I’m reading The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations, 1963, by Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba (Princeton University Press).1 The authors, a couple of sociologists, empirically characterize the attitudes and behaviors of people then living in varying shades of political democracy.
From what I have read so far, one of the most useful products of their work is their simple diagram of the basic functional political differences between authoritarian/totalitarian and democratic nations. Below is their Figure 2 matrix model, “Types of Political Culture”.
“System” is a national-scale or state-scale system of governance. “Input Objects” are various forms of effective feedback that are given to, and ultimately control, those conducting governance. “Output Objects” are the various forms of influence exerted on residents by any type of national-scale or state-scale government.
Democratic governments, those where the government is formed by and for the people, are generically designated by Almond and Vera as “Participant” political cultures. “Subject” political cultures are those where a relatively small group, or an individual, takes power without consent and governs a whole nation of “subjects” in a strictly ‘top-down’ fashion — as do totalitarian or authoritarian governments. 2
In this last regard, I very strongly recommend taking the time to read Matt Taibbi’s most recent piece of reporting on the American 2024 election process. While reading that article, notice which US political party has been actively turning the “1”s into “0”s in the “Input Objects” and “Self as Active Participant” columns of the Almond and Verba political culture model above. Note also that the loss of these two critical “1”s would complete the transformation of the US into a nation of dependent subjects governed by those without any real skin in the game.
As Taibbi admonishes at the end of his piece, individual Americans need to take back the lead again:
Voters, by voting, “protect democracy.” A politician who claims to be doing the job for us is up to something. The group in the current White House is trying to steal for themselves a word that belongs to you. Don’t let them.
Two other directly-related Taibbi stories:
And…
“Parochial” political cultures are relatively small, informal, unorganized, direct contact, word-of-mouth, entirely local political cultures. Think of how small hunter-gatherer groups or tribes relatively loosely coordinate themselves.