Politics, Policy, And Culture

Dennis J Coyle, Richard J Ellis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000307566
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Politik

This new set of original case studies is designed to offer an empirical counterpart to Cultural Theory (Westview, 1990 ), the landmark statement of political culture theory authored by Michael Thompson, Richard Ellis, and Aaron Wildavsky, and to extend and challenge the analysis developed there. Here, the theoretical concepts laid out in that book

Part One
Public Policy

Chapter 1
Ideology, Culture, and Risk Perception

Hank C. Jenkins-Smith and Walter K. Smith

Explanations of attitudes about nuclear policy have placed great emphasis on the role of political ideology¹ and trust in political actors.² The highly polarized political battles over development of the Yucca Mountain high-level radioactive waste repository in Nevada³ and testing at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) transuranic waste facility in New Mexico⁴ serve to underline the importance of ideology and trust as critical factors that constrain nuclear policies.

In this chapter we seek to place the concepts of trust and ideology in a broader political context, which we hope will prove more useful for understanding the dynamics of policy disputes over nuclear facility siting. In part, our dissatisfaction with current explanations stems from the fact that specific variables (e.g., ideology) are often treated as isolated contributors to perceived risk when they may in fact be part of a larger, interactive tapestry of causal relationships. Whom one chooses to trust may well be related to ideological predispositions after all. And what one fears may well be grounded in more general political constructs such as cultural worldview. We are concerned that the primary focus on the particular linkages among trust, ideology, and nuclear policy attitudes may impoverish our understanding of the political nature of attitudes about nuclear risk. We will argue that it is essential to place the issues of trust and fear in the broader context of one’s sense of control over policymaking (or political efficacy) and—more generally—in the context of one’s worldview, or cultural bias.

Using data from a 1991 nationwide telephone survey of citizens from randomly selected households, we present an analysis of the relationships among measures of nuclear risk perception, trust in prominent policy actors, cultural bias, and political efficacy. Our intent is to show how citizens’ judgments about nuclear risk are grounded in an array of factors that characterize their general perceptions of politics. Most prominent among these factors is political culture.

Concepts and Hypotheses

The existing research clearly shows the importance of ideology and trust as factors that shape attitudes about nuclear policies, but relatively little effort has been made to place ideology and trust within a broader framework of individuals’ political characteristics. For example, to what degree might ideology channel trust? Would it be implausible to argue that citizens who identify themselves as extremely liberal have less trust in the major agencies responsible for nuclear weapons or more trust in environmental groups than would those who identify themselves as extremely conservative? If not, the link between attitudes about nuclear policies and trust may be partially a function of political ideology.

At the same time, we question the primary emphasis given to ideology as a determinant of attitudes and risk perceptions in nuclear policy issues.⁵ An alternative line of scholarship has suggested that perceptions of risk, and hence attitudes about nuclear policies, can best be explained by the cultural biases of the groups and individuals involved. Cultural theorists argue that individuals’ assessments of which kinds of risks (e.g., social, economic, or environmental) are most pressing are based on very general values and beliefs—or cultural biases—that justify patterns of social relationships.⁶

One particularly useful variant of cultural theory, as specified by Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky,⁷ can be taken as suggesting that preferences for patterns of social relationships, and the biases that flow from these preferences, will influenee both who is trusted and attitudes toward nuclear policies.⁸ Placement on two dimensions—one reflecting the degree to which individuals define themselves as part of a group (the “group” dimension), and another reflecting perceptions of the appropriate extent and variety of rules governing relations among people (the “grid” dimension)—determines one’s cultural type.

Hierarchs perceive themselves as group members (high group) and accept substantial differentiation among the rules that apply to different members of the group (high grid). This placement predisposes these individuals to trust experts and those in authority, to have faith in (and relatively little fear of) technologies that are sanctioned and managed by experts, and to be chiefly concerned about threats to order and security.

Egalitarians are also high group, but low grid: For these individuals, rule differentiation among group members violates a fundamental principle of equality. For egalitarians, experts and those in positions of authority are suspect, particularly those in large centralized and secretive organizations. These individuals distrust and fear concentrations of power—particularly by those not readily held accountable for their actions. Potentially hazardous technologies and the environmental risks that flow from organizations seen as having concentrated, unaccountable power (such as nuclear utilities or corporations) are singled out as particular threats.

Individualists are low grid and low group, perceiving themselves to be involved in bidding and bargaining with other individuals to transact their own terms for social relations. Intrusions upon such individual transactions (such as the regulation of private business or imposition of standards of “political correctness” within organizations) are perceived as threats to individuals’ abilities to make their own way in life. Such intrusions are seen as one of the chief risks confronting society.

Finally, fatalists are individuals who are low group (they tend to see themselves as excluded outsiders) and high grid (their world is shot through with social distinctions). As the name fatalist implies, these individuals tend to see the occur-rence of events and their outcomes as arbitrary and beyond their control; the world might produce a cornucopia of wealth, health, and safety, but it might just as readily produce disaster. Fatalists see themselves as having little ability to shape such outcomes.

According to this formulation of cultural theory, an egalitarian might hold a particularly negative view of the nuclear industry (and those who support it) because nuclear technologies are seen to be the outgrowth of large corporations and central governments—both of which are held by egalitarians to be exemplars of unresponsive and concentrated power. Both those who operate and regulate nuclear facilities are likely to be distrusted. At the other extreme, a hierarch would likely find nuclear facilities to be far less salient and fearsome (because they have faith in the experts that run and regulate them). Cultural theorists would therefore argue that hierarchs will have greater trust in those who operate and regulate nuclear facilities than would those of an egalitarian stripe. Thus the link between attitudes toward the nuclear industry and trust may be driven by a third variable— culture.

Furthermore, both trust in political actors and cultural biases are likely to be associated with individuals’ sense of “political efficacy”—that is, their belief that (1) they can understand and participate in the political process and that (2) the politicai system will respond.⁹ A deep sense of political inefficacy may well spill over into distrust of the actors involved in nuclear policy. Distrust, in turn, may operate in several distinct ways to affect more specific policy beliefs and positions. First, distrust of those policy elites who act as “reference groups” within key policy areas may lead to rejection of the substantive claims and policy positions taken by that group. Second, distrust of elites or organizations that are charged with implementing policies may generate opposition to those policies due to the perception that those who run the organizations are nefarious or incompetent. Thus a systemwide inefficacy may be conflated with more specific distrust in those groups and elites who are prominently engaged in nuclear policy debates.

Beyond its implications for trust, the link between efficacy and cultural bias may be of considerable import. In particular, political efficacy concerns how individuals understand the workings of the political process and may thereby influenee the ways in which centralized, high-technology policies are perceived. Less “internally efficacious” individuals (i.e., those who believe that they cannot understand and effectively participate in the political process) may be more deferential to, and willing to rely upon, hierarchical, centralized systems in which they can have less direct policy influence and may therefore have more faith in the poiicy outcomes of those systems. Thus we would expect those who are less internally efficacious to be more likely to share the hierarch’s cultural biases. Less “externally efficacious” individuals (i.e., those who sense that existing political structures are unlikely to respond to their wants and needs) may have less faith in the policy outcomes of centralized, hierarchical systems and may therefore be more fearful of policies that emanate from such systems. In this case, we would expect those with a low sense of external efficacy to share the cultural biases of the egalitarian.¹⁰

These considerations guide our specific hypotheses. We will begin by retesting the standard hypotheses that perceptions of political risks are related to ideology and trust. Specifically, we hypothesize that

• H₁: Those respondents who classify themselves as political liberals will tend to perceive greater risk, and those who identify themselves as more conservative will perceive less risk.
• H₂: The greater the trust in environmental interest groups, the more likely it is that the respondent will take a position on risk advocated by that group (greater perceived risk of things nuclear).
• H₃: The greater the trust in organizations responsible for implementation of nuclear policy (the Nuclear Regulatory Commission [NRC] and the nuclear industry), the less the perceived risk of things nuclear.

Next, we will test hypotheses regarding the relationships between cultural biases and risk perception. We hypothesize that

• H₄: Respondents who lean more toward egalitarian cultural biases will tend to perceive greater nuclear risks than will those who lean toward hierarchical or individualistic cultural biases.

Regarding political efficacy, we hypothesize an indirect link, via cultural bias, in which political efficacy is associated with a particular cultural bias that, in turn, influences the perceived risks of nuclear policies (via H₄). In essence, we expect individuals with less internal efficacy (all other things being equal) to be more deferential and reliant on extant political and social structures and hence to be more inclined toward hierarchical cultural biases. Those who are less externally efficacious, in contrast, will be less willing to accept the outcomes of existing social and political structures and will be inclined more toward egalitarian cultural biases. Therefore we hypothesize that

• H₅: The lower the level of external political efficacy, the greater the tendency toward egalitarian cultural biases.
• H₆: The lower the level of internal political efficacy, the greater the tendency toward hierarchical cultural biases.

Finally, we hypothesize that levels of trust in prominent policy elites will be influenced by external political efficacy, ideology, and cultural bias. All other things being equal, those who believe that they can influence the actions of policy elites are more likely to trust them. Those of a politically conservative bent will be less likely to trust environmentalists and more likely to trust the NRC and the nuclear industry. And—for reasons discussed previously—those who share the egalitari־ an’s cultural predispositions are more likely to trust environmental groups, and hierarchists are more likely to trust the NRC and the nuclear industry. Trust, in turn, will affect perceived risks (via H₂ and H₃). Specifically,

• H₇: The greater the level of external efficacy, the greater the level of trust in all policy elites.
• H₈: The more politically conservative the respondent, the greater the trust in those charged with implementing nuclear policies.
• H₉: The more politically liberal the respondent, the greater the trust in national environmental groups.
• H₁₀: The greater the tendency toward the hierarch’s cultura...