutions; Keith Grint (2008) a short very useful article by an academic

-       The Geography of Thought – how westerners and asians think differently and why; Ricard Nesbitt (2003) An American social psychologist gives a thought-provoking book

-       Riding the Waves of Culture – understanding cultural diversity in business; Frans Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner (1997) the Dutchman who took on de Hofstede’s mantle

-       When Cultures Collide – leading across cultures; Richard Lewis (1996) The book which introduced us to the field – and gave us marvellous vignettes of the strange habits of almost all countries of the world   

The Fourth Dimension?

It’s strange how our mind operates on single tracks but suddenly makes a connection with an idea that has been travelling on a parallel track.

This past year has seen regular posts about the idea behind the blog’s new title – that writers who work across boundaries (be they cultural or intellectual) tend to think more creatively and to express their ideas more clearly than those stuck in the old silos. I even developed a table of some 20 writers to prove the point.

Completely separately, there have also been regular posts about cultural values – referring to the work of people such as de Hofstede; Ronald Inglehart; FransTrompenaars; Richard Lewis (of When Cultures Collide fame) and Richard Nesbitt.  That body of writing emphasises the distinctiveness of cultural values and is most graphically illustrated in the Inglehart cultural map of the world which is best explained in this brochure. Those were the days when a body of literature called “path dependency” was raising important questions about how “sticky” cultural values were…viz how difficult it is to change national behavioural traits

There is one guy who could have helped me make the connection between these two very separate streams of thinking – and that is the rather neglected figure of Ronnie Lessem. Ronnie who? I hear you asking. I first came across his work in the early 1990s when I bought a copy of “Global Management Principles“ (1989) which impressed me very much. It - 

classifies the management literature (and styles) of the twentieth century using the points of the compass.   North" is traditional rational bureaucracy: "West" celebrates the animality of the frontier spirit: "East" the developmental side of the collectivity; and "South" the metaphysical He then goes on to argue that organisations and individuals also go through such phases. It is undoubtedly the most inter-disciplinary of the management books: and gives very useful vignettes of the writers and their context. 

And utterly original – as you would expect of someone raised in Zimbabwe in southern Africa who then moved to the UK. His work blazed a trail, however, which few have chosen to follow – it’s just too original! His personal style of writing was a bit daring for academia in those days! And his references sometimes too wide – in the opening pages he quotes approvingly the development style of the ultimately-disgraced Bank for Credit and Commerce

In a way, it embodies the thesis-antithesis-synthesis approach beloved by those who refuse to accept the Manichean view of the world and argue instead for “balance” (Giddens; Mintzberg) - except that it adds a fourth dimension! 

Which is my cue for an (overdue) discussion of this issue of World Views. In the 1970s anthropologist Mary Douglas developed what she called the “grid-group” typology, consisting of four very different “world views” – what she calls hierarchist, egalitarian, individualist and fatalist. This came to be known as “Cultural Theory”. I came across Mary Douglas’ theory only in 2000, thanks to public admin theorist Chris Hood’s “The Art of the State” which uses her typology brilliantly to help us understand the strengths, weaknesses and risks of the various world views. 

I am aware of only one book-length study which compares and contrasts these various models “Way of life theory – the underlying structure of world views, social relations and lifestyles” – a rather disjointed dissertation by one, Michael Edward Pepperday (2009) an introduction to which is here. Those wanting to know more can read this post which might encourage them to have a look at this short article “A Cultural Theory of Politics” which shows how the approach has affected a range of disciplines. Grid, group and grade – challenges in operationalising cultural theory for cross-national research (2014) is a longer and, be warned, very academic article although its comparative diagrams are instructive

Lessem Resource

Management development through cultural diversity (1995)

Integral Polity – integrating nature, society, culture and the economy (2015)