POL 2104 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto, Post-Materialism
12 Mar 2014
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Document Summary
From political culture to social capital: understanding political culture, the role of political cleavages on political culture, civic cultures, post-materialism, the possibilities and problem of social capital. Elite cultures: close-knit communities, highly educated, middle- and upper-class, organized around specific ideas that elaborate and systemize the world they inhabit. View of the masses and their role within society: privy to greater amounts of information and, in turn, they cover a broader range of issues. Ideologues unwilling to compromise their world view, conservatism or liberalism. Theories of political cultures i: marxist and class theory: base and superstructure. Theories of political cultures iii: rational choice: people participate by calculating the costs and benefits of doing so, self-interest drives political behavior, free-riders riding on the coat-tails of others. Ex: going out and voting why bother, 1 vote doesn"t make a difference: problem with rational choice is that rationality is defined in an economist manner. Problem governments may face too many demands; become overloaded.
