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Chapter 10. Political Socialization: The Making of a Citizen

Learning Objectives

· 1Describe the model citizen in democratic theory and explain the concept.

· 2Define socialization and explain the relevance of this concept in the study of politics.

· 3Explain how a disparate population of individuals and groups (families, clans, and tribes) can be forged into a cohesive society.

· 4Demonstrate how socialization affects political behavior and analyze what happens when socialization fails.

· 5Characterize the role of television and the Internet in influencing people’s political beliefs and behavior, and evaluate their impact on the quality of citizenship in contemporary society.

The year is 1932. The Soviet Union is suffering a severe shortage of food, and millions go hungry. Joseph Stalin, leader of the Communist Party and head of the Soviet government, has undertaken a vast reordering of Soviet agriculture that eliminates a whole class of landholders (the kulaks) and collectivizes all farmland. Henceforth, every farm and all farm products belong to the state. To deter theft of what is now considered state property, the Soviet government enacts a law prohibiting individual farmers from appropriating any grain for their own private use. Acting under this law, a young boy reports his father to the authorities for concealing grain. The father is shot for stealing state property. Soon after, the boy is killed by a group of peasants, led by his uncle, who are outraged that he would betray his own father. The government, taking a radically different view of the affair, extols the boy as a patriotic martyr.

Stalin considered the little boy in this story a model citizen, a hero. How citizenship is defined says a lot about a government and the philosophy or ideology that underpins it.

The Good Citizen

Stalin’s celebration of a child’s act of betrayal as heroic points to a distinction Aristotle originally made: The good citizen is defined by laws, regimes, and rulers, but the moral fiber (and universal characteristics) of a good person is fixed, and it transcends the expectations of any particular political regime. *

Good citizenship includes behaving in accordance with the rules, norms, and expectations of our own state and society. Thus, the actual requirements vary widely. A good citizen in Soviet Russia of the 1930s was a person whose first loyalty was to the Communist Party. The test of good citizenship in a totalitarian state is this: Are you willing to subordinate all personal convictions and even family loyalties to the dictates of political authority, and to follow the dictator’s whims no matter where they may lead? In marked contrast are the standards of citizenship in constitutional democracies, which prize and protect freedom of conscience and speech.

Where the requirements of the abstract good citizen—always defined by the state—come into conflict with the moral compass of actual citizens, and where the state seeks to obscure or obliterate the difference between the two, a serious problem arises in both theory and practice. At what point do people cease to be real citizens and become mere cogs in a machine—unthinking and unfeeling subjects or even slaves? Do we obey the state, or the dictates of our own conscience?

This question gained renewed relevance in the United States when captured “illegal combatants” were subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques”—an Orwellian euphemism for torture—during the Bush administration’s war on terror following the 9/11 attacks. One prisoner was waterboarded 183 times (strapped to a board with towels wrapped around his head while water was poured slowly onto the towels until he smothered). * Other harsh interrogation methods were also used.

Chapter 10. Political Socialization: The Making of a Citizen

Learning Objectives

· 1Describe the model citizen in democratic theory and explain the concept.

· 2Define socialization and explain the relevance of this concept in the study of politics.

· 3Explain how a disparate population of individuals and groups (families, clans, and tribes) can be forged into a cohesive society.

· 4Demonstrate how socialization affects political behavior and analyze what happens when socialization fails.

· 5Characterize the role of television and the Internet in influencing people’s political beliefs and behavior, and evaluate their impact on the quality of citizenship in contemporary society.

The year is 1932. The Soviet Union is suffering a severe shortage of food, and millions go hungry. Joseph Stalin, leader of the Communist Party and head of the Soviet government, has undertaken a vast reordering of Soviet agriculture that eliminates a whole class of landholders (the kulaks) and collectivizes all farmland. Henceforth, every farm and all farm products belong to the state. To deter theft of what is now considered state property, the Soviet government enacts a law prohibiting individual farmers from appropriating any grain for their own private use. Acting under this law, a young boy reports his father to the authorities for concealing grain. The father is shot for stealing state property. Soon after, the boy is killed by a group of peasants, led by his uncle, who are outraged that he would betray his own father. The government, taking a radically different view of the affair, extols the boy as a patriotic martyr.

Stalin considered the little boy in this story a model citizen, a hero. How citizenship is defined says a lot about a government and the philosophy or ideology that underpins it.

The Good Citizen

Stalin’s celebration of a child’s act of betrayal as heroic points to a distinction Aristotle originally made: The good citizen is defined by laws, regimes, and rulers, but the moral fiber (and universal characteristics) of a good person is fixed, and it transcends the expectations of any particular political regime.*

This question gained renewed relevance in the United States when captured “illegal combatants” were subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques”—an Orwellian euphemism for torture—during the Bush administration’s war on terror following the 9/11 attacks. One prisoner was waterboarded 183 times (strapped to a board with towels wrapped around his head while water was poured slowly onto the towels until he smothered).* Other harsh interrogation methods were also used.

Defining Citizenship

Throughout history, people of diverse moral character have claimed to be models of good citizenship. The relationship between the moral character of citizens and different forms of government underscores Aristotle’s observation that the true measure of a political system is the kind of citizen it produces. According to this view, a good state is one whose model citizen is also a good person; a bad state is one whose model citizen obeys orders without regard for questions of good or evil. Simple though this formulation may sound, it offers striking insights into the relationship between governments and citizens, including, for example, the fact that we cannot divorce civic virtue or public morality from our personal integrity or private morality.

It is little wonder that different political systems embrace different definitions of citizenship. In many authoritarian states, people can be classified as citizens only in the narrowest sense of the word—that is, they reside within the territory of a certain state and are subject to its laws. The relationship between state and citizen is a one-way street. Ordinary citizens have no voice in deciding who rules or how, or even whether they have a vote. In general, the government leaves them alone as long as they acquiesce in the system.

By contrast, in totalitarian states, where the government seeks to transform society and create a new kind of citizen, people are compelled to participate in the political system, but popular participation is meaningless because it is not voluntary and stresses duties without corresponding rights. Loyalty and zealotry form the core of good citizenship in such states, and citizens may be forced to carry out orders they find morally repugnant.

In democratic societies, people define citizenship very differently. In elementary school, the good citizenship award typically goes to a pupil who sets a good example, respects others, plays by the rules, and hands in assignments on time. Adults practice good citizenship by taking civic obligations seriously, obeying the laws, paying taxes, and voting regularly, among other things. In a democracy, the definition of good citizenship is found in the laws, but the legislators who write the laws are freely elected by the people—in other words, a true republic at its best erases (or at the very least eases) the tension between citizenship and moral conscience.

Many individuals, including civil libertarians, emphasize that the essence of citizenship lies in individual rights or personal liberties. Citizenship in the United States requires little in the form of duties and obligations, and affords its beneficiaries an enviable array of opportunities (hence, the steady flow of immigrants into the United States, compared with the trickle of U.S. citizens emigrating to other countries). According to the Fourteenth Amendment, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Note that citizens of the United States are distinguished from aliens not on the basis of how they act or what they have done but simply on the basis of birthplace—to be born in the United States is to be a U.S. citizen. Moreover, the presumption is once a citizen, always a citizen, barring some extraordinary misdeed (such as treason) or a voluntary renunciation of citizenship.

A Classical View

The minimalist view of citizenship described in the “Ideas and Politics” feature may provide a convenient way of distinguishing citizens from aliens (foreigners), but it does not do justice to a time-honored concept in Western civilization. To the ancient Greeks, the concept of citizenship was only partly related to accidents of birth and political geography; rather, responsible and selfless participation in the public affairs of the community formed the vital core of citizenship. Aristotle held that a citizen “shares in the administration of justice and in the holding of office.”* The Athens of Aristotle’s time was a small political society, or city-state, that at any given time accorded a proportionately large number of citizens significant decision-making power (women and slaves were excluded). Citizenship was the exalted vehicle through which public-spirited and properly educated free men could rule over, and in turn be ruled by, other free men and thereby advance civic virtue, public order, and the common good.

In eighteenth-century Europe, the Greek ideal reemerged in a modified form. Citizen became a term applicable to those who claimed the right to petition or sue the government. Citizens were distinguished from slaves, who had no claims or rights and were regarded as chattel (property). Citizens also differed from subjects, whose first and foremost legal obligation was to show loyalty to and obey the sovereign. According to the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), citizens, as opposed to slaves or subjects, possessed constitutional freedom – that is, the right to obey only laws to which they consented. Kant also contended that citizens possessed a civil equality, which relieved them of any obligation by law or custom to recognize a superior moral authority, and political independence, meaning a person’s political status stemmed from fundamental rights rather than from the will of another.* No longer were citizens to be ruled arbitrarily by the state.

Republican government came the closest to this ideal of citizenship. In the final analysis, as Kant and other eighteenth-century thinkers recognized, the freedom and dignity of the individual inherent in the concept of citizenship could flourish only under a republican government, and such a government could function only if its rank-and-file members understood and discharged the responsibilities of citizenship.

One distinguishing feature of the modern era is the extension of citizenship. In the United States, for instance, it took many years for racial minorities, women, and individuals without property to gain the right to vote and the right to protection under the law in the exercise of their civil rights. Yet, as the number of citizens (and of people in general) has risen, effective political participation for individuals has often become more difficult. It is one thing for society to embrace ideas such as citizenship for all and equal rights in theory; it is quite another to provide the civic education and social development necessary to make the ideal of a society of political equals a practical reality.

Political Culture: Defining the Good

The Greek view of what constituted the good citizen was a reflection of the way the Greeks defined the word good. Every language in the world has a word meaning “good,” and it is arguably the most important word in any language. But every language is embedded in a culture, and no two cultures are identical. We are all products of the culture into which we are born. From our earliest infancy, and long before we know how to read or write, we learn to talk.

Along with the language, we also learn about our environment, which includes both tangible and intangible things. Among the most important intangibles are values—that is, what our parents or other guardians say is “good” or “bad.” In the process of learning the difference between good and bad (picking up our toys is “good” and not eating our vegetables is “bad”), we also learn about right and wrong. Crossing the line from “good” and “bad” in word and deed to “right” and “wrong” in thought and sentiment is a giant step across a great chasm—it is the difference between outward behavior and inner motives, beliefs, and desires. Culture, in the sense that anthropology and political science use the word, is all about established norms, customs, and traditions—in other words, how society defines right and wrong and about what “the good life,” or the word good itself, means in a given place and time. There is no universally accepted definition of “the good life” in this world for the simple reason that there is no universal culture.

Culture has many meanings. Here we are interested primarily in the aspects of culture that are related to politics—what scholars often call political culture. Political culture encompasses the prevailing moral values, beliefs, and myths people live by and are willing to die for. It also includes the collective memory of a society—the history we learn about in grade school; what we come to know about our leaders, about crises we have survived as a nation, and about wars we have fought. Virtually anything and everything that shapes our shared perceptions of reality is part of our political culture. This collective memory and these shared perceptions differ depending on the specifics of geography, climate, terrain, and other physical circumstances, as well as certain accidental factors—for example, the presence or absence of hostile and aggressive neighbors.

Small nations often have a history of being subjugated by powerful neighbors. Island peoples, such as the British and the Japanese, have a history that differs in fundamental ways from landlocked nations, owing to the absence of shared borders. The success of the thirteen American colonies in breaking away from the British Empire, as well as the United States’ historic isolationism, would not have been possible without the benevolent presence of two great oceans. Clearly geography matters.

Religion plays a major role in shaping political cultures. We cannot understand Western civilization without reference to Roman Catholicism, the Reformation, and Christianity. By the same token, Islam forms the moral core of life in the Arab Middle East, as well as in much of South, Central, and Southeast Asia (see Figure 10.1). The same is true of Hinduism in India; Buddhism in Cambodia, Tibet, and Thailand; Taoism and Confucianism in China and other Asian countries; and Shinto, as well as Buddhism, in Japan. Even where secularization has eroded religious beliefs (as in the West), the stamp of religion on political culture is both undeniable and indelible (see “Ideas and Politics”).

Figure 10.1.

Map of Islamic Faith. Religion exerts a powerful influence on the political ideas, values, and aspirations of people all over the world. With an estimated 1.5 billion adherents, Islam is the second-largest body of believers in the world. (Christianity is the first, with roughly 2.1 billion.)

We are often bemused, perplexed, or outraged by the reactions and perceptions of others. We wonder what they must be thinking. How could anyone, for example, condone the actions of terrorists whose victims are often innocent bystanders? We tend to assume that anyone with extreme views is ignorant, misguided, or even depraved. In fact, however, profound differences in perception, outlook, and behavior can often be traced to differences in national history, personal experience, and political culture.

Ideas and Politics The Tao and the Clash of Civilizations

In his provocative little book The Abolition of Man (New York: Macmillan, 1947), C. S. Lewis argued that “the Tao” could be found in civilizations, cultures, and religions the world over. Taoism originated in China in ancient times. The Tao is “the way”—the source of all knowledge about nature and truth, the key to inner peace and social harmony. Lewis noted that this type of metaphysical reasoning and the moral values it fostered are found in religions and ethical systems all over the world. He cites many “Illustrations of the Tao” drawn “from such sources as come readily to the hand of one who is not a professional historian.”

Lewis makes a powerful case for humanistic education—that is, for teaching people to love truth and justice. Learning to love truth and justice, Lewis suggested, is the key to civil society, because people are not simply rational beings and do not naturally behave according to reason. It is necessary, therefore, that society finds ways to link human emotions with positive attitudes and good acts, which brings us back to the Tao. What Lewis called the Tao teaches respect for authority, humility, honesty, charity, generosity, and so forth—in short, the way to live in harmony with oneself, others, and nature.

Political culture cannot be distilled from moral and religious teachings alone; indeed, politics is not what Lewis’s book is about. But his views on the role of public education in developing a sense of right and wrong—a civic culture that supports democratic processes and institutions—have significant implications for students of politics.

The late Harvard scholar Samuel Huntington wrote a best-selling book in the mid-1990s titled The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order. The book’s thesis highlights the prevalence and intensity of faith-based politics in today’s world. Indeed, the nexus between education and values, the province of religion and morality, remains an important question—one involving a global battle for the hearts and minds of people with little understanding of international politics.

· Historians, political theorists, and social scientists of all types often make a distinction between the proximate and root causes of dramatic events such as wars and revolutions. We focus on war and revolution in later chapters, but the distinction between surface and deep-seated factors can be applied to everyday politics—and everyday life—as well. How we react to events is important, but how we see the world is even more important. Why? Think about it.

(Hint: Ask yourself where your own ideas about the greatest values in life come from. To a greater extent than most of us realize, what we are is inseparable from where we are—and where we were born. Try to imagine what you would think of Jews and/or Christians if you had been born in a Palestinian refugee camp or lived in Gaza. Now reverse the example: Imagine what you would think of Arabs and/or Muslims if you were Jewish.)

A political culture is like a filter for our personal experiences—without it we lack any common interpretation of reality. Without a shared reality, we lack the basis for a community or society.

We can study political culture in several different ways. We can look at its sources in society (geography, climate, history, religion, and the like), at its manifestations (attitudes, perceptions, beliefs, and prejudices), or at its effects (actions and public policies). As is often the case, however, the closer we look, the more complicated the picture becomes.*

Another way to think about political culture is in terms of one national political culture and many regional and local political subcultures. College students have an opportunity to research this question themselves by simply engaging classmates from different states or regions of the country—and from different countries—in conversations about growing up. Comparing your own upbringing with those of others from different backgrounds can be both fun and enlightening.

In the next section, we look at the ingenious ways societies sow the seeds of political culture. Consider this: are our ideas about “first things” (good and bad, right and wrong) really our ideas at all—or were they implanted at a young age, long before we had any idea of them?

Political Socialization: Forming Citizens

Though we can dispute the proper definition of citizenship, most people agree that good citizens are made, not born. Children grow up to be responsible citizens through the interplay of various influences and institutions—including family, religion, school, peer groups, the mass media, and the law. The process of being conditioned to think and behave in a socially acceptable manner is called socialization.

Every self-sustaining society inculcates in its citizens certain basic values necessary to establish and perpetuate a political order. Even as staunch an individualist as the British philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) acknowledged that the sense of citizen loyalty or allegiance “may vary in its objects and is not confined to any particular form of government; but whether in a democracy or in a monarchy its essence is always … that there be in the constitution of the state something which is settled , something permanent, and not to be called into question; something which, by general agreement, has a right to be where it is, and to be secure against disturbance, whatever else may change.”*

Political socialization is the process whereby citizens develop the values, attitudes, beliefs, and opinions that enable them to support the political system.* This process begins with the family.

The Family

The family exerts the first and most important influence on the formation of individual values. Different political regimes view the family in different ways. Some governments support and nurture the family; others choose to remain indifferent toward it; a few seek to undermine it and regard the love and loyalty that flow from family ties as subversive to the state. Despite these varying reactions, all governments recognize the importance of the family in the socialization process.

Even nations that publicly proclaim the value of the traditional family, however, may not be able to ensure its success in society. The number of children living in single-parent households in the United States, for example, has risen dramatically since the 1960s due to rising divorce rates, changes in sexual mores, teenage pregnancies, and other social changes. Whereas in 1980 single-parent households constituted 19.5% of the total, that figure had risen to 29.5% by 2008. Another sign of the times: In 2009, 7.8 million children lived with at least one grandparent, a 64% increase since 1991, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released in mid-2011.

Poverty and lack of education are major causes of divorce. Moreover, the problem is self-perpetuating. Studies confirm that children raised in single-parent families are at greater risk than those in two-parent families to drop out of school, to become involved with crime and illegal drugs, to be unemployed (or underemployed) and poor, and to have failed marriages and personal relationships as adults—a vicious cycle.* Of course, single-parent families are often successful, and many children raised by single parents become well-adjusted adults. Indeed, if one parent is physically or emotionally abusive, it is often better for a child to be nurtured (and protected) only by the parent who is not.

Children are first socialized at home, within the family structure, learning what is and what is not permissible, with rewards and punishment to reinforce daily behavior. In this manner, parents make the obligations of children to the family and to others clear. Slowly, children become citizens of the family, often with clearly defined responsibilities and occasionally with rights or privileges. Parents emphasize moral ground rules, even if they don’t always specify the reasons for them (“Do it because I said so”). Trust, cooperation, self-esteem, respect for others, and empathy, each rooted in family relations, bear on the behavioral and moral development of individuals. *

Where discipline is lacking and parents are overly permissive, children are given rights and privileges with few if any responsibilities. In such cases, socialization is impeded to the extent it fails to produce behaviors conducive to social harmony, civility and civic duty, or leads to narcissism, self-promotion, and a tendency to exploit others.

he family also helps determine the direction the ultimate political socialization of children takes and how successful it will be. Party orientation and even affiliation often derive from the family, especially when both parents belong to the same party. In the United States, about 70% of children whose parents both have the same party affiliation favor that party too.* In addition, the family exerts a powerful influence on religious persuasion, which tends to correlate highly with party affiliation, as well as with certain political opinions (fundamentalist Protestants tend to oppose abortion; Jews tend to support Israel; and so on).* However, studies indicate that when it comes to opinions about more abstract political issues, parental influence is quite limited.* As adults, we often find ourselves at odds with our parents’ ideas about politics (among other things), a fact often attributed to “generational” differences.

Social Class and Minority Status

Family interest in politics tends to increase with social standing. Middle- and upper-class children are most likely to become actively engaged in politics; children from lower-class families are typically uninformed about politics and participate less often.* There are many exceptions, however, including Abraham Lincoln, Harry S. Truman, Richard Nixon, William Jefferson Clinton, and Barack Obama, all arising from humble origins to become president of the United States.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, current president of Liberia Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and Josephine Baker, the first African American female to star in a major motion picture, are examples of women not born to privilege who rose to great heights. Josephine Baker was born in St. Louis in 1902 and dropped out of school at the age of 12. She is best known as a recording artist and stage performer, but she was decorated for her undercover work in the French Resistance during World War II. When she died in Paris in 1975, she became the first American woman to receive French military honors at her funeral. Condoleezza Rice, born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1954 at a time when blacks were not allowed to have a hamburger at Woolworth’s, became the first black woman (and only the second woman) ever to serve as U.S. Secretary of State (2005–2009).

Minority status can play a significant role in political socialization. Some researchers have found that in the United States, African American children tend to place less trust in government, and to feel less confident of influencing it, than do white children.*

Not surprisingly, such attitudes correlate with political opinions; thus, holding social-class differences constant, black adults in the United States tend to be less conservative than whites on most economic and foreign policy issues, although not on the issue of crime. Politically, though not necessarily socially and culturally, Asian Americans tend to resemble white ethnic groups more closely than black groups, particularly on domestic social issues. Hispanic Americans tend to fall between blacks and whites. However, family socialization and the transmission of political beliefs have exerted an influence on Cuban Americans, who, as a group, tend to be more hard-line conservative, especially on foreign policy questions, than are other Hispanic-American groups, including Mexicans and Puerto Ricans. One reason is that after Cubans fled to the United States at the time of the Cuban Revolution, Cuban leader Fidel Castro confiscated their property and persecuted family members they had left behind.

Gender and Politics

Like class and race, gender differences can be important independent correlates of political behavior and opinions. In the United States, the so-called gender gap—differences in the ways men and women think and vote in the aggregate—has gotten a lot of attention in recent decades. For instance, in the 1992 general elections, Bill Clinton won the women’s vote by 8 points, but won the men’s vote by only 3. Women thus helped a challenger defeat a sitting president. In 1996, the gender gap was even bigger. In 2008, women favored Barack Obama over John McCain by a wide margin despite the fact that McCain’s running mate was a woman, Sarah Palin. But that number does not tell the whole story: in all, 8 million more women voted for Obama than for McCain, and women voters accounted for 53% of all the votes cast. Obama thus received a double boost from women voters—a larger percentage of a bigger vote. The pattern is different in congressional races, however, where the gender gap is seldom apparent.

Some researchers tie gender differences to early family experiences and expectations; others contend there are innate differences in the way men and women develop moral and political awareness. One theory postulates that due to some combination of socialization and biology, women—as mothers and primary caregivers for children—tend to develop a moral and political perspective that emphasizes compassion and the protection of human life.* An alternate theory holds that gender-based political differences are rooted in some women’s later life experiences.* For example, working women who have been paid less than men doing the same job are likely to vote for a party or candidate that stresses fairness and equal rights.

One important political difference between the sexes revolves around the government’s use of force. Women tend to be more reluctant to support war, more opposed to capital punishment, and more inclined to support gun control. Women also tend to give more support to social welfare programs intended to help families, the working poor, and the economically disadvantaged. These differences help explain why the gender gap has aided Democrats in recent years. We turn now to a factor that has greatly aided Republicans in recent times.

Religion

Either the church or the state may present itself as the true source of moral authority, which makes religion particularly important in the socialization process. And just as religion can influence a young person’s developing political opinions, so can politics decisively shape the role of religion within the family and the place it ultimately occupies within the larger political order.

Sometimes religion can legitimize existing practices and lend stability to a society in transition. Hinduism in India, for instance, has proved compatible with changing political institutions. Described by one expert as having “a multi-layered complexity allowing for the existence of many gods, many incarnations, many layers of truth,”* Hinduism has tended, historically, to support the status quo. Even when the status quo allowed systematic discrimination against a lower, “untouchable” class, Hinduism counseled patience and perseverance in anticipation of future lives to come. In other parts of the world, however, religious doctrine has ignited aggressive policies. In Libya and Iran, for instance, Islamic fundamentalism has helped fuel belligerent foreign policies and contributed to a periodic fervor for war.

Religion and politics sometimes conflict. In Nazi Germany, the government steamrolled the Lutheran and Catholic churches. In the former Soviet Union, the regime allowed the historically entrenched Russian Orthodox Church to continue functioning but restricted and monitored its activities, frequently persecuting believers.*

In the United States, religion and politics reinforce one another at a number of levels. Although the Supreme Court has interpreted the Constitution to prohibit government from directly supporting religion, the First Amendment also clearly prohibits government from denying an individual’s free exercise of religion. Religion continues to flourish in the United States. In the mid-1980s, “More than 90 percent of all Americans identify with some religious faith, and on any given Sunday morning more than 40 percent are to be found in church”; furthermore, by “most measurable indices the United States is a more religious country than any European nation except Ireland and Poland.”* But this picture appears to be changing—about 15% of survey respondents in the United States say they have “no religion.”*

The Judeo-Christian tradition continues to be dominant in the United States, yet there is significant diversity within that tradition. Census data show numerous Protestant denominations constitute about 51% of the population (with Baptists constituting the largest groups at about 16%); Roman Catholics, 24%; and Jews, 1.7%. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, both the public reaction and the mass media focused attention on the fact that there is also a Muslim minority in the United States, although it is relatively small (0.6%). There are more Buddhists in the United States than Muslims.

Important political differences correlate with these differences in religious orientation, some even arising from the religious doctrines themselves. Quakers and Mennonites tend to be pacifists, whereas, as previously mentioned, fundamentalist Protestants tend to oppose abortion and Jews generally favor Israel. By the same token, members of black Protestant churches tend to be more politically liberal than are Protestants affiliated with mainstream churches, and members of mainstream churches tend to be more politically liberal than their evangelical Protestant counterparts.

More generally, on a scale measuring political conservatism and liberalism, Protestants tend to be somewhat more conservative than Catholics and much more conservative than Jews. Jews, Catholics, and religiously unaffiliated voters have historically identified more with the Democratic Party, whereas Protestants have leaned toward the Republican Party, though the correlation between religion and party affiliation appeared to be weakening until George W. Bush received 56% of the Protestant vote and Al Gore (the Democratic candidate) only 42% in the 2000 presidential election. (Gore won among Roman Catholic voters, however, with 50% to Bush’s 47%.) In 2010, Roman Catholics joined Protestants in voting Republican in the midterm elections, a shift reflecting the Vatican’s staunch “pro-life” (anti-abortion) position. But in 2012, a majority of Roman Catholics voted for Obama despite a strong pro-choice stance on the part of the church hierarchy. (The literal meaning of the word “hierarchy” is “holy government”).

Religion can be used to edify and elevate as well as divide. Sometimes political leaders draw on religious imagery to unite citizens in a common understanding of the present or point them toward a more noble vision of the future. * For example, the famous U.S. clergyman and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. inspired the nation with his dream of a day “when all of God’s children—black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics—will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual ‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’” The tragic assassination of King, like the assassination of Abraham Lincoln a century earlier, helped rally the U.S. people to the cause of racial equality.

The role of religion in U.S. national politics has risen sharply in recent years. As part of his “faith-based initiative,” George W. Bush asked Congress to allow religious organizations to compete for government contracts and grants without a strict separation of religious activities and social service programs.

But it was the shock of September 11, 2001, that changed everything. Suddenly, religion was at the heart of a great menace, namely, international terrorism. The late Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist network gave the world a horrifying glimpse of religion’s dark side when they attempted to unite the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims against the “Crusaders” (Christians and Jews) in a jihad, or holy war. Al Qaeda obliterated the distinction between religion and ideology and used Islam as an instrument of war against the West.

chools

Schools play a vital role in civic education. In effect, the state uses schools as instruments of political socialization. Some governments merely prescribe one or two courses in civics or history, require students to salute the flag, and hang a few pictures of national heroes on school walls. Other governments dictate the entire school curriculum, indoctrinate the children with slogans and catch phrases, heavily censor textbooks and library acquisitions, and subject teachers to loyalty tests.

Different regimes inculcate different values. Under some regimes (for example, the Soviet Union in the 1930s), blind obedience to authority is the norm. In others, patriotism is encouraged, but so is the habit of critical and independent thinking. One other key variable is the priority given to education (see “Ideas and Politics”).

Ideas and Politics Confucian vs. Confusion: A Reverence for Education

An international study, published in December 2010, compared students in sixty-five countries representing all different faiths in math, science, and reading. The winner? Confucianism!

China’s Shanghai was at the top of all three lists by a wide margin. The New York Times columnist Nicolas Kristof observed, “Three of the next top four performers were also societies with a Confucian legacy of reverence for education: Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea.”*

Finland was the only non-Confucian country in the mix. The United States came in 15th in reading, 23rd in science and 31st in math.

No less worrying is a study published a month later, in January 2011, reporting that 45% of undergraduates in the United States show almost no gains in learning in the first two years.* The research indicated that colleges don’t make academics a priority, that professors are primarily interested in research, and that students spend 50% less time studying compared with students several decades ago.

Other details in the research: over a third of U.S. students surveyed reported spending no more than five hours per week studying alone (research shows that students who study in groups learn less); half report never taking a course where they wrote more than twenty pages; nearly one-third say they never took a course where they read more than forty pages per week.

· Problems in society are often a product of a particular culture, perhaps one that is changing too fast or one that is too resistant to change. Such problems also are a product of public policy, which may reflect the values of an elite social class or a dominant religious sect. Why are students in the United States—a country with many of the best schools and universities in the world—falling behind students elsewhere in the world? Think about it.

(Hint: Many teachers in the United States blame parents and a certain approach to parenting for many of the problems they encounter in the classroom. To learn more, Google “America education falling behind.” Try it again and add the word “parents.”)

Socialization studies tell us a lot about how children learn civic values in school.* During the elementary school years, children develop positive emotional attachments to key political concepts, such as liberty and democracy and respect for others. Young children also learn to think of the government in terms of an authority figure—a police officer, the president, and so on.

As we mature, cognition comes into play; we begin to grasp abstract concepts such as democracy. During adolescence and early adulthood, our attitudes toward authority often change radically. We cease to obey authority without question. Increasingly, we want to decide things for ourselves—a sentiment readily transferable to the political realm.

High school civics classes are probably less important than the total educational experience.* Lessons and stories on the nation’s history, formal rituals such as reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, patriotic music, and extracurricular activities like sports, band, debate, and writing for the school newspaper all can convey the importance of responsible participation and working toward a common goal. Electing class officers and participating in student government is typically our first exercise in democracy.

In general, higher education and political participation go hand in hand. Higher education also correlates positively with personal self-confidence and trust in others—personality traits that democratic political systems, based on citizen participation, require.*

In the United States, the college curriculum often represents a blend of vocational training and liberal arts—with the latter, which includes literature, philosophy, science, history, and linguistics, placing great emphasis on the development of critical thinking.* Advocates of the liberal arts stress the importance of education not only for citizenship, but also for leadership. What such an education does, at its best, is produce politically literate adults. Evidence suggests it tends to produce more liberal adults, as well.*

The ideal of liberal education fits easily with constitutional guarantees that protect the right to question authority. It also prepares citizens to do so.* With rare exception, democracies alone tolerate independent thinking and dissent. Recall that the Greek philosopher Socrates was considered subversive and sentenced to death—not for teaching his students what to think but for teaching them how to think.

Peer Groups

A peer group can refer either to a group of people who are friends, or to people of similar age and characteristics. The concept of peers itself arises from “the tendency for individuals to identify with groups of people like themselves.”* Peer groups exert considerable influence over our political activities and beliefs, but there has been little research on the influence of peer groups in politics.*

The relationship between gang membership and the development of antisocial attitudes by adolescent male lawbreakers, for example, is a matter of more than academic interest. Studies indicate that gang membership and teenage crime are linked. According to one study, peers and gangs “can affect the value a person assigns to the rewards of crime (by adding the approval of colleagues to the perceived value of the loot or the direct gratification of the act).”* But it’s still not clear whether gangs cause teenagers to commit crimes or attract teenagers predisposed to criminal behavior in the first place. In all probability, the answer is both.

Psychologically, peer groups satisfy our need for approval. Peer groups are often formed voluntarily and informally, but organizations such as the Girl Scouts, the Young Democrats, or a high school journalism club are also peer groups. As such, they also satisfy the same need for approval and a sense of belonging, one totalitarian tyrants like Hitler, Stalin, and Mao deftly exploited (see Chapter 6).

The state can create peer-group structures for youth, as well as adults. These involuntary associations are typically designed to infuse ideological fervor and abject loyalty into young hearts and minds. Under the Nazi Party, for example, German life was organized through an elaborate network of state controlled associations of peers to ensure that every German would, in time, adopt correct political attitudes and be properly socialized into the new Nazi order. Similarly, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union created an all-encompassing set of centrally controlled peer organizations in the guise of clubs and civic associations.

In liberal democracies, the state plays a role in the socialization process but does not control it. Peer groups form naturally and civic associations are independent of the state.

The Mass Media and Internet

The media and Internet also play a significant role in political socialization. In nondemocratic states, the mass media—that is, television, radio, newspapers, and large-circulation magazines—are almost always owned or controlled by the state, and the Internet is monitored and websites the government finds objectionable are often blocked (as in China, North Korea, and Iran). Even some democratic governments monopolize radio and television broadcasting (as in Denmark) or own and operate television networks (as in Great Britain) but strive to ensure fairness and objectivity.

The Internet is especially crucial in shaping attitudes now because young people generally have a high level of computer skills and spend more hours each day on the Internet than watching TV. For American youth between the ages of 12 and 24, one recent study found that in “daily time spent,” the Internet soared from 10% in 2000 to 30% in 2010. The same respondents reported watching TV almost as much, but spending almost no time reading newspapers and magazines.*

Television is still popular most everywhere in the world, of course, even in some strict Islamic societies, where the state now uses this otherwise “decadent” source of Western pop culture to inculcate Islamic moral values. Thus, in Saudi Arabia, a traditional monarchy, state-owned television holds an annual “Miss Beautiful Morals” pageant that is the exact opposite of our beauty pageants—the physical appearance of the contestants is irrelevant (in fact, they are covered from head to foot). Rather, the winner is the contestant who is judged to have the most devotion and respect for her parents.*

The Law

The law plays an important role in socialization. Some laws are designed to promote public order (by having cars drive on the right side of the street, for example). Other laws prohibit violent or antisocial behavior in society, such as murder, false advertising, theft, and racial discrimination. Equally important, the very idea of “law and order” is ingrained in us at an early age and the “rule of law” is an essential feature of liberal democracy. Thus, the law conditions our behavior in all sorts of subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

Socialization and Political Behavior

Fortunately, most citizens who participate in the political process choose, most of the time, to do so legally.

Political Behavior

Most of us participate in politics in largely symbolic, passive, or ritualistic ways—for example, by attending a political rally, responding to a political poll, watching a candidate on television, or putting a bumper sticker on our cars. Some volunteer on political campaigns (witness the huge volunteer “army” that helped Barack Obama get elected in 2008) or join liberal public interest groups such as the Sierra Club, the American Civil Liberties Union, or MoveOn.Org, or conservative ones such as the National Right to Life Committee, the National Taxpayers Union, or the Christian Coalition. Others participate in political protests of one kind of another.

Even during the turbulent Vietnam War era, however, only 2% of U.S. citizens surveyed believed violence was justified to achieve political aims.* Support for milder forms of protest is much higher, but this support falls off sharply as the action in question approaches the line between legal and illegal behavior. In general, protests, mass marches, and street demonstrations are far less common in the United States today than in Europe and elsewhere in the world.

Civil Disobedience

Some illegal acts—in particular, those classified as civil disobedience—are intended to stir a nation’s conscience. Taking his cue from Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. advocated civil disobedience in the struggle for racial equality in the 1960s. Civil disobedience stresses nonviolence and encourages demonstrators to accept the consequences of breaking the law, including arrest and detention.

Whether a particular form of illegal political behavior is morally wrong depends on the context—and the beholder. Where people are victimized by government or by a dominant class or ethnic group, the moral basis for law and authority often erodes. Even in the United States, illegal forms of political behavior have not always been considered “un-American.” Agitating for independence from Great Britain in colonial times, for example, was treasonous. Had the American Revolution failed, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington, among other leaders of the revolt, would probably have gone to the gallows.

Before the Civil War, the “underground railroad” that helped fugitive slaves escape bondage was a clear violation of federal law by many otherwise law-abiding citizens, especially in northern states like Massachusetts and New York. The underground railroad could not have existed without a network of activists who considered slavery a desecration of a “higher law,” nor could these activists have themselves escaped prosecution without the cooperation of family, friends, and neighbors.

That the legal system does not always serve the cause of justice is, in fact, a kind of cliché even in the United States, where most people express a strong belief in the rule of law. It’s the theme of popular books, movies, and television shows. Thus, for example, in the popular TV series Person of Interest, a billionaire computer genius and a former Green Beret and CIA field officer who have lost faith in the system go outside the law to protect intended victims from violent crimes that fall outside the government’s narrow definition of a terrorist threat.

But, of course, illegal political behavior—sabotage, assassinations, and terrorist acts—aimed at elected officials and legitimate governments cannot be tolerated. Examples of such acts are all too common even in stable democracies. The attack on Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords at a shopping mall in Tucson, Arizona, in early 2011 resulting in the death of six people, including a 9-year-old girl, is a recent case in point.

When Political Socialization Fails

A nation’s political culture reflects the fundamental values its people hold dear. These values need not be entirely consistent and may even conflict at times. Nor will day-to-day political beliefs and actions of individual citizens always conform to the ideals people hold dear in the abstract.* But a steady state requires an established political culture consisting of shared values. In democracies, these values set a very high standard—too high, in fact, to be fully attainable. And yet the standard is kept at the forefront, and it is the striving for a perfection never achieved that, in many ways, defines democracy and distinguishes it from its alternatives.

In the United States, private values correlate highly with key public (or civic) values.* Accordingly, U.S. adults generally profess a strong belief in basic liberal values: personal freedom, political equality, private ownership of property, and religious tolerance. Not only are these values expressed in the nation’s fundamental documents and writings, including the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and The Federalist Papers, but they are also instilled in U.S. youth by a variety of socialization strategies.

In other democratic societies, the process of socialization works the same way and serves the same purposes. But the expression of such core values as liberty, equality, security, prosperity, and justice (see Chapter 13), as well as the precise content and balance among them, vary significantly from one country to another. In Europe, “equality” is more often about class-consciousness than civil rights. As a result, the state provides a much wider range of social services (including guaranteed universal health care) than in the United States. By the same token, love of liberty in Europe does not impede the police in criminal investigations the way it often does in the United States, nor does it entail the right of private citizens to own deadly weapons.

When a multiethnic nation fails to politically socialize large numbers of citizens as members of a single community—in effect, a new nation—the consequences are far-reaching. If there are multiple communities, there will be multiple processes going on and multiple political cultures being perpetuated. Members of the various subnational communities will not be successfully integrated into the political system, and they will not share the norms, rules, and laws of the society.

Some citizens may never become fully socialized politically. A state’s failure to socialize its citizens may result from its unequal or unfair treatment of them. Citizens may then become angry, cynical, or embittered, or they may even turn to crime or revolution. In extreme cases of unjust, tyrannical government, citizens’ “crimes” may be viewed as actions taken justifiably. Thus, while the failure of political socialization is always detrimental to the government in power, the moral and political implications of that failure are not always as easy to evaluate.