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Prominent theories of democracy, both classical and modern, have asserted that democracy requires a distinctive set of cultural values and orientations from its citizens.1 Although most political scientists generally agree that cultural values can have certain impacts on political processes in different societies, they disagree on the following three issues: 1) which particular cultural orientation can influence political processes in different societies.2 Is there an “Asian Culture” that shapes political processes in such societies; 2) what specific cultural orientation influences political process and how do specific orientations exert their influence over the political process,3 and 3) whether culture has independent effects on political processes.4
In this paper, I am trying to provide a preliminary answer to these critical
1
{Almond & Verba 1963 #18}.
2
. (Almond and Verba1989a; Almond and Verba1989b; Inglehart, Ronald. 90a. Culture Shift in
Advanced Industrial Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 90a).; Inglehart, Ronald. 97. Modernization and
Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic, and Political Change in Forty-Three Societies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 97).; Inglehart, Ronald. "The Renaissance of Political Culture." American political science review Vol, 82 No. 4 (88).; Inglehart1977; Putnam2000; Putnam, Robert D. 93. Making Democracy Work: Civic
Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 93).; Gibson, James L."Alternative Measures of
Political Tolerance: Must Tolerance be "Least-Liked"?" American Journal of Political Science Vol. 36 No. 2 (92).;
Gibson, James L. and Duch, Raymond M."Anti-Semitic Attitude of the Mass Public: Estimates and Explanations
Based on a Survey of the Moscow Oblast." Public Opinion Quarterly Vol. 56 No. 1 (92).; Gibson, James L., Duch,
Raymond M., and Tedin, Kent L. "Democratic Values and the transformation of the Soviet Union." Journal of
Politics Vol, 54 No. 2 (92).; Gibson, James L. and Duch, Raymond M. "Emerging Democratic Values in Soviet
Political Culture." In Public Opinion and Regime Change: The New Politics of Post-Soviet Societies, eds. Miller,
Arthur H., Reisinger, William M., and Hesli, Vicki L. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 93) .).
3
Almond and Verba argue that political culture influences democratic consolidation, other scholars believe that political culture can influence democratic transition. Still others believe that political culture influences the way democracy works in different societies.
4
For the argument that the political culture has independent effects on political processes, see (Laitin,
David D. and Wildavsky, Aaron."Political Culture and Political Preferences." The American Political Science
Review Vol. 82 No. 2 (88).; Pye, Lucian W. "Political culture revisited." Political psychology Vol, 12 No. 3 (91).;
Wilson1992; Inglehart, Ronald. "The Renaissance of Political Culture." American political science review Vol, 82
No. 4 (88).). For the critique of cultural theory, see (Jackman, Robert W. and Miller, Ross A. "The Poverty of
Political Culture." American Journal of Political Science Vol, 40 No. 3 (96).; Jackman, Robert W. and Miller, Ross
A. "A Renaissance of Political Culture." American Journal of Political Science Vol, 40 No. 3 (96).).

The study of urban politics has come to focus on urban policy studies rather than on the differentiating characteristics of urban areas themselves. Yet, the urban-rural cleavage is still one of the most profound sources of differentiations in political behavior, not only in the United States, but in other areas of the world.

Cultural Impacts on Political Processes
In this section, I am going to demonstrate how cultural values influence political processes. The first generation of culturalists argued that certain cultural values, such as political interests, knowledge of governmental processes, political efficacy, and trust are important because they facilitate participation. Differences in the distribution of these important values between “traditional” and “modern” societies should be, at least, partially responsible for differences in the level of participation by citizens in different societies. When people in traditional society acquired “democratic orientation,” the level of political participation in that society increase which in turn will press political leaders to further “open the society up.”
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This line of reasoning, it seems to me, is built largely on the institutionalist assumption. It assumes that the behavioral logic for people in different societies is identical. The differences among people in different societies more often lie in whether
16 (Nie, Norman H., Powell, Bingham G. Jr. , and Prewitt, Kenneth. "Social Structure and Political
Participation: Developmental Relationships, Part I." American Political Science Review Vol, 63 No. 2 (69).; Nie,
Norman H., Powell, Bingham G. Jr. , and Prewitt, Kenneth. "Social Structure and Political Participation:
Developmental Relationships, Part II." American Political Science Review Vol, 63 No. 3 (69).). 25 they understand particular governmental processes and whether they are efficacious.
People are characterized either as parochial who are not aware of the impacts of politics on their life, or subjects who do not think they can influence political processes, or citizens who are aware of their own rights and believe they are capable of participating in politics. When parochial and subjects acquire psychological resources to become citizens, the behavioral logic identified by rational choice theorists–to maximize utility--will prompt them to participate in politics.
But such an argument is only partially a cultural one. By assuming the behavioral logic of people in different societies to be identical, scholars fall into the institutional trap. What has been forgotten by the first generation of culturalists is that the behavioral logic for people in different societies may be different and such differences can have significant consequences on various aspects of political life. We agree that institutional change will eventually alter the behavioral logic of people in traditional society, but our analyses presented in the previous section suggests such change does not occur over night with simple changes in institutions.
Specifically, we expect political culture as exemplified by norms influences political processes in the following ways. First, people’s orientation toward authority and collectivism shape their perception of “good government.” Since democratic ideas have become widespread globally after the “third wave” of democratization, every government, even the most authoritarian ones, packages themselves as being a certain form of democracy, we can expect these norms should help shape people’s 26 understanding of democracy. Those who see authority relationships as hierarchical should be more likely to understand democracy in terms of paternalistic care by government of its own citizens, rather than as an institutional arrangement for people to choose government leaders and to supervise their behavior. To them, democracy means government officials soliciting people’s opinion before making decisions and taking their interests into consideration when making decisions with regard to the country. Alternatively, those perceiving proper relationships with authority as reciprocal are more likely to perceive democracy as a procedural arrangement for them to participate in politics and more importantly, as providing citizens with rights to constrain government behavior. For the same reasons, we can expect a similar division between individualistic and collective orientation.
Secondly, we would expect that such norms should influence the intentions of people to get involved in unconventional political action. It is reasonable to argue that a collective and hierarchical orientation may make political actors either give up their own interests for those of certain collective entities or believe it is not proper for them to burden those in power with their private interests. Such orientations, however, do not prevent people from participating in politics. Instead, they establish a threshold that limits the choice of political actors in their private interest articulation. We thus expect that people with these two traditional norms are unlikely to engage in and approve unconventional political actions.
Finally, we expect that tolerance for bad behavior by government varies for people with different psychological orientations. Those perceiving proper relationship 27 with authority as hierarchical and those with a collective orientation should be more likely to tolerate their government than others, even if it is not responsive, nor provides them with good policies or honest officials. In the former case, they are more willing to believe there is a reason behind such bad behavior and the government either will take care of their long term interests and/or will take care of their interests later on. For the latter, although certain policies may jeopardize their interests, they may be willing to give up their private interests for a collective entity rather than withdraw their support of the government. For people with a different orientation, however, the relationship with authority may be perceived as reciprocal–when they delegate power to the government to rule, they expect the government to have an obligation to deliver what they want. If the government fails to deliver, they will withdraw their support. We thus expect such an orientation also influence whether people trust their government in different societies.
Do people’s orientation have any impacts on their understanding of democracy?
To explore this question, I recoded the answer to the question asking the meaning of democracy into two categories. The answers perceiving democracy in terms of paternalism are coded into -1 and the answers perceiving democracy in terms of procedures, participation, and rights into 1. We then added all answers together to create an index. Positive values in the index tells us that people perceive democracy in terms of procedures, participation, and rights. Zero means the answer given by the respondents are mixed.
As is continually argued, a sense of rights of ordinary citizens is at the center of 28 modern democracy. Only when political actors perceive democracy as an institutional arrangement for them to excise their right to choose governmental leaders and/or to participate in the decision making process can we expect democracy in a society to function properly. We thus code the answers which sees democracy as a right as 1 -- all the others, including missing values as zero and use it as another variable that measures people’s understanding of democracy