1

POLITICAL CULTURE, POLITICAL

STRUCTURE AND POLITICAL
CHANGE (1971)

In The Civic Culture, perhaps the best known study of political culture, Almond
and Verba say that ‘the relationship between political culture and political structure
[is] one of the most significant researchable aspects of the problem of political
stability and change’ (1965: 33). I want to look at the way this relationship has
been treated in one particular area, an area very relevant to questions of political
stability and change in our own society; that is, in studies of political participation
and apathy, especially research into the sense of political efficacy or competence.
This is the area with which The Civic Culture itself is largely concerned, and it is
now well established that individuals low in a sense of political efficacy tend to be
apathetic about politics; indeed, Almond and Verba consider the sense of efficacy or
competence to be a ‘key political attitude’ (1965: 207).
The major claim made for the usefulness of the concept of political culture is,
in the words of The Civic Culture, that it provides ‘the connecting link between
micro and macropolitics’ (1965: 32). Similarly, Pye states that ‘it is the problem
of aggregation – which involves the adding up of the discoveries of individual
psychology in such a manner as to make community-wide behaviour understandable
in the light of individual actions –…for which the concept of political culture holds
such great promise’ (1965: 9). In discussions of political participation, the use of the
concept of political culture has not fulfilled this promise. Attention has remained
almost entirely focused at the level of individual psychology. Furthermore, that
political participation does pose a problem of ‘community-wide behaviour’ has
hardly been recognized.
The problem is that of the social pattern of political participation, and the social
distribution of a low, and high sense, of political efficacy. Empirical studies show
that aspects of our own political culture, such as a low sense of political efficacy,
that are related to low rates of political participation, tend to be concentrated (like
apathy itself) among individuals from a low SES background.1 A relatively random
4 Carole Pateman

distribution of different levels of the sense of efficacy would be unremarkable but

the existing pattern, on the face of it, does call for some attempt to be made at an
explanation. Yet in most recent work on democracy and participation no such
attempt is made; in fact it is argued that the existing pattern of political participation
and apathy must be taken as the starting point for discussions of democracy. It is
claimed that if we are to talk realistically about democracy then we must accept that
the ordinary citizen is unlikely to become more interested or active in political
affairs than he is at present.2
To argue that we must take the existing social pattern of political participation
as unchangeable or given is to say that we must take the existing political culture,
or at least part of it, as given, and this leads to a one-sided view of the relationship
between political culture and political structure. In his article on ‘Political Culture’
in the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (1968), Pye states that ‘if the
concept of political culture is to be effectively utilized, it needs to be supplemented
with structural analysis, but the difficulty is that political structures can be seen on
the one hand as products reflecting the political culture, while on the other hand
they are also “givens” which shape the political culture’. It is this second aspect of
the relationship that has been neglected in recent discussions. Attention has been
focused on the way in which the political structure reflects the existing political
culture as, for instance, in the various, and now familiar, discussions of the contribu-
tion to the maintenance of a stable democratic structure made by those aspects of
our own political culture related to political apathy and disinterest. If it is assumed
that the social pattern of political participation, and the culture that underlies this
pattern, cannot be significantly changed, then there is no point in looking at the
neglected side of the political culture/structure relationship; the features of the
culture in question have already been assumed to be incapable of being ‘shaped’ in
a more participatory direction.
Several factors have contributed to this conclusion about the pattern of Anglo-
American political participation and political culture, including the tendency for
researchers into political socialization to concentrate on childhood socialization
and an implicit evaluative assumption, in many discussions, about the way in which
the existing system does work. Both these aspects will be discussed later. Also
important is a lack of clarity in the use of the concept of political culture itself.
The multi-dimensional nature of the concept is often obscured because attention
is focused on one of its components, the psychological, at the expense of another
element that would raise the question of the significance of the neglected side of
the political culture/structure relationship.
The concept of political culture is used to cover an extremely wide range of
political phenomena.3 However, it is typically summed up along the lines suggested
by Dawson and Prewitt (1969): ‘Political culture, conceptualized roughly, is the
pattern of distribution of orientations members of a political community have
towards politics’ (1969: 27). These writers do not define ‘orientations’ but it is
clear that they are using it to cover all the ways in which the individual can regard
politics, that is to refer to ‘all the perceptions (cognitions, knowledge), affects
 Political culture, structure and change (1971) 5

(feelings and attitudes), and evaluations (values and norms) through which a person
relates himself to social objects’ (Easton and Dennis 1969: 5). An investigation
of a political culture, therefore, will include the three sides of the individual
citizen’s relationship to politics: his value perspective; any relevant personality or
psychological factors; and cognitive aspects, i.e. his knowledge and beliefs about his
own political structure and the way it operates. Thus if all three aspects of a political
culture were considered the neglected side of the relationship between political
culture and political structure could not be avoided. The cognitive element
contains a built-in reference to the impact of political structure on political culture.
One reason that this connection is often overlooked is that the term ‘orienta-
tions’ is also used more narrowly to refer to the psychological aspect of the political
culture. This is how, following Parsons, it is used in The Civic Culture (although,
notwithstanding their definitions, Almond and Verba attempt to stretch the term
to cover all three aspects). It is worth looking more closely at the definitions in
The Civic Culture and, briefly, at what Parsons has to say about culture because the
Parsonian framework remains focused at the micro level and has nothing to say
about the problem of the relationship between culture and structure; indeed, it
eliminates any such problem.
Gabriel Almond is usually credited with introducing the notion of political
culture to the study of politics in his essay on Comparative Political Systems, published
in 1956, and most recent discussions refer one back to that source. In that essay
Almond says that Parsons has provided the basis for his approach and he defines
political culture as ‘patterns of orientation to political action’, and orientations as
‘attitudes towards politics’ (Almond 1956: 396). In The Civic Culture Almond and
Verba state that they are using the concept of culture in the sense of ‘psychological
orientation toward social objects’ (my emphasis) and that orientation ‘refers to the
internalized aspects of objects and relationships’; political culture then refers to ‘the
political system as internalized in the cognitions, feelings, and evaluations of its
population’ (Almond and Verba 1965: 13–14).4 However, they do not make clear
why orientations should be defined as ‘psychological’ and ‘internalized’ when part
of what is covered by the notion is cognitive factors, i.e. beliefs and knowledge
about the political system. What does ‘internalized’ mean in such a context? It
becomes clear a few pages later, during Almond and Verba’s discussion of their
typology of political cultures, the parochial, the subject, and the participant, that
essentially all that is meant by ‘internalized’ is that the individual ‘understands’ or is
‘aware’ that he is a member of a political system with a central political authority,
and that he has some knowledge of, and feelings about, that authority. It is this that
is lacking in the parochial political culture (Almond and Verba 1965: 16ff).
These muddles in the Almond and Verba definition of political culture illustrate
some of the difficulties of attempting to use Parsons’ conceptual framework to talk
about political culture; difficulties that do not generally seem to be appreciated by
the writers who so frequently refer to him and so, presumably, regard his work as
helpful. Parsons has a good deal to say about culture and socialization but it is odd
that his work is rarely discussed in writings about political culture.5
6 Carole Pateman

Orientation is an extremely important concept in Parsons’ theory and he says

that it is ‘a structural concept and designates a relatively stable aspect of a system’
(Parsons 1961: 337). Action has an orientation ‘when it is guided by the meaning
which the actor attaches to it’ (Parsons and Shills 1951: 4). The orientation of the
actor ‘concerns the “how” of his relation to the object world, the patterns or ways in
which his relations to it are organized’ (Parsons 1951: 7). How does the actor obtain,
or come to have, the orientation that he has? The answer that Parsons gives to this
question is that it is a result of socialization, of the internalization of culture; more
specifically, of normative culture because it is, says Parsons, ‘inherent in an action
system that action is…“normatively oriented”’ (1951: 36).
Culture, or the cultural system, of which political culture is a sub-system, plays
a crucial role in the Parsonian framework; it is from culture that the ‘order’ in
the system derives. The cultural system is concerned with ‘patterns of meaning’
(Parsons, Shills, Naegele and Pitts 1961: 34) and it is not precisely analogous to
the social or personality systems in that it has, as it were, a dual status. Parsons says
that cultural patterns can be both ‘an object of orientation’ and an ‘element in the
orientation of action’ and can be ‘transferred’ from being an object to become an
element in orientation (Parsons and Shills 1951: 6–7, 67). This transference can be
illustrated by the dyadic model. If a stable pattern of interaction is to be maintained
between ego and alter then they must have mutual (normative) expectations about
each other’s behaviour and their situation must have a common normative meaning
or definition for them both. That is to say, the expectations, the culture or patterns
of meaning, must not be merely ‘an object of orientation’ for ego and alter but they
must both have internalized it to become ‘an element in the orientation of action’,
part of their motivation, their psychologies. ‘What was once an object becomes a
constitutive part of the actor…it is part of his personality’ (Parsons and Shills 1951: 8).
Thus the concept of orientation in Parsons’ theory is essentially psychological, and
Black, in his well-known critique of Parsons, paraphrases orientations as ‘acquired
predispositions to respond in certain ways to given stimuli’ (Black 1961: 272).
Parsons stresses that although the social and cultural systems are analytically dis-
tinct they are also, and this is a central feature of systems of action, ‘interpenetrating’
(Parsons et al. 1961: 990). This interpenetration has just been described: it is the
internalization (in the personality system) of normative culture that gives rise to
and ‘controls’, or institutionalizes, stable patterns of interaction – or social structures.
Parsons places great emphasis on the fact that ‘a fundamental proposition about the
structure of action systems [is]…that their structure as treated within the frame of
reference of action consists in institutionalized patterns of normative culture’ (Par-
sons et al. 1961: 36; Parsons’ emphasis). Thus if the notions of orientation and inter-
nalization are used in their Parsonian sense, there is no question of a problematical
relationship between culture and structure; culture, in one of its aspects, is structure.
If the Parsonian framework is to be used to discuss political culture and struc-
ture, the political structure has therefore to be seen as a structure of shared political
values (or shared, internalized, normative culture) that defines their political situa-
tion, and underwrites the collective (political) goals, for the members of the polity.
 Political culture, structure and change (1971) 7

Political power can then be seen in consensual terms as a ‘generalized capacity’ for
achieving these collective goals through the exercise of decision making by the
occupants of leadership (authority) positions (Parsons 1967). Since Almond and
Verba wish to ‘avoid the assumption of congruence between political culture and
political structure’ (Almond and Verba 1965: 32–33) their references to Parsons
and their definitions of ‘orientations’ and ‘political culture’ are particularly mislead-
ing; their approach presupposes that a viewpoint other than the Parsonian one is
taken. That is, that the individual’s political behaviour is seen as deriving from more
than the internalization of (shared) values and norms, from more than psychologi-
cal factors. One aspect which must be considered is the influence of the impact
upon the individual of the political structure itself, a political structure seen in
terms of a structure of power and authority that is, at least sometimes, exercised
non-consensually and which places an external constraint on the individual and
influences his behaviour and attitudes, i.e. which helps ‘shape’ the political culture.
Almond and Verba also differ from Parsons over the relative importance for
political behaviour of childhood and adult socialization. Although Parsons states
that learning continues throughout life much of his attention has been focused
on childhood socialization within the family, and he argues that the major value
orientation patterns, including presumably the political orientations, are laid down
in childhood. These form the core of the basic structure of personality and ‘are not
on a large scale subject to drastic alteration during adult life’ (Parsons 1951: 203,
208). Adult ego and alter have, so to speak, the process of internalization largely
behind them.
This aspect of the Parsonian framework has important consequences for ques-
tions of political change. For Parsons all questions about political structure boil
down to questions about individual psychology, or at least to questions about the
childhood socialization process through which internalization occurs. The only
problematical element is internalization; a change in political structure is a change
in the socialization process, a change in individual psychology. Parsons states that
‘institutionalization is embedded in the non-rational layers of motivational organi-
zation. It is not accessible to change simply through the presentation to an actor of
rational advantages in the external definition of the situation’ (Parsons et al. 1961:
74–75). In the political sphere any citizens with ‘non-consensual’ attitudes are
regarded as cases of faulty or incomplete internalization. Parsons says that ‘the pri-
mary function of superior authority is clearly to define the situation for the lower
echelons of the collectivity. The problem of overcoming opposition in the form of
dispositions to noncompliance then arises from the incomplete institutionalization
of the power of the higher authority holder’ (my emphasis) (Parsons 1967: 318).
Again, as Giddens has pointed out, when Parsons talks of ‘power deflation’, i.e. a
progressive loss of confidence in political leaders, he ‘conceives the process as basi-
cally a psychological one’ (Giddens 1968: 266).
Most recent writers on political socialization, like Parsons, state that socialization
is a process continuing throughout life, but the tendency has been for the emphasis
to be placed on the earlier years. Dawson and Prewitt, for example, state that
8 Carole Pateman

‘new orientations are acquired, but in most instances they occur within bounds
established by the deep and persistent orientations acquired during childhood’
and they suggest that the adult is unlikely to alter the more ‘basic’ orientations
such as ‘his conception of the legitimate means of selecting political rulers, or
broad ideological goals’ (Dawson and Prewitt 1969: 56). The important point is
that an interpretation of adult political behaviour basically in terms of childhood
socialization (irrespective of definitions of orientation or political culture) will
be a largely psychological interpretation. Moreover, since patterns of childhood
socialization are not easy to influence, this approach tends to support the claim
that it is not feasible to change the existing pattern of political participation. Nor
does this approach offer much help towards an explanation of the existing pattern
of participation. Even if individuals having a low or high sense of political efficacy
have been socialized differently as children this does not explain why parents
from different SES backgrounds should typically adopt such divergent methods of
socialization. I shall return to this point, but next I shall discuss an example of the
‘psychological’ approach specifically concerned with the sense of political efficacy.
A paper by Easton and Dennis provides an interesting example of the way in
which concentration on childhood socialization obscures a possible explanation
for the political apathy and disinterest of the majority of ordinary citizens, an
explanation in terms of the impact of the political structure on the individual.
Easton and Dennis are concerned with the norm of political efficacy, a norm which
involves that in a democracy citizens should be politically active and leaders should
be responsive to citizens’ demands. They argue that the early ‘internalization’ of
this norm of political efficacy is crucial for adult political behaviour, because it
provides a reservoir of ‘diffuse support’ for the political system. That is, it may
offset adult experiences that ‘undermine the political importance of the ordinary
member’ of the polity; childhood socialization helps ‘contain’ the ‘frustration’ that
adult citizens might feel both ‘in normal times, when members may feel that their
capacity to manipulate the political environment is not living up to their expectations,
and in special periods of stress, when popular participation may appear to be pure
illusion or when political outputs fail to measure up to insistent demands’ (Easton
and Dennis 1967: 38). But Easton and Dennis offer no convincing arguments
to show that this is what does happen. Given the postulated motivation, it seems
far more plausible that if the adult citizen finds his political expectations are
continually frustrated and that ‘insistent demands’ fail to meet with any worthwhile
result, then either of two things is likely to happen. Either he will demand that
the political environment is changed so that participation ceases to be ‘pure
illusion’, or he will give up trying to influence the political process and lapse into
apathy.6
If the second alternative is adopted then there is a simple and straightforward
explanation for the low rates of political participation of ordinary citizens. Given
their experiences of, and perception of the operation of the political structure, apathy
is a realistic response, it does not seem worthwhile to participate. This explanation,
it should be noted, is in terms of adult, not childhood experiences, and in terms of
 Political culture, structure and change (1971) 9

cognitive, not psychological factors. Additional support for this suggestion can be
derived from an examination of the pattern of replies of respondents from different
SES backgrounds to the statements that make up the political efficacy scale. So far,
the concept of political efficacy has been taken as fairly unproblematical, but, as
with the concept of political culture itself, recent discussions have overlooked that
political efficacy is a multidimensional concept and attention has been concentrated
on its psychological component.
A scale to measure the individual’s sense of political efficacy was first devised by
Campbell, Gurin and Miller in the early 1950s. They described the sense of efficacy
as ‘the feeling that individual political action does have, or can have, an impact on
the political process, i.e. that it is worthwhile to perform one’s civic duties. It is the
feeling that political and social change is possible, and that the individual citizen
can play a part in bringing about this change’ (Campbell et al. 1954: 187). Almond
and Verba’s definition of ‘subjective competence’ in The Civic Culture is similar.
They say that the political influence of a group or individual is ‘the degree to which
government officials act to benefit that group or individual because the officials
believe that they will risk some deprivation…if they do not so act’. If an individual
‘believes he can exert such influence, we shall view him as subjectively competent’
(Almond and Verba 1965: 136–37). Campbell et al. have also suggested that a more
general personality or psychological trait lies behind the sense of political efficacy
or competence, namely ‘ego strength’, a ‘sense of personal effectiveness’, or a ‘sense
of control or mastery over the environment’ (Campbell et al. 1960: 516–18). The
sense of personal effectiveness and the sense of political efficacy have been found
to be correlated. In Political Life, Lane’s definition of political efficacy combines
both these aspects; ‘it has…two components – the image of the self and the image
of democratic government. – and contains the tacit implication that an image of
the self as effective is intimately related to the image of democratic government as
responsive to the people’ (Lane 1959: 149). However, we have already seen that
Easton and Dennis also distinguish a third aspect of political efficacy, namely a
norm of efficacy. So, like political culture, the concept of a sense of political effi-
cacy involves three dimensions: the evaluative or normative, the psychological (the
feeling of personal effectiveness, or ego strength), and the cognitive (knowledge
and belief about the operation of the democratic political structure).
The original political efficacy scale, which more recent investigations follow
closely, contained these statements:

1. I don’t think public officials care much what people like me think.
2. The way people vote is the main thing that decides how things are run in this
country.
3. Voting is the only way people like me can have any say about how the
government runs things.
4. People like me don’t have any say about what the government does.
5. Sometimes politics and government seems so complicated that people like me
can’t really understand what’s going on (Campbell et al. 1954: 187–88).7
10 Carole Pateman

On the face of it a reasonable interpretation of the replies to these statements is that

they indicate how the individual citizen perceives his political environment. The
differential scores obtained by respondents from low and high SES backgrounds
(those from higher SES backgrounds tending to obtain the highest scores) would
indicate that they differ in the extent to which they regard the government as
responsive to their demands and needs. Thus, if the ordinary citizen from a
lower SES background regards the political structure as unresponsive, one arrives
at the explanation for his apathy suggested earlier: apathy is a realistic response,
participation is seen as pointless. There is other evidence to show that individuals
from different SES backgrounds do differ in this way in their perceptions of the
political structure.8 Why then has this fairly obvious interpretation of the social
pattern of political participation been overlooked?
Among the features that, I claimed earlier, contributed to the one-sided view
of the political culture/structure relationship was an evaluative assumption about
the way in which the existing democratic political structure does in fact oper-
ate. This assumption is precisely that the system is responsive to the demands and
needs of all citizens. That this is an evaluative assumption can be seen, for example,
from Prewitt’s examination of the claim of many recent theorists of democracy
that elected leaders are in fact accountable to the ordinary citizen (the concept
of accountability embodying much the same notions about the operations of the
system as responsiveness). Prewitt argues that the notion that elections legitimize
leaders has been ‘converted into a statement about the process which holds them
accountable’. He shows that the assumption of accountability is often unjustified
in city government, and to a lesser extent at higher levels in the USA because of
the prevalence of volunteerism, i.e. a situation where ‘both the choosers and the
chosen come to think of movement into and out of political office as being regu-
lated by self-selection and self-eliminating patterns rather than electoral challenge’.
He comments that volunteerism might be connected to ‘political disillusionment’
among the electorate (Prewitt 1970).9
The assumption enters into arguments about the sense of political efficacy
and participation in two ways. It is assumed that it is, in principle, worthwhile for
all citizens to participate, and it is also assumed that for the majority of ordinary
citizens such activity is only rarely required, that it is realistic and rational for them
to be apathetic and disinterested most of the time. To look at this first assumption
slightly differently: that the results of investigations showing the social distribution of
a low and high sense of efficacy have been used to support the arguments of
recent writers on participation and apathy, depends upon the assumption that
the replies of individuals from higher SES backgrounds to the political efficacy
scale accurately reflect the realities of the political structure. Conflicting replies can
thus only be implicitly interpreted as telling us something about the respondents’
psychology.
An illustration of how such an implicit evaluative assumption can influence
arguments about political efficacy is provided in the recent study by Langton on
Political Socialisation. Langton suggests that a developed sense of political efficacy
 Political culture, structure and change (1971) 11

arises from the individual’s participation in a politicized group or social environment.

‘In the family, for example, this may come about through the child’s internalization
of the politicized parental role, or by a more indirect means. In the latter case the
politicized group environment may inspire a process which translates ego strength
into political efficacy, i.e. it makes ego politically relevant’ (Langton 1969: 143).
What Langton does not explain is how the ‘translation’ is made from ego strength,
a psychological feeling of effectiveness, to political efficacy, a belief that one can
make an impact on political affairs. Interaction in a ‘politicized’ environment might
lead one to believe that the existing political structure gives little or no scope for
the ordinary citizen to influence political affairs; one may come to believe that
ego is politically irrelevant, even though one may feel (psychologically) effective
in everyday affairs. That is, the argument is only convincing on the implicit
assumption that the political structure is such that participation is worthwhile. But
once the assumption is made then apathy can appear to derive solely from a feature
of the individual’s psychological make-up.
A similar argument can be found in The Civic Culture, together with another
explanation for apathy which provides an example of the second of the two uses of
the evaluative assumption. The first of Almond and Verba’s arguments arises from
their investigation of the political socialization process that produces a developed
sense of political efficacy. They found that it is opportunities to participate within
the authority structures of different social spheres, the home, the school, the work-
place, that is of crucial importance. They also found that socialization in the work-
place is the most important of all, i.e. that it is adult socialization that is vital for the
development of a high sense of political efficacy. They argue that the individual
will generalize from his experiences within the authority structures of areas like the
workplace to the political sphere. If the individual has the chance to participate, to
exercise influence over decisions, at work then he will see the political sphere as
offering similar opportunities (Almond and Verba 1965: 271–73, 294–99, Tables
XI. 6–8).10 However, in the discussion in the final chapter of The Civic Culture
the assumption is that the existing democratic political structure is responsive to
citizens’ demands, that citizens can influence political decisions. An implicit expla-
nation for apathy, therefore, is that apathetic citizens are making an erroneous
generalization from their experiences in the workplace onto the political sphere.
Almond and Verba’s alternative explanation of the apathy of the ordinary citizen
is that it is a realistic response to his political environment. They argue that given
the complexity of political affairs and the difficulties of obtaining information, then
it is irrational for the average citizen to use his time and energy taking a keen and
active interest in politics (Almond and Verba 1965: 340).11 The assumption is that
even without active participation the individual’s interests will be secured; the fact
that the individual could participate is assumed to be enough to keep democratic
leaders responsive. But respondents’ replies to Almond and Verba’s subjective
competence scale follow the same pattern as replies to other efficacy scales, so it
is reasonable to conclude that many of their respondents do not agree with their
assumption about the responsiveness of the existing political structure.12
12 Carole Pateman

The conclusion of studies of the aspects of the Anglo-American political culture

relevant to the sense of political efficacy, and so to political participation, is that
change is neither required nor feasible. Or, rather more accurately, because it is
assumed that the existing political structure is responsive to citizen’s needs and
demands and that the only real task is to see how the existing political culture
contributes to or detracts from the stability of that structure, we are confronted
with a premise rather than a conclusion. It is assumed that questions about
radical changes in political culture are relevant to the modernizing or developing
countries, not to our own; consider the question posed by Almond and Yerba
of what kind of political culture it is that ‘fits’ a democratic political structure
(Almond and Verba 1965: 337, 360). Given that they assume that we do have
a stable, successful, democratic structure, their answer is hardly surprising, that
it is our own ‘civic culture’ that provides the best ‘fit’. What is problematical is
whether the modernizing countries, where Almond and Verba see a ‘participation
explosion’ occurring, will also develop this culture (Almond and Verba 1965: 2).
The ironical aspect of all this is that the writers on political efficacy and partici-
pation, due to their own assumptions and approach, have been taken completely
unawares by the demands for a ‘participation explosion’ within their own poli-
ties. Not only have their arguments failed to recognize or explain the problem
of the existing social pattern of participation, but nor do they give any hint that
there would be demands for an increase in participation in various social spheres.
The other side of this failure is that the concepts of political culture and the sense
of political efficacy have not been properly recognized as multidimensional. The
gap between the largely psychological arguments used at the micro level and the
‘community-wide’ or macro level political behaviour and attitudes can only be
bridged if the three aspects of the sense of political efficacy are treated not as sepa-
rate, or separable, but as three components of a complex whole.
From this perspective the evidence of The Civic Culture can be reinterpreted.
The replies to Almond and Verba’s subjective competence scale are tapping the
cognitive element of the sense of political efficacy. What the evidence on the
socialization process in the family, school and workplace reveals is, I suggest,
the psychological element, ego strength or the sense of personal effectiveness. As
already stated these two aspects have been found to be correlated; both must enter
into any explanation of the social pattern of participation. An outline for such an
explanation could run as follows.
The result of the socialization process for the individual from a lower SES back-
ground, especially socialization through the authority structure of the workplace,
is such that, typically, he feels ineffective in his dealings with the world; thus he
tends not to participate in political affairs. This feeling of ineffectiveness no doubt
contributes to a view of the political structure as unresponsive, but the ordinary
citizen’s experiences and observations of that structure lead him to conclude that
participation would be pointless. This, in turn, reinforces the feeling of ineffective-
ness and so on. In other words, political culture and political structure are mutu-
ally interdependent and reinforcing. This is not, of course, a particularly original
 Political culture, structure and change (1971) 13

observation, but it is something, despite Pye’s remark quoted earlier, that tends to
be forgotten in discussions of participation and apathy.
The relationship between political culture and political structure is doubly
complicated. The implicit reference when talking of ‘political structure’ is to the
national political structure; certainly this is what Almond and Verba mean. However,
it is being argued here that it is not just the impact of the national political struc-
ture that helps ‘shape’ the political culture, but authority structures, that is, political
structures on a wide definition of the term ‘political’, in various social spheres;
the impact of the authority structure of the workplace being particularly impor-
tant. Other writers on political socialization have agreed with Almond and Verba
about the importance of the authority structure of the family and school, but few
have considered the possible implications of the impact of the authority structures
within which the individual interacts in adult life. Hence the unsatisfactory position
that I noted above. The differences in levels of political efficacy found in children
(which follow the same social pattern as in adults) can be explained in terms of
the different views on child-rearing and so the different family authority structures
typically provided by parents of different SES backgrounds, those of higher SES
backgrounds being more participatory (Greenstein 1965: 91–92; Kohn 1968).13 But
this does not explain why the parents (adults) should differ in this respect, nor the
pattern of levels of sense of political efficacy in adults. Interesting evidence on this
point has been almost completely neglected in discussions of political socialization,
evidence supporting Almond and Verba’s argument that it is socialization in the
workplace, i.e. adult socialization that is crucial for (some aspects at least) of politi-
cal socialization. This evidence suggests that it is the non-participatory role of the
ordinary man in the workplace that is a major influence on his whole view of the
world, including his views on child-rearing, and especially on his feeling of inef-
fectiveness (Kohn and Schooler 1969; Lipsitz 1964).14 Those who tend to be politi-
cally apathetic, individuals from lower SES backgrounds, have typically had few or
no opportunities to participate in different social spheres from childhood through
to adult life. Thus this evidence provides the missing link between the studies of
childhood socialization and the psychological aspect of adult political behaviour.
If this argument is at all convincing, it throws considerable doubt on the
claim that existing patterns of political participation must be taken as given. If an
explanation can be found for the tendency for low rates of political participation
to be concentrated among citizens from low SES backgrounds, then, at the very
least, the question of whether these rates could be increased is still an open one,
awaiting further empirical investigation. My argument suggests that the changes
required would be radical ones. It would not be enough to modify the national
political structure to make participation more worthwhile if the citizens required to
participate do not feel (psychologically) confident to do so; to influence the latter
aspect a change in the socialization process, a change in the ‘intermediate’ authority
structures, especially that of the workplace, is also required.
It might be objected that this conclusion has been reached by ignoring one
element in the concept of the sense of political efficacy, the evaluative or normative;
14 Carole Pateman

the different elements have not been treated as it has been claimed that they should.
The normative aspect is, perhaps, the most confused part of the discussions of political
culture and participation and requires more analysis than is possible in this context.
However, a few brief points can be made. Following Parsons it would seem that if
the individual has ‘internalized’ the norm of political efficacy at an early age (that
citizens should be active and leaders responsive in a democracy), then there should
be few problems about his adult political ‘orientation’ or behaviour, he should have
few ‘dispositions to non-compliance’. But how, on this kind of argument, do we
make sense of the recent phenomenon of a demand for a ‘participation explosion’;
do the demands and political activities of some young people, young people being
those most prominently involved, indicate that their socialization was ‘faulty’?
First, if the psychological and cognitive components of the sense of political
efficacy are considered in this context, it is not surprising that these young people
are politically active. Their social background is typically such that they will feel
highly (psychologically) effective, yet this goes together with a view of the political
structure like that attributed above to the typically apathetic citizen, namely that
it is unresponsive to the needs and demands of citizens. Second, that they are
demanding a change in the political structure in the specific form of a move toward
greater popular participation in various social spheres can be explained by the very
fact that they have ‘internalized’ the norm of political efficacy. ‘Internalization’
itself is a notion that is used in several different ways in the literature, but even on a
‘strong’ Parsonian interpretation, to the effect that through internalization the norm
somehow becomes part of the personality and ‘controls’ what the individual wants,
the demands are intelligible. Indeed, if one took a much looser interpretation of
‘internalization’, perhaps ‘accept’ or ‘believe in’, then probably the majority of the
population in the Anglo-American democracies have internalized the norm. In
either case, the crucial point that is overlooked in discussions in general terms of
the internalization of norms is that there is more than one way to interpret the norm
of political efficacy and the other norms and values traditionally associated with
democracy; there is more than one view on what ‘really’ constitutes responsiveness
of leaders and so on, and these differences in interpretation also encompass divergent
notions of what form of democratic institutions actually embody, or give practical
expression to those norms and values.
Thus so far as the third component of the sense of political efficacy is concerned,
the difference between the typical young ‘protester’ and the typical apathetic citi-
zen (who both share the same view of the political structure) lies in the interpreta-
tion of the norm. The latter, while believing that the existing structure does not
live up to expectations based on the norm, cannot clearly envisage an alternative
democratic structure.15 This forms another element in the ‘circle’ of apathy. On
the other hand, the advocate of a move toward a more participatory structure does
see an alternative, based on adherence to (on ‘internalization’ of), but a different
interpretation of, the norm of political efficacy. Whether or not the alternative
advocated is empirically feasible is a question, central though it is to the issue of
political change in our own society, that has been dismissed without examination,
 Political culture, structure and change (1971) 15

lost behind the evaluative assumptions and the conceptual confusions in studies of
political culture and participation. Investigations of political culture and political
socialization may have formed one of the growth points in the study of politics in
the last decade but they have made only a minimal contribution to ‘the problem of
political stability and change’.

Notes
1 See, for example, the first study of political efficacy (Campbell, Gurin and Miller, 1954:
192 and Table A3). A summary of findings on political efficacy can be found in Milbrath
(1965: 56ff). ‘SES’ is ‘socio-economic status’.
2 This is the major argument of those recent theorists of democracy, the majority, who
claim that the ‘classical’ theory of democracy is unrealistic and needs drastic revision.The
final chapter of The Civic Culture (Almond and Verba, 1965) provides one example of this
argument; other examples are briefly discussed in Pateman (1970: 3–14).
3 For example, this characterization: political culture ‘includes political traditions and folk
heroes, the spirit of public institutions, political passions of the citizenry, goals articulated
by the political ideology, and both formal and informal rules of the political game…
political stereotypes, political style, political moods, the tone of political exchanges…
some sense of what is appropriately political and what is not’ (Dawson and Prewitt, 1969:
26).
4 Compare these two definitions from other writers who follow Parsons. Orientations
are ‘stable, internalized, dispositional traits, underlying and guiding individual behaviour’
(Nordlinger, 1967: 46). Political culture is ‘the “internalized” expectations in terms
of which the political roles of individuals are defined and through which political
institutions (in the sense of regularized behaviour patterns) come into being’ (Eckstein,
1963: 26).
5 There is a brief discussion in Kim (1964). Mitchell (1967) devotes a short section to
political culture suggesting that Parsons provides a fruitful approach in this area as in
others.
6 Apathy may be an example of the ‘containment’ of frustration but, even so, the point
is that it is far from clear that this results from the ‘internalization’ of a norm in child-
hood.
7 Agreement with statements 1, 3, 4, 5 indicates inefficaciousness, and disagreement with 2.
8 The typical working-class view of a gulf between ‘us’ and ‘them’, in contrast to the
middleclass view of society as an ordered hierarchy, has often been remarked upon. One
investigator found that manual workers interviewed had a general picture of government
as ‘a group of men who arrange to keep themselves in power and don’t care about the
interests of the common people’ (Lipsitz 1964: 958). Evidence of the divergent views of
the political structure of different income groups in the USA can be found in Form and
Rytina (1969). In a very interesting article Mann (1970) has collected together evidence
of different perspectives of middle- and working-class individuals over a variety of areas.
9 See also evidence on the belief in the efficacy of elections in Dennis (1970).
10 ‘The structure of authority at the workplace is probably the most significant – and
salient–…with which the average man finds himself in daily contact’ (Almond and Verba
1965: 294).
11 Almond and Verba also argue that because, like any other government, a democratic
government must govern, i.e. ‘have power and leadership and make decisions’, citizens
cannot be very active politically; that would upset the ‘balance’ between ‘power and
responsiveness’ of leaders necessary for democratic government (1965: 340–44). This
argument that a stable democratic system requires apathy is common to many recent
writers on democratic theory, who stress the dangers to stability of a significant increase
in popular activity. One of the more emphatic statements on these lines can be found
16 Carole Pateman

in Sartori (1965). Sartori also argues that apathy ‘is nobody’s fault in particular, and it is
time we stopped seeking scapegoats’ (1965: 88).
12 See Almond and Verba (1965) figures VI.1 and 2 showing that the higher the educational
attainment of the respondents the higher their level of competence.
13 For descriptions of English family structures, see e.g. Klein (1965).
14 See also the discussion of other studies supporting the argument that the authority
structure of the workplace is a major influence on the sense of effectiveness in Pateman
(1970); and see the comments on the factory in Inkeles (1969).
15 See the discussion in Mann (1970).

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