Political Culture in Libya

Amal S M Obeidi, Amal Obeidi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136115868
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Few empirical studies of Arab countries have dealt with political culture and political socialisation or focused on people's beliefs, values, and attitudes towards the government or political leaders, mainly because the regimes have been reluctant to allow opinion to be tested. The significance of this book is that it assesses the influence of state ideology on the new generation of Libyans, and examines their political culture.

Chapter One

Political Culture: Theoretical Considerations

In 1979, Elkins and Simeon stated that ‘political culture is one of the most popular and seductive concepts in political science; it is also one of the most controversial and confused.’¹ This reflects the fact that the concept has been employed and debated by many scholars; through their theoretical debates they have created a considerable literature on the subject. The concept has, therefore, survived a significant amount of criticism. ‘What is distinctive about the concept of political culture, is the enduring nature of its appeal in the face of large body of criticism.’² The increasing attention given by scholars to the term in the last few years indicates that the concept has had a ‘renaissance’, as Ronald Inglehart has described it.³ Furthermore, as Almond has said:

the movements that have most actively polemicized against political culture as an explanatory variable (Marxism of various kinds, and rational choice theory) now seem to have run out of steam, appear to be inclined to negotiate settlements, rather than requiring unconditional surrender.⁴

The main focus of the literature on political culture is on three regions: industrial societies, communist societies and East Asian societies. This chapter contains a theoretical review of the literature of political culture in general, but particular attention will be given to political culture in the Arab countries. The first section is devoted to an analysis of the historical development of the concept through a historical review. This part also focuses on definitions of political culture. The second deals with the criticism of the term and its rehabilitation. The third section focuses on the relationship between political culture and political socialisation. The fourth covers the analysis of political culture in Arab countries. Finally, studies of political socialisation in Arab countries will be reviewed.

A HISTORICAL REVIEW OF STUDY OF POLITICAL CULTURE

Historically, the idea of political culture has been around ever since people have written about politics. Scholarly interest in the notion of political culture goes back at least as far as Plato, when he argued in The Republic that:

Governments vary as the dispositions of men vary, and there must be as many of the one as there are of the other. For we can not suppose that states are made of ‘oak and rock’ and not out of the human natures which are in them.⁵

Plato stressed the importance of political culture and discussed what can be termed political socialisation, i.e. political orientations coming about through education and childhood socialisation.⁶ The question of education was picked up by Aristotle in his book Politics. He showed the importance of political culture through his description of the optimum government, which he believed came from a mixed polity. Almond states that

Aristotle's conception of mixed government with a predominant middle class is related to what some of the modern scholars in recent years have characterized as the civic culture in which there is a substantial consensus on the legitimacy of political institutions and the direction and content of public policy, a widespread tolerance of a plurality of interests and belief in their reconcilability, and a widely distributed sense of political competence and mutual trust in the citizenry.⁷

Ideas of political culture were not just debated in the West, but were also found in the Islamic world. Abu-Nasr al-Farabi,⁸ an Arab thinker, in his book ‘Ara’a Ahl al-Madina al-Fadila [the Opinions of the People of the virtuous city], stresses the role of education and the creation of good citizenship through the education process.

Machiavelli also emphasised themes of political culture and political socialisation. He developed notions as to how political leaders should act to promote support and loyalty. Machiavelli ‘instructed the prince on how to act to command the respect and loyalty – although not necessarily the love – of his subjects.’⁹

Rousseau also reflected on the importance of political culture and socialisation processes. He was influenced by Montesquieu, who studied French culture and society through sociological, anthropological and psychological approaches in a bid to explain the national history and political institutions of his time. Rousseau discussed political culture through such terms as morality, custom and opinion.

Another thinker who paid attention to political culture as a core idea was de Tocqueville. In his book Democracy in America, de Tocqueville states that

In order that society should exist and, a fortiori, that a society should prosper, it is necessary that the mind of all the citizens should be rallied and held together by certain predominant ideas; and this cannot be the case unless each of them sometimes draws his opinions from the common source and consents to accept certain matters of belief already formed.¹⁰

As the notion of political culture has always been around, the sudden appearance of the term itself at the end of 1950s and early 1960s needs an explanation. A number of factors account for it. First, Almond suggests that the ‘failure of enlightenment and liberal expectations as they related to political development and political culture set the explanatory problem to which political culture research was a response.’¹¹ Second, the development of social theory in general in the 19th and 20th centuries was crucial in prompting political culture studies. Third, the development of survey research methodology and technology in the period following the Second World War has increased the practical potential for undertaking studies of political culture.

In 1956, Gabriel Almond first introduced the concept of ‘political culture’ as part of his formula for the classification and comparison of political systems. In the early 1960s he, together with Sidney Verba, carried out an empirical study and survey of attitudes in five countries, which was published in their study, The Civic Culture (1963). They defined the concept of political culture as covering the political attitudes and orientations of individuals in relation to the political system: ‘Attitudes towards the political system and its various parts, and attitudes towards the role of the self in the system.’¹² ‘Orientation’ refers to the internalised aspects of objects and relationships. It includes: (i) cognitive orientation, (ii) affective orientation, and (iii) evaluative orientation.¹³ These orientations refer to the knowledge of individuals and their beliefs about the political system, their feeling about the political system, and their judgements of it.¹⁴ In other words, political culture ‘becomes the frequency of different kinds of cognitive, affective, and evaluative orientations toward the political system in general, its input and output aspects, and the self as political actor.’¹⁵ The orientations which Almond and Verba describe become the basis for the three types of political culture, which are: parochial, where individuals have low expectations and awareness of government and are generally not involved; subject, where the individuals are aware of the output of the political system but do not participate in the process of policy decisions; and participant, where individuals are active and involved in the political system as a whole in both the input and output of the system.¹⁶ This analysis shows that Almond and Verba consider political culture and its role as part of the political process.

Some other scholars have reiterated Almond's formulation of political culture. Lucian W. Pye was one of them. For Pye, political culture provides ‘an ordered subjective realm of politics,’ which is found on two levels. ‘For the individual the political culture provides controlling guidelines for effective political behaviour, and for the collectivity it gives a systematic structure of values and rational considerations which ensures coherence in the performance of institutions and organisations.’¹⁷ Political culture then is the product both of collective histories and individual life histories of the political system. It evolves also from conscious learning about politics. As Chilcote states, ‘it gives a behavioural form of analysis to such terms as ideology, national spirit, and values of people.’¹⁸

For Verba political culture as a concept consists of the ‘sy...