10CPS99.VP:CorelVentura 7.0 - CiteSeerX

COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / October 1999Lockhart / CULTURAL CONTRIBUTIONS

Relying on culture as an important explanatory variable is regarded with skepticism by manycontemporary political scientists. Yet, doubts about culture’s usefulness rest in large part on falseperceptions of various sorts. These misunderstandings relegate an important explanatory vari-able to the social science scrap heap. Accordingly, the author engages in three tasks. First, se-lected prominent arguments for culture’s lack of explanatory usefulness are discussed. Sec-ond, it is demonstrated how at least one conceptualization of culture, Mary Douglas and AaronWildavsky’s grid-group theory, overcomes aspects of these difficulties and contributes to ex-plaining institutional form and political change. Third, it is argued that grid-group theory con-tributes significantly to both institutional analysis and rational choice theory. Grid-group theoryaugments each of these latter two approaches and, more important, reveals complementary as-pects, linking these modes of analysis together as mutually supportive elements of a more inclu-sive explanatory scheme.

CULTURAL CONTRIBUTIONS TOEXPLAINING INSTITUTIONAL

FORM, POLITICAL CHANGE,AND RATIONAL DECISIONS

CHARLES LOCKHARTTexas Christian University

Numerous cultural approachescontend in comparative politics; politi-cal science generally; and related fields such as anthropology, sociol-

ogy, and social psychology.1 Furthermore, cultural approaches have attracteda range of criticism. In this article I defer to the fine work of others with respectto surveys of cultural approaches and some ranges of criticism (Dittmer, 1977;

862

AUTHOR’S NOTE:I want to thank Dennis Coyle, Richard Ellis, Chalmers Johnson, BrendonSwedlow, and two anonymous Comparative Political Studies reviewers for helpful comments onprevious versions of this article.

COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES, Vol. 32 No. 7, October 1999 862-893© 1999 Sage Publications, Inc.

1. A few prominent examples in these categories include Inglehart (1997, 1988); Lipset(1996, 1990); Putnam (1993); Putnam, Leonardi, and Nanetti (1988); Wilson (1997, 1992);Huntington (1996); Almond and Verba (1963); Verba et al. (1987); Verba, Nie, and Iim (1978);

at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 4, 2016cps.sagepub.comDownloaded from

http://cps.sagepub.com/

Lane, 1992; Ross, 1997). My own criticism is focused on matters of particu-lar relevance to my positive agenda: showing how one version of politicalculture theory, grid-group theory (Douglas, 1982a; Thompson, Ellis, &Wildavsky, 1990), helps to explain institutional form and political changeand fosters complementary linkages between political culture theory, institu-tional analysis, and rational choice theory in comparative politics.

THE CASE AGAINST CULTURAL EXPLANATIONS

Three criticisms hold particular relevance for this agenda. In the narrow-est, scholars argue with features of the “first wave” of postwar Americanpolitical culture studies (Almond, 1956; Almond & Coleman, 1960; Almond &Powell, 1966; Almond & Verba, 1963; Pye & Verba, 1965). These studiespromoted an “allegiant participant” ideal that the United States resembledmore closely than other societies (Lijphart, 1984). Furthermore, the function-alist orientation that these studies adopted toward political development hada system-preserving bias (LaPalombara, 1987).

Two broader and deeper deficiencies have been attributed to theories ofpolitical culture generally. First, many scholars regard institutional form asfundamental. Institutionalists are skeptical of causal linkages between cul-ture and its alleged consequences (Orloff & Skocpol, 1984) and origins (Hall,1986, p. 34) because for them human activity inevitably fits the procedures ofthe institutions that fill persons’ lives. Persons are less creatures of choicethan of habit and duty, honoring the obligations of their institutional niches(March & Olsen, 1989). These scholars commonly view culture as insubstan-tial and residual (Berliner, 1988; Coleman, 1990; Lowi, 1984) and hold thattheories of political culture lack promise for developing political science.

Second, scholars often argue that cultural explanations cannot account forpolitical change (Johnson, 1982; Steinmo, 1994). Rogowski (1974) offers anincisive statement of this position (pp. 3-17). His argument against culturalexplanation rests on a critique of the conception of socialization associatedwith first-wave studies. This conception of “cumulative socialization” is con-cisely detailed by Eckstein (1988), who believes that early learning acts as a“filter” for later learning (pp. 790-791). So earlier learning becomes deeplyrooted and resilient to change. Furthermore, these filters help to construct

Lockhart / CULTURAL CONTRIBUTIONS 863

Laitin (1986); and North (1990); Elazar (1980); Feldman and Zaller (1992); Harrison (1993);Jones (1994); and Hinich and Munger (1996); Shweder (1991) and Benedict (1934); Parsons andShils (1951); Pye (1962) and Whiting (1980).



orientations that fit various pieces of learning into larger coherent patterns. Inthis view, culture amounts to established patterns of attending to, and inter-preting, a complex ambiguous world. Such cultures carry inertia that makesrapid adjustment unlikely (Eckstein, 1988, p. 796).

Articulating a theme echoed by others recently (March & Olsen, 1989),Rogowski doubts that early learning is crucial. He draws on German experi-ence in advocating this view. Extensive support for the Nazi regime in the late1930s was generally attributed to authoritarian cultural orientations amongGermans. Yet, by the early 1970s, the Federal Republic had acquired aquarter-century’s experience as a democracy with broad popular support.Because he sees no significant intergenerational differences in this support,Rogowski concludes that cultural explanations of this change run contrary tothe first-wave’s emphasis on the importance of early learning and are thus adhoc. Rogowski’s analysis pits culture against rational choice theory, whichportrays persons as adept at adjusting behavior to realize their interests undershifting circumstances.

These two deeper reservations with theories of political culture portraythem at odds with widely practiced contemporary forms of political explana-tion: institutional analysis and rational choice theory. If these claims wereaccurate, culture would likely hold little value for the development of com-parative political studies. But it is intuitively unreasonable to think that cul-ture is irrelevant to institutional development and a theory of instrumentalpreferences. How do persons know what form their institutions should takeor what values, objectives, and interests their instrumental choices shouldrealize if not through culture? Following Eckstein (1997), I argue that socialscience is a science of culture. A new entrant in the field of conceptualiza-tions of culture, grid-group theory, surmounts many of the limitations associ-ated with previous theories of political culture.2

SURMOUNTING LIMITATIONS ATTRIBUTEDTO THEORIES OF POLITICAL CULTURE

AN INTRODUCTION TO GRID-GROUP THEORY

Grid-group theory was conceived in sociology (Durkheim, 1897/1951),refined in cultural anthropology (Evans-Pritchard, 1940; Douglas, 1978,

864 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / October 1999

2. Although Ross (1997, p. 62) is less encouraged by grid-group theory’s overall potentialthan I, he also sees its particular strength as fostering complementary contributions betweenpolitical culture approaches and rational choice theory (pp. 46, 50).



1982a, 1982b, 1986, 1992), and recently advanced and applied in politicalscience and related areas (Coyle & Ellis, 1994; Ellis, 1993; Holling, 1979;Schwarz & Thompson, 1990; Thompson, Ellis, & Wildavsky, 1990). Thetheory explains how persons derive a limited range of answers to basic socialquestions such as: How does the world work? What are humans really like?To whom am I accountable (Wildavsky, 1994). Grid-group theorists arguethat persons’ answers to these questions produce orientations toward twobasic social dimensions: legitimacy of external prescription (grid) andstrength of affiliation with others (group).3 The theory thus helps to fill anotorious void in the social sciences (Becker, 1976, p. 133) by explaininghow distinctive social-relations preferences are formed as consequences ofacquiring various grid and group positions (Schwartz & Thompson, 1990, p. 49;see below: pp. 870-871). The range of actual social practice is constrainedbecause only four general ways—each admitting some variations—ofresponding to these questions are socially viable.4 Preferences for variouspatterns of social relations prompt supporting justifications or cultural biases


3. By “legitimacy of external prescription” I refer to the varying ease with which personsaccept that other persons’ judgments are valid for, and binding on, them. For a career-enlistedperson in a military service, for instance, this legitimacy is apt to be high because he or she willhave chosen a life that routinely involves accepting the instructions of officers with few questions.

4. Although this claim is controversial, it is obviously less limiting than the widely acceptednotion that only variations on two ways of life—hierarchy and individualism—are sociallyviable; see Lindblom (1977). There is also a fair amount of empirical analysis supporting thisclaim; see Evans-Pritchard (1940), Dumont (1980), Strathern (1971), and Uchendu (1965).

In addition, Fiske (1993), Maruyama (1980), and Lichbach (1995) have independentlyderived similar typologies. The similarities between Lichbach’s market, community, contract,and hierarchy options for resolving collective action problems and grid-group theory’s individu-alistic, egalitarian, fatalistic and hierarchical ways of life are particularly striking. Lichbach’scontract option presents a more positive face than fatalism as portrayed by Banfield (1958).However, as Mars (1982, pp. 66-69) and Douglas (1996, pp. 93-94, 183-187) show, fatalists dofairly well in some institutional niches.

Moreover, the problem of fitting a negative or avoidant perspective into typologies of socialorientations is a general one. For instance, in psychology the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator(MBTI), which is widely used among practitioners in a variety of organizational settings (Myers& Myers, 1980), is frequently criticized for having no way to incorporate negative personal char-acteristics. In its scheme persons simply have “different gifts.” To include less socially construc-tive characteristics, academic psychologists have derived a five-factor model of personality(McCrae & Costa, 1987). Four of these factors (extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and con-scientiousness) appear to parallel the four polar pairs of the MBTI, but the fifth factor (neuroti-cism) has no counterpart in the MBTI (McCrae & Costa, 1989). Some grid-group theoristsinclude a fifth nonsocially interactive way of life—the hermit’s—that I do not apply in this arti-cle; see Thompson (1982).



and vice versa. Together, preferences and justifications form distinctive waysof life or cultures (see Figure 1).

For instance, low tolerance for external prescription, reinforced by weakfeelings of group membership, produces an individualistic way of life organ-ized largely by self-regulation among voluntary contract-based networks ofpersons. Promoting such a way of life among persons perceived as self-interested, with roughly equal broad competencies such as rationality, is onepurpose of Smith’sWealth of Nations. Increasingly strong feelings of groupaffiliation together with weak prescription entail a way of life that grid-grouptheorists call egalitarian. From this perspective, broadly equal humans,unmarred by natural flaws destructive of social harmony, prefer to organizeinto small groups that reach collective decisions through discussionsdesigned to produce consensus. This process is reminiscent of Rousseau’sdescriptions of the social ideal inThe Social Contract. High feelings of groupaffiliation in conjunction with perceptions legitimizing strong external pre-scription create a realm of hierarchy. In this view, unequal humans with vari-ous social shortcomings that require improvement through institutional guid-ance are arrayed in vertical collectives. The ideal polis portrayed by Plato inThe Republicillustrates this way of life. Weak feelings of group affiliation,


Figure 1. Grid-Group Theory’s dimensions and cultures.



intersecting with perceptions of external direction, elicit a way of life thatgrid-group theorists call fatalism. The unhappy combination of recognizingconstraint by others but not feeling part of any broader social collective pre-disposes fatalists to social avoidance rather than interaction. As a conse-quence of avoidance, fatalists rarely write political theory; their views have,however, been well portrayed by others (Banfield, 1958; Douglas, 1996,pp. 93-94; Mars, 1982, pp. 66-69; Turnbull, 1972).5

Grid-group theorists argue that all four ways of life are present in varyingproportions in all societies.6 Similarly to the interaction of different aminoacids in biological systems, each way of life provides services for the oth-ers that they cannot create for themselves.Societies thus tend to be “multi-cultural” in this sense. Sharp differences in the historical contingencies thatsocieties face contribute importantly to variations in the relative influence ofrival cultures among them. It is difficult to imagine, for instance, the individu-alism of Hobbes’claim that, when the sovereign’s directives nullify the basisfor his authority (rescuing one from the perpetual threat of violent death),one’s obligation may be set aside gaining much credence among the encir-cled continental Germans. Nearly perpetual rivalries among early Germanprincipalities and the later encirclement of Germanic territory by states har-boring security fears and revanchist aspirations virtually assured an influen-tial position for the culture of hierarchy in German society. Even in the highlyindividualistic United States, fears for internal order arising from the GreatDepression and external security prompted by the Second World War con-tributed to greater influence for hierarchy and the construction of a largermore active American state across the late 1930s and early 1940s.

Individualism is a culture more applicable to societies relatively insulatedfrom severe security concerns. Low-grid cultures were initially better repre-sented in what became the United States as a consequence of early immi-grants fleeing various aspects of hierarchy (Lipset, 1990). Thereafter, theready availability of real property afforded greater realization of the practicesof the liberal theorists than was possible in Europe, and all cultures in theAmerican colonies found some mutual accommodation in variations of rep-resentative government and civic virtue. The Revolutionary War furtherdepleted and demoralized the ranks of hierarchists. Subsequently, the pre-vailing predispositions of individualists were “crystallized” or institutional-ized in a new Constitution, and relative isolation from other powerful


5. For exceptions to the reticence of fatalists seeEcclesiastes9:11 and Schopenhauer’sTheWorld as Will and Representation.

6. Empirical confirmation of this tenet in instances of large-scale societies is in its earlystages. See Dake and Wildavsky (1990), Grendstad (1990, 1995), Grendstad and Selle (1997),Ellis and Thompson (1997), and Coughlin and Lockhart (1998).



societies helped individualists retain a dominant, although (as I discussbelow) not a monopoly, position across much of American history.

Although the peculiarities of the historical contingencies that societiesconfront influence the specific character of their policy responses, grid-group theory’s cultures have distinctive predispositions with respect to insti-tutional design. The characteristic institutional preferences of rival ways oflife suggest that the sharp distinction that Lowi (1984) and other structuralistsdraw between culture and structure is misguided. Instead, the two realmshave a symbiotic relationship; culture is an important source for the forma-tion and sustenance of social institutions and vice versa.

MUST CULTURAL THEORIES PLAY FAVORITES?

I begin my argument that grid-group theory’s concept of culture is lesssusceptible to problems frequently associated with theories of political cul-ture by returning to the two controversial features of the first-wave studiesthat I mentioned above. First, grid-group theory includes inherent safeguardsagainst global favoritism of one culture. Each of the four rival ways of lifemakes distinctive socially valuable contributions to the multicultural socie-ties that they comprise. As J. S. Mill (On Liberty) suggests, individualisticinfluence is crucial for the development and sustenance of individual rights.Persons armed with these rights have produced unprecedented degrees of onevision of social progress in some Western societies. This vision employs per-sonal liberty and market (efficiency)-driven technological progress to realizeeconomic prosperity. This combination of institutions is unique to individu-alism (Olson, 1993).

Hierarchists, for instance, focus on other social goods and are especiallyconcerned with the creation and preservation of expertise and order. Particu-larly when spurred by historical contingencies that pose severe threats, hier-archists are capable of remarkable feats of social mobilization such asStalin’s industrialization drive (Lindblom, 1977) or the development effortslaunched by the Meiji Restoration (Johnson, 1982). So hierarchists maysponsor more social progress than Mill was inclined to grant. But libertystemming from individual rights and market-based concern for economicefficiency are not the institutions that provide hierarchical development.Instead, hierarchical social development is guided by a master plan devisedby societally recognized experts. From this perspective, a market-basedprocess, driven by the countless decisions of persons exercising liberty, is toohaphazard and chaotic.

Egalitarians do not value either of the preceding conceptions of develop-ment. For them, social progress is defined in terms of achieving social




circumstances (ideally, small-scale groupings) that facilitate person-respecting social solidarity (Titmuss, 1971). Both the individualists’marketsand the hierarchists’ bureaucracies are apt to fall short of recognizing thepeculiar capacities of all persons, relegating those whose skills enjoy littlemarket demand or fit poorly with the direction chosen by society’s recog-nized experts to the fringes of social life. The inherent stratifying effects ofmarkets and bureaucracies create a central point of contention for egalitarianswho strive to reduce status differentials among persons and to build senses ofself-esteem, caring, and inclusive social equality.7

When society is confronted by particular historical contingencies, one ofthese cultures and its characteristic social institutions may be more importantto societal viability than others (Lockhart & Franzwa, 1994). For example, anextensive centrally directed mobilization for development was probably cru-cial in preventing Japan from experiencing the sort of subjugation and dis-memberment that China suffered in the late 19th century. But grid-group the-ory allows its practitioners to be evenhanded in recognizing all four culturesas sources of potentially crucial social contributions.

Second, for grid-group theoristssocietal viability is an unintendedbyproduct of the activities of adherents of distinctive ways of life. In contrastto many other political culturalists, they argue that the “system” that culturaladherents strive to maintain is their own way of life rather than multiculturalsociety. Individualists seek to implant their favored institutions more thor-oughly throughout society, and the adherents of other cultures have similarobjectives. The inevitable result of this intercultural, but intrasocietal, con-flict is social change as issues raised by historical contingencies favor oneculture and then another. If one culture is highly dominant—hierarchy in theSoviet Union—the pace of change may be slow. But as we have recently wit-nessed, possibilities for innovation will eventually increase as historical con-tingencies afford improved opportunities to other cultures. The adherents ofeach culture, then, strive perpetually to reshape society more thoroughly intheir own image.


7. Fatalism is a less socially interactive culture than the three just discussed. Nonetheless, ittoo provides a crucial social service in the form of a reservoir for social discontent. This reservoirrepresents a place of retreat for those who are unable or unwilling to sustain the competition,regulation, or emotional intensity required by individualistic markets, hierarchical bureaucra-cies, and egalitarian groups, respectively. Furthermore, egalitarians strive to recruit allies fromthis reservoir for their perpetual struggle against social stratification.



IS CULTURE RESIDUAL?

I now examine, in turn, how grid-group theory allays each of the twodeeper concerns that many scholars voice with respect to cultural explana-tion. Culture’s centrality to social explanation depends on how it is con-ceived. As Eckstein (1988) laments, “The termculture, unfortunately, has noprecise, settled meaning in the social sciences” (p. 801). In part, grid-grouptheorists conceive of culture as the beliefs and values with which various fac-tions justify their rival ways of life (Thompson et al., 1990, pp. 1-38). Thesecultural biases are based on beliefs about the natural and social environmentsthat rest ultimately on experience, particularly childhood and adolescentsocialization.8 Distinctive conceptions of humans follow from specificbeliefs about the world. Together, these beliefs about humans and their worldlocate persons with respect to the grid and group dimensions and spawn pref-erences for specific patterns of social relations.

But grid-group theorists also recognize cultures in the distinctive institu-tions that arise from these social-relations preferences (Douglas, 1986;Katznelson, 1997, pp. 105-106).9 This theory illuminates tighter, more spe-cific relations between disparate constrained sets of practical objectives andinterests that rival clusters of beliefs and values foster and the distinctiveinstitutions that embody these sets than other theories of political culture.This characteristic enables theorists to capture key features of persons’politi-cal worlds more effectively. Thus, grid-group theory generates clearer, moreeasily measurable concepts than alternative theories of political culture. Forinstance, individualists perceive a bountiful and resilient natural (Locke,Sec-ond Treatise, chap. 5) and social (Nozick, 1974) world. They also viewhumans as self-interested and equal in broad capacities. These humans arethus properly motivated and sufficiently capable to master their own fates in acornucopian environment. Accordingly, individualists evince low-grid pref-erences, relying primarily on self-regulation among persons. Government,with its inherent coercion, should be limited. They reveal their low-groupposition in preferences for working through networks of persons linked byvoluntary contractual relations rather than through ascribed groups.

Egalitarians, in contrast, see a fragile environment. Not only is nature sub-ject to depredation but social contexts—the inner city—are easily perverted


8. Lockhart (1999, chap. 2) shows that, even for prominent political leaders, experienceswith significant others during childhood and adolescence shape cultural identities that influenceadult professional decisions. Early introduction into the cultures of grid-group theory and reli-ance on these cultures in adult political life are both facilitated by the broad basic issues on whichgrid-group theory’s cultures focus.

9. Similarly, Spiro (1984) refers to institutions as “culturally-constituted elements.”



as well. Egalitarians believe that humans are naturally benign in their motivesand broadly equal in both basic capacities and needs (Gewirth, 1978), thusfitting with this delicate environment. Yet, humans are easy prey for destructivesocial stratification. Egalitarians believe that by undoing natural human equal-ity, stratification creates arrogance in the dominant and resentment in the domi-nated, perverting in the process the natural goodness of all. Accordingly,egalitarians exhibit a high-group position, preferring to deal with the hazardsposed by fragile environments through the collective resources of close-knitgroups that share a limited material bounty fairly equally—exemplified bythe aphorism “live simply so that others may simply live” or as Schumacher(1973) had it, “small is beautiful.” These groups are ideally relatively smalland manifest their low-grid position by reaching collective decisions throughopen discussion resulting in consensus (Downey, 1986; Zisk, 1992).10

Hierarchists believe in more complex tolerant/perverse environments.Both the natural and social worlds are sufficiently robust to support someexploitation, but if humans press too hard, disaster will follow. Figuratively,humans live on mesas, not needing to worry about minor variations of thetable-top terrain, but having to stay clear of the encircling cliffs. Experts invarious matters are required to discern crucial natural and social boundariesnot equally evident to everyone as well as for ascertaining how humansshould adjust their behavior in conformity with these limits. For this high-grid culture, then, many of the obvious interpersonal differences in specifictalents that low-grid individualists and egalitarians believe to be morally andsocially inconsequential take on significance. Hierarchists’high-group posi-tion appears in their preference for organizing societies into verticallyarrayed collectives. High-grid preferences appear in the way these institu-tions bring experts and ordinary persons together, the former providing thedual services of education and social control for the latter. Authorities thusoccupy ordinary persons with sanctioned activities, simultaneously improvingtheir lives and enabling them to contribute more appropriately to society.11


10. Both low-grid cultures frequently form coalitions with hierarchy to gain specific benefitsand to project their ways of life into society at large. Thus, varying forms of limited governmentand social democracy, for instance, are adopted by individualists and egalitarians, respectively.

11. Space considerations require essentially ignoring the less socially interactive fatalistsfrom here on in this article. Briefly, fatalists perceive the world as operating randomly andhumans, fittingly, as capricious. Accordingly, they prefer to adopt a low-group position, attempt-ing to stay out of harm’s way by minimizing their interaction with unpredictable uncontrollableforces. In those social relations that remain unavoidable, they prefer to rely on the coercive tech-niques of hierarchists rather than the varying consensual practices of low-grid cultures to limitthe damage that capricious others are apt to produce.



So persons draw on their cultures not only to interpret the world (North,1995, p. 17; Scott, 1985, p. xvii) but also to shape it (Ross, 1997, p. 64), build-ing distinctive institutions that realize their rival beliefs and values. Their per-ceptions of matters such as the world about them, their fellow humans, andthe forms of social relations appropriate for these humans under such condi-tions provide crucial guidance for institutional development. I develop thisthesis by drawing on two examples—one American, the other German—ofpersons employing their cultural beliefs and values to shape institutions indistinctive predictable ways.12

Late 18th-century colonists in North America worked their way throughseveral governmental variations. Dominion status in an empire and a looseconfederation of local popularly elected legislatures were preferred by hier-archists and egalitarians, respectively. For instance, the writings of JonathanBoucher and Thomas Paine provide prototypical examples of hierarchicaland egalitarian views on humans and their world, respectively (Levy, 1992,pp. 86-91, 73-80). Boucher was as well an implacable advocate of remainingwith England, whereas Paine worked indefatigably for local legislatures.These two men are typical of others in terms of their associating empire withhierarchy and limited local government with egalitarianism (Main, 1964;Wood, 1969).

But these options were successively challenged and overcome by theRevolution and the replacement of the Articles of Confederation with a newConstitution. This Constitution was furthered by a coalition between hierar-chists and individualists. The former, having lost on the issue of dominion,found the Articles incapable of delivering the security and order they desiredand sought improved circumstances through a coalition with some individu-alists who, following egalitarian attacks on specific forms of property, sharedimportant practical objectives and interests with hierarchists (Beard,1913/1965). Political-economic elites’ disaffection with life under the Arti-cles afforded Madison the opportunity for suspending existing institutionsand creating innovative alternatives that realized the Lockean values, objec-tives, and interests prominent in his education (Ketcham, 1971, chaps. 1-2).As Madison’s appeals for ratification of the Constitution (Federalist,10and51) reveal, its separation of powers defines the form of governing institutionsfavored by those whose views of self-interested human nature and visions of


12. I employ American and German examples throughout this article to illustrate and supportmy argument. I rely on the United States primarily for its familiarity across American compara-tivists regardless of their regional specialities and on Germany because of the exceptional impor-tance its experience has held for authors skeptical of culture’s explanatory capacity (e.g.,Rogowski, 1974; Rohrschneider, 1994).



a bountiful human condition construct the grid-group position of individual-ism. His unusual scheme of checks and balances is rarely duplicated outsidethe exceptionally individualistic United States.

Rohrschneider’s (1994) study of Berlin’s united parliament also clearlyreveals how cultural values and the related practical objectives and intereststhat derive from them shape institutions. Rorhschneider finds that membersof parliament (MPs) from the former West Berlin conceive of democracy dif-ferently than MPs from the former East Berlin. In contrast to the individual-rights version of democracy favored by western MPs, eastern MPs adhere toan egalitarian view of democracy relying heavily on plebiscitarian proce-dures and relatively equal material distribution. Furthermore, parliamentaryexperiences refine views arising from MPs’ early socialization (Rohrschneider,1994, p. 932). So the institutions in which persons spend their lives shapetheir beliefs and values; institutions form and sustain cultures.

But it does not follow that culture is residual, for there is another causalloop to this process. The institutions that socialized Rohrschneider’sMPs—largely to allegiance in the West and to opposition in the East wherefew current Berlin MPs have close ties to the former German DemocraticRepublic (GDR)—were constructed through processes involving consider-able extrasocietal influence designed to support particular beliefs and values.External powers helped to shape the institutions of the Federal Republic andthe GDR roughly in the images of individualism and hierarchy, respectively.The United States, whose dominant culture disapproved of hierarchy as thepreeminent source for the Federal Republic’s Basic Law, constructed—withsympathetic Germans—a competitive parliamentary democracy and marketeconomy. In the East, the Soviets—with sympathetic Germans—created dis-tinctive hierarchical institutions, embodying the Soviet belief in a society ledby an expert elite toward an improved historical era. Although the relativelyegalitarian eastern MPs in the current Berlin parliament resist hierarchicalmeans, their conceptions of democracy nonetheless reveal a shared high-group position that the GDR’s institutions surely helped to shape. For egali-tarian eastern MPs, individualism is sullied by both its general associationwith personal greed and the complicity of its industrial adherents with theNazis. So, individualistic and high-group cultures formed and sustained theinstitutions of the Federal Republic and the GDR, respectively.

Furthermore, the democratic institutions of the new united state (Land) ofBerlin are likely to be somewhat different from those that characterized WestBerlin in the past. Democrats from western Berlin will persist in attemptingto realize democracy through greater protection of various individual rights.But their newly arrived democratic colleagues from eastern Berlin will striveto develop democracy by incorporating sometimes compatible, but often




contradictory, efforts to let “the people” decide and to effect greater eco-nomic redistribution. This flow of causation, through which cultures shapeinstitutions, is no more residual than the flow through which institutionsacculturate persons.

This point does not address Hall’s (1986) concerns as to where and howpersons acquire cultures (p. 34). I cannot elaborate this matter sufficiently here,but there is no mystery about the general answer (Lockhart, 1998, chap. 2).Briefly, if we examine the process of basic socialization (learning aboutbecoming a person), it is clear that in the process of growing up, personsacquire beliefs and values that identify them as adherents of one or another ofgrid-group theory’s cultures. The broad fundamental issues on which grid-group theory focuses (does the social environment present opportunities orthreats, are humans relatively equal or unequal, is centralized expertise pref-erable to a grassroots consensus) make this acquisition virtually inevitable.This process is distinct from the adult professional socialization (learning arole) that March and Olsen (1989) view as influential in explaining the pref-erences of persons who compose political institutions. As Madison’s activi-ties show, March and Olsen’s narrow focus leaves unanswered why adultssometimes discard the institutions in which they live and create others in theirplace.

I close this section by responding to a related objection to cultural expla-nations raised by contemporary institutionalists. March and Olsen (1989)find culturalists’ claims about the influence of exogenous socializationunpersuasive (pp. 40-41). That is, how can socialization that political elitesacquire in early life influence their actions in the professional institutions ofadult life? Grid-group theory questions the boundaries applied in both first-wave political socialization and contemporary institutional analysis. Theformer tended to define political socialization narrowly (e.g., party affilia-tion). Grid-group theorists argue that broader forms of learning—How exten-sive are the opportunities afforded by the social environment? How capableare humans of mastering their own fates? What institutions are suited forvarious worlds and humans?—hold political implications that carry over intoa broad range of adult activities.

Contemporary institutional analysts also perceive varying life experi-ences as too compartmentalized. Why should answers that are acquired inadolescence to the broad social questions in the previous paragraph not carryover into varying social contexts in later life? Self-selection provides an obvi-ous transfer mechanism. Hierarchists are more likely to choose careers in themilitary services and the Catholic Church than individualists or egalitarians.In turn, individualists are more likely to succeed as entrepreneurs than lessflexible hierarchists and less materially motivated egalitarians. And




contemporary American social workers are more apt to be adherents of one ofthe high-group cultures (egalitarianism under Aid to Families with Depen-dent Children [AFDC], more hierarchical under Temporary Assistance forNeedy Families [TANF]) than individualists. Professional experience rou-tinely reinforces and refines orientations stemming from early socialization.So, small businesspersons may become progressively less inclined to acceptwhat they see as government interference in market activities. But earlysocialization to individualism likely contributes to persons’ developingcareers in small business.

IS CULTURE CAPABLE OF EXPLAININGPOLITICAL CHANGE?

Tighter linkages between rival sets of beliefs and values and the distinctiveinstitutions they construct create clearer indices of culture. These indicescontribute, in turn, to more empirically testable propositions (Coughlin &Lockhart, 1998; Dake & Wildavsky, 1990; Ellis & Thompson, 1997; Grend-stad, 1995; Grendstad & Selle, 1997). I now extend earlier applications ofgrid-group theory by employing it in the explanation of political change.According to this theory, culture arises from experience, and earlier workapplying the theory to this task argued that historical contingencies changecultural biases through surprise. That is, the world no longer works the wayone’s culture predicts—for example, individualists’ faith that conscientiouseffort will be rewarded (Thompson et al., 1990, pp. 69-93). In response to theGreat Depression, for instance, some persons who had considered them-selves self-reliant recognized that new social circumstances left them depen-dent on help from more active public institutions.13 Their shift toward thehigh-group cultures supported Roosevelt’s efforts to build a more activestate. As their beliefs about the world changed, so did their views of humansand their preferences with respect to institutions. As Richard Nixon laterremarked, “I am now a Keynesian” (Silk, 1972, p. 14).

This is the sort of change that Eckstein (1988) argues political culture the-ory precludes (p. 796). Grid-group theory is less restrictive. Two points arepertinent to a clarification of differences. First, as I shall soon show, thismeans of culture contributing to political change (persons dropping one cul-ture and adopting another) is rare. Other mechanisms, more compatible withfirst-wave political culture theory, account for most of culture’s contributionsto political change. But grid-group theorists do emphasize the lifelong


13. Many individualists did not change their views. Herbert Hoover, for instance, continuedto travel the country throughout the 1930s, giving speeches to receptive audiences that railedagainst Roosevelt’s policies (Abbott, 1991, p. 236).



character of socialization and think that extraordinary events in later life mayoverride aspects of earlier socialization. For grid-group theory, culture pro-vides a conception of how the world works that supports certain forms ofsocial behavior as moral and prudent. If persons’ experiences provide clearmessages that the world is no longer working the way it was once perceived todo, we should not be surprised if some persons, particularly those with hybridcultural biases (to be introduced below), apply a different culture.

Second, Eckstein, similarly to Rogowski, portrays political culture theoryas a rival to rational choice theory, so he emphasizes their differences, includ-ing the former’s stress on the lasting effects of early socialization. Grid-grouptheorists see rational choice theory and their own as complementary. The lat-ter offers an explanation of social preferences, and the former explains howpersons go about realizing what they prefer (Becker, 1976; Lockhart &Coughlin, 1992; Wildavsky, 1994). In this view, explaining a person’schoices does not involve a rivalry between self-interest and culture. Everyoneis self-interested in some sense, but rival cultures define the self and its appro-priate motivations and interests differently (Lockhart & Wildavsky, 1998).Adherents of rival cultures thus exhibit distinctive conceptions of self-interested behavior. For instance, both individualists and hierarchists strive tobe sincere. But to be sincere according to the low-grid low-group standards ofindividualism, a person must express her inner thoughts and feelings franklyto essentially equal others even if these others will not be pleased by herviews. In contrast, among the members of a high-grid, high-group hierarchysincerity requires behaving in accordance with externally imposed require-ments that derive from one’s position in a social ladder of superiors and sub-ordinates and leaving unvoiced inner thoughts and feelings that deviate fromthese guidelines (Pye, 1988, 50-51). So the interests that adherents of rivalcultures seek to realize are distinctive, constrained, and predictable.

In my view, cultures contribute to political change more through creativeproblem solving than surprise-induced cultural shifts. That is, in respondingto threatening historical contingencies, cultures are more likely to adjust theirinstitutions so as to better support their ways of life in altered circumstancesthan to transform themselves into other cultures. I shall consider two suchproblem-solving mechanisms.14 First, particularly in a relatively pluralisticsociety such as the contemporary United States, persons are apt to havesocialization agents that represent different cultures. These persons may


14. This discussion by no means exhausts these mechanisms. Others include conflictbetween cultures (e.g., modern social insurance arising from hierarchical Bismarck’s conflictwith socialist egalitarians) and historical contingencies splitting a culture into factions who dis-agree about priorities among values as well as how to realize their highest priorities. Forinstance, the “opening” of Japan by Western powers split hierarchical Japanese elites into those



retain sympathies for rival cultures, particularly with respect to certaindomains of social life, thus developing hybrid cultural biases (Hochschild,1981; Walzer, 1983). Consider the situation of a hypothetical attorney who isalso a wife and mother. Following a series of academic and professional men-tors, she applies individualism toward workplace issues. But, in accordancewith themes introduced to her by feminists, she practices egalitarianism inher family: roughly equal spousal sharing of household responsibilities andparticipation of the children in family decisions. She has, then, anegalitarian-individualistic (EI or IE) hybrid cultural bias.

Historical contingencies may alter the cross-pressures weighing on such abias and contribute to political change in the process. The emergence of thefamily leave issue that sharpens tensions between the home and the work-place, for example, may prompt this attorney to broaden the application ofher egalitarian cultural bias to an aspect of the workplace by endorsing newinstitutional supports for working parents at the expense of the firm’s eco-nomic efficiency. In so doing she does not replace her culture of individual-ism with a new culture of egalitarianism; rather, she shifts marginally the wayshe applies her two preexisting cultures across domains of social life. Institu-tional pressures, such as those on which March and Olsen (1989) focus, arelikely to attenuate a person’s flexibility in this regard but not necessarily con-strain it entirely.

Issues that prompt such shifts arise from contingencies that likely defyprediction, but the intrapersonal mechanism that triggers the revised applica-tion of particular cultures can be specified. This trigger involves a shift inrelevant analogies that has the effect of relocating a boundary between socialcategories. Heretofore, for example, this attorney has associated workplacematters with an individualistic efficiency model and family matters with anegalitarian caring model. So long as coworkers are viewed as workers, theefficiency model applies to their activities. But the family leave issue revealssome coworkers as parents and suggests the application of the caring model.In these revised circumstances many persons may gradually begin applyingegalitarianism to an issue on which their practice has been individualistic.These shifts in the application of hybrid cultural biases may alter the relativeinfluence of rival cultures and prompt institutional change.

A second mechanism through which culture contributes to politicalchange is also set in motion by historical contingencies. Threatening eventsmay foster changes in relations among cultures, and revised political


who reaffirmed their commitment to a traditional, inward-looking, agriculturally based societyfree from pollution by foreign ideas and the Restoration elites who believed that emulation ofWestern practices was required for sustaining Japanese territorial integrity and independence.See Eckstein’s (1988) discussion of “pattern-maintaining” change (pp. 793-794).



institutions may result from new cultural coalitions. American political his-tory may be viewed as oscillation between various multicultural coalitions.Hartz (1955) was correct about the leading culture in America, but he exag-gerated. Individualism (I), although prominent, is hardly alone (Ellis, 1993).Rather, it provides the stable element of coalitions that for a time oscillatedback and forth between egalitarianism (E) and hierarchy (H). Each of grid-group theory’s cultures shares values with two other cultures: I and E bothsupport personal rights against state authority; I and H both practice socialstratification; and E and H both exhibit direct concern for the social collec-tive’s health. These shared values provide bases for coalitions. But each ofthese cultures is also at odds with the others regarding conflicting beliefs, val-ues, practical objectives, and interests, so political coalitions are temporary.

For example, as Bailyn (1967) relates, in 1760, social stratification arisingfrom hierarchical and individualistic sources was widely accepted in colonialNorth America (pp. 302-303).15 But by the mid-1760s, increasing Englishregulation of the American colonies (e.g., the Stamp Act) began to fostercommon ground between Whig individualists such as Samuel Langdon andegalitarians such as Thomas Paine in opposition to particular forms of strati-fication. Many individualists reacted to increased external regulation byemphasizing a democratic public-action face compatible with egalitarian-ism. This face is familiar from McClosky and Zaller (1984), Hirschman(1982), and Huntington (1981) for whom it forms one pole of Americanpolitical oscillation. Colonial Whigs had grown up under the benign neglectwith which Britain had generally viewed the colonies prior to incurring theexpenses of the French and Indian War and had become accustomed to regu-lating their own social lives. The imposition of new British regulations servedas a trigger for an individualistic-egalitarian (I-E) coalition by bringing indi-vidualists initially to question these British actions and eventually to joinegalitarians in maintaining that institutions that acted so high-handedly werethoroughly corrupt. This antiauthority coalition of low-grid cultures reactedagainst distant insensitive authorities, creating an independent society underthe extremely limited central government provided by the Articles of Con-federation. Concomitantly, it formed new governing institutions in several ofthe states that emphasized local control through an active citizenry operatinglegislatures with limited powers.


15. This brief sketch of American political life from the mid-1760s through the late 1830s isillustrative and generally unexceptional. I am engaged less in historical innovation than in high-lighting the political consequences of shifting cultural coalitions. I have drawn on Bailyn (1967),Wood (1969), Lutz (1980), Main (1964), Wills (1978), Elkins and McKitrick (1994), Hofstadter(1958), Schlesinger (1945), Shain (1995), and Lee (1994).



In the decade following the Revolution, new historical contingencies, espe-cially Shay’s rebellion, left some—not all (Beard, 1913/1965)—propertiedinterests feeling endangered. Perceptions of “desperate debtors” (Hamilton,Federalist,6) using egalitarian state legislatures to attack some forms ofproperty thus provided the trigger for an I-H coalition. Increasingly, individu-alists thought that government needed less to represent ordinary humans thanto filter out their crasser influences (Ellis, 1993, pp. 63-67). The constitu-tional convention of 1787 illustrates the movement of these individualiststoward a coalition with hierarchists such as Alexander Hamilton and Gouver-neur Morris. Under these threats to property, individualists reveal anotherface, this one focused on private material interests, also familiar from McClo-sky and Zaller (1984), Hirschman (1982), and Huntington (1981) for whom itforms the second pole of American political oscillation.16 The resulting Fed-eralist coalition built a more powerful and active national government thanhad existed under the Articles.

However, routine Federalist practices of economic favoritism and exclu-sion—franchises, concessions, charters, and so forth—as well as glorifica-tion of public authority, gradually prompted some individualists to lean againtoward closer relations with egalitarians. This shift reached a crucial juncturein the election of 1800 that produced Thomas Jefferson’s resurgent I-E coali-tion. The trigger in this instance lies in the success of the preceding I-H coali-tion’s efforts to achieve greater social stratification. The Jeffersonian phaseof this coalition was not as ambitious in attacking the Federalist state as manyof its supporters had hoped, and “Jeffersonian” inclinations were actuallyrelaxed for the time after 1812, but the antiauthority character of the Jeffer-sonian period was reasserted by Andrew Jackson’s presidency (1829-1837),which marked another high point in terms of antistatist collaboration


16. Two different coalition patterns characterize a pair of later periods of American politicaldevelopment: the late 1830s-early 1890s (a period of relative individualistic dominance) and theearly 1890s-late 1980s (hierarchical-individualistic [H-I] coalitions oscillating with periods ofrelative individualistic dominance). So, in contrast to McClosky and Zaller (1984), Hirschman(1982), and Huntington (1981), I believe that the poles between which American politics oscil-lates change from time to time. Furthermore, across this extended history, Elazar’s (1984) sub-cultures can be translated into grid-group theory’s categories (Thompson, Ellis, & Wildavsky,1990, pp. 233-245): individualism as individualism, moralism as egalitarianism, and traditional-ism as a version of hierarchy. Making these translations carries two benefits. First, it offers acompelling solution for the dispute about how to relate Elazar’s subcultures (Elazar, 1980; Shar-kansky, 1969; Wirt, 1980; see also Lieske, 1993). Second, the grid-group theory categorizationenables us to get Whigs such as Daniel Webster out of the high-group but low-grid moralism sub-culture and into a more broadly titled high-group, high-grid (hierarchical) culture where theybelong (Howe, 1974). The Whigs also present a problem for Greenstone (1986, 1982), who seesonly competing versions of liberalism outside of the South.



between individualists and egalitarians. Jackson reduced the size and activi-ties of the national government, destroying some aspects of the Federaliststate in the process.

Instances of shifting coalitions stem from unpredictable events, but simi-larly to the situation of hybrid cultural biases, the trigger mechanism can bespecified. In addition to disagreeing with hierarchists and egalitarians onmany matters, individualists share some beliefs and values with hierarchistsand still other beliefs and values with egalitarians. An event that triggers anI-E coalition raises a threat to individualists (e.g., the imposition of externalauthority), which suggests working with egalitarians to construct institutions—an independent society under the Articles or Jackson’s state-bashing presi-dency—that support shared values and the practical objectives that derivefrom them. But such a coalition and the institutions it creates are vulnerableto a dissolution because they do not support the beliefs and values that indi-vidualists share with hierarchists. These values may require an I-H coalitionand the distinctive institutions—the Federalist state—associated with it.

I now return to the sharp changes in Germany between the late 1930s andearly 1970s that Rogowski (1974) uses so effectively against first-wave cul-turalists. Germany appears to be a crucial instance that political culture theo-ries must explain before they can regain credibility. Rapid German transfor-mation from a predominantly hierarchical to a much more individualisticsociety (Dahrendorf, 1967; Grendstad, 1990) is unusual but not miraculous.Historical contingencies prompted the shifting cultural coalitions that pro-duced it, whereas the cultural identities of the shifting coalition partnersshaped the resulting institutional innovations.

As in the preceding American example, the point central to grid-grouptheory’s explanation of German political change is that there was no singlenational culture in Germany. Despite a history of hierarchical dominance, theegalitarian and individualistic cultures were reasonably well developed inGermany by the late 1930s. The former, for instance, provided the basis forthe opposition workers’ socialist movement, and the latter appeared mostnoticeably among entrepreneurs who had long been the constrained lesserpartners in the ruling H-I “blood and iron” coalition.17 These latter cultureshad been discredited by their association with the social and economic turbu-lence of the Weimar period. But the hierarchical faction dominant in the late1930s was the upstart Nazi Party, which was not well respected by more tradi-tional factions of the H-I coalition. After achieving mass popularity through


17. In comparison to the experience of more liberal societies, the events of 1848 slowed thedevelopment of German individualism—inherent in the Reformation—among intellectual cir-cles and affairs of public life such as conceptions of citizenship (Dahrendorf, 1967, p. 387). Seealso Zapf (1986, p. 129).



reestablishing social stability and economic prosperity, the Nazis led Ger-many to destruction in the Second World War. The German regions that ini-tially formed the Federal Republic were dominated by Western societies thatworked selectively with German elites to build individualistic institutions.

Thus, a historical contingency, the unusual openness to external influencecreated by Germany’s wartime destruction, interacted with the presence of asignificant indigenous individualistic culture with which representatives ofthe West could work and facilitated a reversal in the relative influence of thepartners in the long-standing German governing coalition. German individu-alists were encouraged and emboldened by Western colleagues and set aboutconstructing the institutions through which individualists realize their val-ues: a rights-based, competitive, representative, political system and a formof market capitalism. Simultaneously, German hierarchists frequently foundthat their values and the institutions that realized them were discouraged bythe Western allies. During the formal occupation, a coalition of Western andGerman individualists dominated western Germany, reshaping its institutionsin accordance with their values. As the Federal Republic acquired autonomy, itbecame increasingly clear that indigenous German individualists hadreplaced hierarchists as the preeminent partners in the governing coalition.18

Rogowski (1974) puts particular emphasis on a paucity of generationaldifferences in citizen support for this new coalition and its institutions (p. 9).Others have since acquired extensive evidence of intergenerational change.Using participation in political discussion as an index of democratic alle-giance, Baker, Dalton, and Hildebrandt (1981) show that although participa-tion in political discussion increased for five different German generationsbetween 1953 and 1972, there are also sharp and growing intergenerationaldifferences (see pp. 13, 45-52, especially 46). Later generations participatemore actively in political discussion. Across the Federal Republic’s earlydecades, then, it is reasonable to interpret the growing support for individualisticinstitutions (Conradt, 1978, p. 49, 1980; Dalton, 1989, pp. 100-104) as theresultof two factors. First, some cultural shifting occurred among older persons,particularly those with hybrid cultural biases, as a consequence of hierarchi-cal social dominance having produced total defeat in total war. Second and


18. As Padgett (1989) shows, egalitarians have become more influential since the late 1960s,and varying cultural coalitions dominate predictable policy areas (p. 125). Corporatist issuesinvolve the Christian Democratic Party (CDU) and Social Democratic Party (SPD) in a loosehierarchy-egalitarianism (H-E) coalition; market issues involve the CDU and Free DemocraticParty (FDP) in a loose I-H coalition, and individual rights issues involve the SPD and the FDP ina loose E-I coalition. More recently, Noelle-Neumann (1994) and Steinmetz (1994) indicate thatreunification and the influx of persons seeking asylum, respectively, have prompted some resur-gence of hierarchy.



more significant, increasing proportions of individualistic and egalitariancultural biases developed among younger persons socialized under thesharply different circumstances of the Federal Republic.

Grid-group theory thus offers an interpretation of German responses toshifting events across the 1930s-1970s that does not force culturalists intostrained unconvincing improvisation. First, with respect to coalition dynam-ics, grid-group theory focuses on an externally prompted and supportedtransposition of the two cultures forming Germany’s long-standing dominantcoalition. Historical contingencies of the early cold war period facilitated theactivities of individualists in western Germany and hindered their hierarchi-cal counterparts. So, rather than relying on the process about whichRogowski is understandably skeptical (an entire society of hierarchists rap-idly reorienting and adopting individualism), the initial transformation of theFederal Republic was accomplished by emboldened indigenous individual-ists replacing hierarchists in many positions throughout the governing coali-tion. Thus, what had once been an H-I coalition became an I-H coalition. Thenew institutions that this coalition constructed then increasingly socializedthe population to allegiance.

Second, with respect to persons with hybrid cultural biases such as KonradAdenauer (IH), the influential historical contingencies of the early postwarperiod encouraged HI and IH hybrids to apply their individualistic faces moreextensively across domains of public life. These contingencies provided con-siderable scope for realizing individualistic ambitions and more limited ave-nues for achieving hierarchical aspirations. More significant from the stand-point of using culture to explain political change, over time thesecontingencies triggered shifts in relevant analogies. Hierarchy becameincreasingly associated with the German defeat and the stagnant punitiveEast. Individualism, in contrast, became progressively associated with grow-ing prosperity and the ascendent constructively interventionist (e.g., Mar-shall Plan) West. These circumstances encouraged a growing tendencyamong West Germans with IH or HI cultural biases to apply their individual-ism in public life.

LIMITATIONS AND REFUTATION OFGRID-GROUP THEORY APPLICATIONS

It seems reasonable to point out certain limitations to various applicationsof grid-group theory as well as some likely ways in which these limitationsmight lead to refutations of particular applications. First, the various histori-cal contingencies on which my examples have drawn, although possibly lesscontingent from other theoretical perspectives, are likely to be unpredictable




as to timing and strength. In any case, grid-group theory makes no claim tobeing able to make such predictions.

Second, the only prediction that grid-group theory makes with respect tothe specific character of institutional responses to various historical contin-gencies is that they will support the basic beliefs and values of the cultureresponsible for them. Bismarck’s predecessors had mostly dealt with varioussocial hazards among the poor through limited public charity modeled onRoman Catholic practice. Yet, in an example of what Eckstein (1988) calls“pattern maintaining change” (pp. 793-794), Bismarck created nationalsocial insurance programs. Bismarck’s central beliefs, values, practicalobjectives, and interests were similar to those of his hierarchical predeces-sors, but the specific circumstances he faced (egalitarian socialist industrialdisruption in a delicately balanced diplomatic atmosphere) were new, and hedeveloped new institutions to maintain his values and related practical objec-tives under these new circumstances. Grid-group theory could be used to pre-dict that the hierarchical Bismarck would be more willing to construct newstate institutions in support of his values than would individualists, but itcould not have predicted the specifics of his innovation.

Third and perhaps most important, it is not yet clear how widely, strongly,and persistently grid-group theory’s cultures are held among various politicalactors. Among the general citizenry doubts remain about the strength andpersistence of cultural influences (Coughlin & Lockhart, 1998), althoughevidence suggests that both increase with citizen activism (Ellis & Thomp-son, 1997). Thus, it seems likely that among political elites, cultural orienta-tions are sufficiently strong and stable to bear the explanatory burden that Iplace on them in this article. Yet, culture may not regularly overwhelm othersources of preferences, and institutionalists such as March and Olsen (1989)are likely correct that many actions of most political actors reflect institu-tional norms.

Hence, grid-group theory is most fruitfully employed in a specific rangeof situations. In a few instances historical contingencies may appear withsuch speed and force as to overwhelm disagreement and adaptive interactionamong cultures, leaving societies to cope as best they can through existinginstitutional mechanisms. Alternatively, many other routine instances posesufficiently modest implications so that, as institutionalists suggest, politicalactors dutifully carry out their institutions’ standard operating procedures,even if these conflict with the actors’ cultural preferences. Among theinstances between these two extremes are those that Cook (1993) character-izes as “pressured decision points” (p. 6). These situations afford politicalactors time to create innovative responses and are serious enough to promptchoices among alternatives based on rival value clusters. This is the most




fruitful territory for grid-group theory’s application. Rational-choice theo-rists can model individualists’ actions in these situations, but the actions ofadherents of other cultures likely appear to them as “irrational norms”(Elster, 1989). Grid-group theory reveals these situations as struggles amongrival cultures, each striving to realize efficiently or rationally distinctive clus-ters of constrained and predictable values, practical objectives, and interests.

BROADER CULTURAL CONTRIBUTIONSTO SOCIAL EXPLANATION

Lichbach (1997a) correctly calls for “creative confrontations” among cul-tural, structuralist, and rational choice approaches to comparative politics(p. 273). But in confronting one another, we should not overlook possibilitiesfor complementary contributions among these research traditions. Zuckerman(1997, pp. 299-300) credits Shepsle (1995) for linking institutional analysiswith rational choice theory and Douglas (1986) for a related strategy withrespect to political culture and rational choice theories. This article continuesin this vein. I have shown how a relatively new conception of culture avoidssome biases of first-wave cultural studies. Moreover, I have developed thistheory in a fashion that evades marginalization by contemporary institution-alists and extended the theory so that it contributes to the explanation ofpolitical change. Furthermore, this conception is properly interpreted as anally of both the new institutionalism and rational choice theory.19

In the case of institutional studies, grid-group theory helps us to recognizethe symbiosis between structure and culture. Political institutions clearlyhelp to transmit and sustain cultures, but culture shapes and legitimates insti-tutions as well. In their emphasis on the institutional-influence side of thissymbiotic relationship, institutionally oriented contemporary political scien-tists have neglected cultural contributions (cf. King, 1973). By linking a lim-ited number of rival sets of beliefs and values tightly to distinctive institu-tional preferences, grid-group theory helps to highlight the neglected,cultures-shape-institutions portion of this loop. As Madison’s individualisticefforts to replace first hierarchical British imperialism and then the egalitar-ian Articles of Confederation with a sharply individualistic Constitution sug-gest, changes in the relative influence of distinctive cultural preferences


19. More skeptical views appear in the symposium by Bates (1997), Johnson (1997), andLustick (1997). Their articles draw, in part, on earlier exchanges that continue in theAmericanPolitical Science Association—Comparative Politics Newsletter. Some of these earlierexchanges are more encouraging on complementary aspects of cultural, institutional, andrational choice approaches. See, for instance, Lichbach (1997b) and Varshney (1997).



contribute significantly to the direction of institutional innovation. Accord-ingly, by marginalizing culture, political scientists constrain inquiry as towhy institutional innovation takes one form rather than another (Verba et al.,1987, p. 270). They thus beg rather than examine some of the most basicquestions about political institutions, ignoring in the process the potential foranalysis of shifting coalitions within multicultural societies to explain insti-tutional change.

Even more significant, grid-group theory provides a concern with prefer-ence formation to complement rational choice theory’s focus on preferenceimplementation. The latter facilitates analysis of who gets what and why,whereas the former deals with who wants what and why. The instrumentalrationality of adherents of rival cultures is driven by different high-priorityobjectives and interests. So, although persons pursue their interests effi-ciently as rational choice theorists argue, the sets of interests sought by theadherents of rival cultures are distinctive, constrained, and predictable.

For instance, persons’ locations in the grid-group space of Figure 1 tell uswhether their highest priorities entail building interpersonal relationships,based on either conceptions of duty (hierarchy) or love (egalitarianism) orengaging in personal material acquisition (Chai, in press; Coughlin & Lockhart,1998; Elster, 1989; Lockhart, 1999, chap. 3; Lockhart & Coughlin, 1992;Lockhart & Wildavsky, 1998; Sen, 1979; Wildavsky, 1994). Furthermore,grid-group theory enables us to understand why persons with, for instance,low-grid but high-group orientations prefer the benefits of intense relation-ships to those of material gain. If persons believe that what individualistsrefer to (unpejoratively) as “exploiting” natural resources is seriously harm-ful, they are apt to seek satisfaction through the richness of their relationswith others rather than the acquisition of material wealth. This improved rec-ognition of distinctive sets of culturally constrained objectives helps us toavoid reliance on ad hoc devices such as “nonrational norms” (Elster, 1989;cf. Wildavsky 1991).

Having rival cultures with distinctive constrained central objectives helpscomparativists produce testable propositions. In this regard, I have initiatedexploration in this article as to how shifting coalitions among rival culturescontribute to institutional change. The roughly half-century of Americanpolitics from the 1770s to the 1830s and the German experience bridging thelate 1930s to the early 1970s both provide instances of rapid political changethat initially appears impossible for theories of political culture, characteris-tically burdened by inertia in persons’ beliefs and attitudes, to explain. Yet,when we examine these events through the lens provided by grid-group the-ory, we see that political change does not require individuals to change their




cultures. Rather, the political changes at issue can as well be produced as aresult of the shifting coalitions among cultures that are induced by historicalcontingencies.

Grid-group theory’s conception of culture then adds crucial elements totwo of the leading approaches among contemporary political scientists.20 Inthe case of institutional analysis, the theory’s contributions are appropriatelyconsidered coequal. Culture is an important source for the formation and sus-tenance of social institutions and vice versa. Grid-group theory’s contribu-tions in conjunction with rational choice theory are potentially more basic.Why people want what they do is arguably a more fundamental question thanhow they achieve their objectives, supporting Eckstein’s (1997) assessmentthat social science is essentially a study of cultural acquisition andapplication.

More than simply contributing to institutional analysis and rational choicetheory, grid-group theory’s conception of culture helps to weave togetheraspects of these modes of analysis that are currently distinct, often competi-tive, practices. Grid-group theory identifies the high-priority sociopoliticalobjectives of the adherents of rival cultures. Thus, the theory specifies dis-tinctive, constrained, and predictable objectives and interests for each cul-ture. Action aimed at achieving these objectives generally takes the form ofsupporting specific institutions that embody these goals vis-à-vis alternativeinstitutions based on distinct and frequently conflicting objectives. Manypersons do not engage in building the macro-social institutions that have pro-vided the focus for most institutional analysis in political science.21 But forthose who do, the construction and maintenance of distinctive macro-political institutions (achieving social organization through markets, influen-tial state bureaucracies, or unstratified grassroots activist groups) representrational choices for the realization of their varying high-priority values (free-dom of choice that leads to personal individuation and social prosperity, pol-icy formulation by experts resulting in social order, or equality of respectcontributing to relative equality of social condition, respectively). Thus, thedevelopment of disparate institutions is linked to the basic values, practicalobjectives, and interests of rival cultures as rational means to distinctive ends.


20. Applications of rational choice theory to political life are, nonetheless, plagued by prob-lems beyond a lack of focus on the origins of human preferences. See the excellent series of arti-cles in Part 1 of Zey (1992). Relatedly, see Chai (in press); Green and Shapiro (1994); Lalman,Oppenheimer, and Swistak (1993); Monroe (1991); and Rogowski (1978).

21. As Giles-Sims and Lockhart (in press) show, persons engaged in building micro-socialinstitutions such as families give them multiple distinctive shapes consistent with the beliefs andvalues of grid-group theory’s rival cultures.



REFERENCES

Abbott, Philip. (1991).Political thought in America: Conversations and debates. Itasca, IL: F. E.Peacock.

Almond, Gabriel A. (1956). Comparative political systems.Journal of Politics,18, 391-409.Almond, Gabriel A., & Coleman, James S. (1960).The politics of developing areas. Princeton,

NJ: Princeton University Press.Almond, Gabriel A., & Powell, G. Bingham. (1966).Comparative politics: A developmental

approach. Boston: Little, Brown.Almond, Gabriel A., & Verba, Sidney. (1963).The civic culture: Political attitudes and democ-

racy in five nations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Bailyn, Bernard. (1967).The ideological origins of the American Revolution. Cambridge, MA:

Belknap.Baker, Kendall L., Dalton, Russell J., & Hildebrandt, Kai. (1981).Germany transformed: Politi-

cal culture and the new politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Banfield, Edward C. (1958).The moral basis of a backward society. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.Bates, Robert H. (1997). Area studies and the discipline: A useful controversy.PS: Political Sci-

ence and Politics,30, 166-169.Beard, Charles A. (1965).An economic interpretation of the Constitution of the United States.

New York: Free Press. (Original work published 1913)Becker, Gary S. (1976).The economic approach to human behavior. Chicago, IL: University of

Chicago Press.Benedict, Ruth. (1934).Patterns of culture. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Berliner, Joseph S. (1988). The comparison of social welfare systems. In Gail W. Lapidus & Guy

E. Swanson (Eds.),State and welfare USA/USSR: Contemporary theory and practice(pp. 1-13).Berkeley: University of California, Institute of International Studies.

Chai, Sun-Ki. (in press).Creating identity from rational action. Ann Arbor: University of Michi-gan Press.

Coleman, James S. (1990).Foundations of social theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress.

Conradt, David P. (1978).The German polity. London: Longman.Conradt, David P. (1980). Changing German political culture. In Gabriel A. Almond & Sidney

Verba (Eds.),The civic culture revisited(pp. 212-272). Boston: Little, Brown.Cook, Linda J. (1993).The Soviet social contract and why it failed: Welfare policy and workers’

politics from Brezhnev to Yeltsin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Coughlin, Richard M., & Lockhart, Charles. (1998). Grid-group theory and ideology: A consid-

eration of their relative strengths and weaknesses for explaining the structure of mass beliefsystems.Journal of Theoretical Politics,10, 33-58.

Coyle, Dennis J., & Ellis, Richard J. (Eds.). (1994).Politics, policy, and culture. Boulder, CO:Westview.

Dahrendorf, Ralf. (1967).Society and democracy in Germany. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.Dake, Karl, & Wildavsky, Aaron. (1990). Theories of risk perception: Who fears what and why?

Daedalus,119, 41-60.Dalton, Russell J. (1989). The German voter. In Gordon Smith, William E. Paterson, & Peter H.

Merkl (Eds.),Developments in West German politics(pp. 99-121). Durham, NC: Duke Uni-versity Press.

Dittmer, Lowell. (1977). Political culture and political symbolism: Toward a theoretical synthe-sis.World Politics,29, 552-583.




Douglas, Mary. (1978).Cultural bias. London: Royal Anthropological Society.Douglas, Mary. (Ed.). (1982a).Essays in the sociology or perception. London: Routledge and

Kegan Paul.Douglas, Mary. (1982b).In the active voice. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Douglas, Mary. (1986).How institutions think. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.Douglas, Mary. (1992).Risk and blame: Essays in cultural theory. London: Routledge.Douglas, Mary. (1996).Thought styles: Critical essays on good taste. Thousand Oaks, CA:

Sage.Downey, Gary L. (1986). Ideology and the clamshell identity: Organizational dilemmas in the

anti-nuclear power movement.Social problems,33, 357-373.Dumont, Louis. (1980).Homo hierarchicus: The caste system and its implications(Mark Sainsbury,

Louis Dumont, & Basia Gulati, Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Durkheim, Emile. (1951).Suicide: A study in sociology(John A. Spaulding & George Simpson,

Trans.). Glencoe, IL: Free Press. (Original work published 1897)Eckstein, Harry. (1988). A culturalist theory of political change.American Political Science

Review, 82, 789-804.Eckstein, Harry. (1997). Social science as cultural science, rational choice as metaphysics. In

Richard J. Ellis & Michael Thompson (Eds.),Culture matters: Essays in honor of AaronWildavsky(pp. 21-44). Boulder, CO: Westview.

Elazar, Daniel J. (1980). Afterward: Steps in the study of American political culture.Publius,10,127-139.

Elazar, Daniel J. (1984).American federalism: A view from the states(3rd ed.). New York:Harper & Row.

Elkins, Stanley, & McKitrick, Eric. (1994).The age of federalism. New York: Oxford UniversityPress.

Ellis, Richard J. (1993).American political cultures. New York: Oxford University Press.Ellis, Richard J., & Thompson, Fred. (1997). Culture and the environment in the Pacific North-

west.American Political Science Review, 91, 885-897.Elster, Jon. (1989).The cement of society. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (1940).The Nuer: A description of the modes of livelihood and political

institutions of the Nilotic people. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Feldman, Stanley, & Zaller, John. (1992). The political culture of ambivalence: Ideological

responses to the welfare state.American Jounral of Political Science, 36, 268-307.Fiske, Alan. (1993).Structures of social life: The four elementary forms of human relations. New

York: Free Press.Gewirth, Alan. (1978).Reason and morality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Giles-Sims, Jean, & Lockhart, Charles. (in press). Grid-group theory and corporal punishment.

In Michael Donnelly & Murray A. Straus (Eds.),Corporal punishment of children in theo-retical perspective. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Green, Donald P., & Shapiro, Ian. (1994).Pathologies of rational choice: A critique of applica-tions in political science. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Greenstone, J. David. (1982). The transient and the permanent in American politics: Standards,interests, and the concept of public. In J. David Greenstone (Ed.),Public values and privatepower in American politics(pp. 3-33). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Greenstone, J. David. (1986). Political culture and American political development: Liberty,union, and the liberal bipolarity.Studies in American Political Development, 1, 1-49.

Grendstad, Gunnar. (1990).Europe by cultures: An exploration in grid-group analysis. Unpub-lished master’s thesis, University of Bergen, Norway.




Grendstad, Gunnar. (1995). Party followership and leadership in Norway: A political cultureapproach.Party Politics,1, 221-243.

Grendstad, Gunnar, & Selle, Per. (1997). Cultural theory, postmaterialism, and environmentalattitudes. In Richard J. Ellis & Michael Thompson (Eds.),Culture matters: Essays in honorof Aaron Wildavsky(pp. 151-168). Boulder, CO: Westview.

Hall, Peter A. (1986).Governing the economy: The politics of state intervention in Britain andFrance. New York: Oxford University Press.

Harrison, Lawrence E. (1993).Who prospers? How cultural values shape economic and politi-cal success. New York: Basic Books.

Hartz, Louis. (1955).The liberal tradition in America: An interpretation of American politicalthought since the Revolution. New York: Harcourt Brace.

Hinich, Martin, & Munger, Michael C. (1996).Ideology and the theory of political choice. AnnArbor: University of Michigan Press.

Hirschman, Albert O. (1982).Shifting involvements: Private interest and public action. Prince-ton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Hochschild, Jennifer L. (1981).What’s fair? American beliefs about distributive justice. Cam-bridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Hofstadter, Richard. (1958). Andrew Jackson and the rise of liberal capitalism. In RichardHofstadter,The American political tradition(pp. 44-66). New York: Vintage.

Holling, Crawford S. (1979). Myths of ecological stability: Resilience and the problem of failure.In Carolyn F. Smart & William T. Stansbury (Eds.),Studies in crisis management(pp. 97-109).Toronto: Butterworth.

Howe, Daniel Walker. (1974).The political culture of the American Whigs. Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press.

Huntington, Samuel P. (1981).American politics: The promise of disharmony. Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press.

Huntington, Samuel P. (1996).The clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order. NewYork: Simon & Schuster.

Inglehart, Ronald. (1988). The renaissance of political culture.American Political ScienceReview, 82, 1203-1230.

Inglehart, Ronald. (1997).Modernization and postmodernization: Cultural, economic andpolitical change in 43 societies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Jones, Bryan. (1994).Reconceiving decision-making in democratic politics: Attention, choiceand public policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Johnson, Chalmers. (1982).MITI and the Japanese miracle. Stanford, CA: Stanford UniversityPress.

Johnson, Chalmers. (1997). Preconception vs. observation, or the contributions of rationalchoice theory and area studies to contemporary political science.PS: Political Science andPolitics,30, 170-174.

Katznelson, Ira. (1997). Structure and configuration in comparative politics. In Mark IrvingLichbach & Alan S. Zuckerman (Eds.),Comparative politics: Rationality, culture, andstructure(pp. 81-112). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Ketcham, Ralph. (1971).James Madison: A biography. New York: Macmillan.King, Anthony. (1973). Ideas, institutions, and the policies of governments: A comparative

analysis.British Journal of Political Science, 3, 291-313, 409-423.Laitin, David D. (1986).Hegemony and culture: Politics and religious change among the

Yoruba. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.




Lalman, David, Oppenheimer, Joe, & Swistak, Piotr. (1993). Formal rational choice theory: Acumulative science of politics. In Ada W. Finifter (Ed.),Political science: The state of thediscipline II (pp. 77-104). Washington, DC: American Political Science Association.

Lane, Ruth. (1992). Political culture: Residual category or general theory.Comparative PoliticalStudies,25, 362-387.

LaPalombara, Joseph. (1987).Democracy, Italian style. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Lee, Jean B. (1994).The price of nationhood: The American Revolution in Charles County. New

York: Norton.Levy, Michael B. (Ed.). (1992).Political thought in America: An anthology(2nd ed.). Prospect

Heights, IL: Waveland.Lichbach, Mark I. (1997a). Social theory and comparative politics. In Mark Irving Lichbach &

Alan S. Zuckerman (Eds.),Comparative politics: Rationality, culture, and structure(pp. 239-276). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Lichbach, Mark I. (1997b, Winter). What is the current state of theory in comparative politics.American Political Science Association—Comparative Politics Newsletter, 8, 14-15.

Lichbach, Mark Irving. (1995).The rebel’s dilemma. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Lieske, Joel. (1993). Regional subcultures of the United States.Journal of Politics,55, 888-913.Lijphart, Arend. (1984).Democracies: Patterns of majoritarian and consensus government in

twenty-one countries. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Lindblom, Charles E. (1977).Politics and markets: The world’s political-economic systems.

New York: Basic Books.Lipset, Seymour Martin. (1990).Continental divide: Values and institutions in the United States

and Canada. New York: Routledge.Lipset, Seymour Martin. (1996).American exceptionalism: A double-edged sword. New York:

Norton.Lockhart, Charles. (1999).Protecting the elderly: Culture’s contributions to explaining social

policy decisions. Unpublished manuscript.Lockhart, Charles, & Coughlin, Richard M. (1992). Building better comparative social theory

through alternative conceptions of rationality.Western Political Quarterly, 45, 793-809.Lockhart, Charles, & Franzwa, Gregg. (1994). Cultural theory and the problem of moral relativ-

ism. In Dennis J. Coyle & Richard J. Ellis,Politics, culture, and policy(pp. 175-189). Boul-der, CO: Westview.

Lockhart, Charles, & Wildavsky, Aaron. (1998). The social construction of cooperation: Egali-tarian, hierarchical, and individualistic faces of altruism. In Sun-Ki Chai & Brendon Swedlow(Eds.),Economics, philosophy, and rational choice: Aaron Wildavsky applying cultural the-ory (pp. 113-131). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishing.

Lowi, Theodore J. (1984). Why is there no socialism in the United States? A federal analysis. InRobert T. Golembiewski & Aaron Wildavsky (Eds.),The costs of federalism(pp. 37-54).New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.

Lustick, Ian S. (1997). The disciplines of political science: Studying the culture of rationalchoice as a case in point.PS: Political Science and Politics,30, 175-179.

Lutz, Donald S. (1980).Popular consent and popular control: Whig political theory in the earlystate constitutions. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.

Main, Jackson Turner. (1964). The antifederalists: Critics of the Constitution, 1781-1788. Chi-cago: Quadrangle Books.

March, James G., & Olsen, Johan P. (1989).Rediscovering institutions: The organizationalbasis of politics. New York: Free Press.

Mars, Gerald. (1982).Cheats at work: An anthropology of workplace crime. London: Allen andUnwin.




Maruyama, Magoroh. (1980). Mindscapes and science theories.Current Anthropology, 21,589-600.

McClosky, Herbert, & Zaller, John. (1984).The American ethos: Public attitudes toward capi-talism and democracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

McCrae, Robert R., & Costa, Paul T., Jr. (1987). Validation of the five-factor model of personal-ity across instruments and observers.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52,81-90.

McCrae, Robert R., & Costa, Paul T., Jr. (1989). Reinterpretating the Myers-Briggs Type Indica-tor from the perspective of the five-factor model of personality.Journal of Personality, 57,17-40.

Monroe, Kristen Renwick. (Ed.). (1991).The economic approach to politics: A critical reassess-ment of the theory of rational action. New York: HarperCollins.

Myers, Isabel Briggs, & Myers, Peter B. (1980).Gifts differing. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psy-chologists Press.

Noelle-Neumann, Elisabeth. (1994). Problems with democracy in Eastern Germany after thedownfall of the GDR. In Frederick D. Weil & Mary Gautier (Eds.),Research on democracyand society: Vol. 2. Political culture and political structure: Theoretical and empirical Stud-ies(pp. 213-231). Greenwich, CT: JAI.

North, Douglass. (1995). Five propositions about institutional change. In Jack Knight & Itai Sened(Eds.),Explaining social institutions(pp. 15-26). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

North, Douglass C. (1990).Institutions, institutional change, and economic Performance. NewYork: Cambridge University Press.

Nozick, Robert. (1974).Anarchy, state, and utopia. New York: Basic Books.Olson, Mancur. (1993). Dictatorship, democracy, and development.American Political Science

Review, 87, 567-576.Orloff, Ann Shola, & Skocpol, Theda. (1984). Why not equal protection? Explaining the politics

of social spending in Britain, 1900-1911, and the United States, 1880s-1920.AmericanSociological Review, 49, 726-750.

Padgett, Stephen. (1989). The party system. In Gordon Smith, William E. Paterson, & Peter H.Merkl (Eds.),Developments in West German politics(pp. 122-146). Durham, NC: DukeUniversity Press.

Parsons, Talcott, & Shils, Edward (Eds.). (1951).Toward a general theory of action. Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press.

Putnam, Robert D. (1993).Making democracy work: Civic traditions in modern Italy. Princeton,NJ: Princeton University Press.

Putnam, Robert D., Leonardi, Robert, & Nanetti, Raffaella Y. (1988). Institutional performanceand political culture: Some puzzles about the power of the past.Governance: An Interna-tional Journal of Policy and Administration,1, 221-242.

Pye, Lucian W. (1962).Politics, personality and nation building: Burma’s search for identity.New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Pye, Lucian W. (1988).The Mandarin and the cadre: China’s political cultures. Ann Arbor:University of Michigan, Center for Chinese Studies.

Pye, Lucian W., & Verba, Sidney. (Eds.). (1965).Political culture and political development.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Rogowski, Ronald. (1974).Rational legitimacy: A theory of political support. Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press.

Rogowski, Ronald. (1978). Rationalist theories of politics: A midterm report.World Politics,30,296-323.




Rohrschneider, Robert. (1994). Report from the laboratory: The influence of institutions onpolitical elites’ democratic values in Germany.American Political Science Review, 88,927-941.

Ross, Marc Howard. (1997). Culture and identity in comparative political analysis. In Mark IrvingLichbach & Alan S. Zuckerman (Eds.),Comparative politics: Rationality, culture, andstructure(pp. 42-80). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. (1945).The age of Jackson. Boston: Little, Brown.Schumacher, E. F. (1973).Small is beautiful: Economics as if people mattered. New York:

Harper & Row.Schwarz, Michiel, & Thompson, Michael. (1990).Divided we stand: Redefining politics, tech-

nology, and social change. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Scott, James C. (1985).Weapons of the weak: Everyday forms of peasant resistance. New

Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Sen, Amartya K. (1979). Rational fools: A critique of the behavioral foundations of economic

theory. In Henry Harris (Ed.),Scientific models and man(pp. 1-25). London: Oxford Univer-sity Press.

Shain, Barry Alan. (1995).The myth of American individualism: The protestant origins ofAmerican political thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Sharkansky, Ira. (1969). The utility of Elazar’s political culture: A research note.Polity,2, 66-83.Shepsle, Kenneth A. (1995). Studying institutions: Some lessons from the rational choice

approach. In James Farr, John Dryzek & Stephen T. Leonard (Eds.).Political Science in his-tory: Research programs and political transactions(pp. 221-243). New York: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Shweder, Richard A. (1991).Thinking through cultures: Expeditions in cultural psychology.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Silk, Leonard. (1972).Nixononomics: How the dismal science of free enterprise became theblack art of controls. New York: Praeger.

Spiro, Melford E. (1984). Some reflections on cultural determinism and relativism with specialreference to emotion and reason. In Richard A. Shweder & Robert A. LeVine (Eds.),Culturetheory: Essays on mind, self, and emotion(pp. 323-346). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Uni-versity Press.

Steinmetz, George. (1994). Fordism and the (im)moral economy of right-wing violence in con-temporary Germany. In Frederick D. Weil & Mary Gautier (Eds.),Research on democracyand society: Vol. 2. Political culture and political structure: Theoretical and empirical stud-ies(pp. 277-315). Greenwich, CT: JAI.

Steinmo, Sven H. (1994). American exceptionalism reconsidered: Culture or institutions? InLawrence Dodd & Calvin Jillson (Eds.),Dynamics in American politics(pp. 106-131).Boulder, CO: Westview.

Strathern, Andrew. (1971).The rope of Moka: Big-men and ceremonial exchange in MountHagen, New Guinea. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Thompson, Michael. (1982). The problem of the center: An autonomous cosmology. In MaryDouglas (Ed.),Essays in the sociology of perception(pp. 302-327). London: Routledge andKegan Paul.

Thompson, Michael, Ellis, Richard, & Wildavsky, Aaron. (1990).Cultural theory. Boulder, CO:Westview.

Titmuss, Richard M. (1971).The gift relationship: From human blood to social policy. NewYork: Random House.

Turnbull, Colin. (1972).The mountain people. New York: Simon & Schuster.




Uchendu, Victor C. (1965).The Igbo of Southeast Nigeria. New York: Holt, Rinehart &Winston.

Varshney, Ashutosh. (1997, Summer). Cultures and modes of rationality.American Political Sci-ence Association—Comparative Politics Newsletter, 8, 18-21.

Verba, Sidney, Kelman, Steven, Orren, Gary R., Miyake, Ichiro, Watanuki, Joji, Kabashima, Ikuo, &Ferree, G. Donald, Jr. (1987).Elites and the idea of equality: A comparison of Japan, Swedenand the United States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Verba, Sidney, Nie, Norman H., & Iim, Jae-on. (1978).Participation and political equality: Aseven nation comparison. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Walzer, Michael. (1983).Spheres of justice: A defense of pluralism and equality. New York:Basic Books.

Whiting, Beatrice Blythe. (1980). Culture and social behavior: A model for the development ofsocial behavior.Ethics,8, 95-116.

Wildavsky, Aaron. (1991). Can norms rescue self-interest or macro explanation be joined tomicro explanation?Critical Review, 5, 301-323.

Wildavsky, Aaron. (1994). Why self-interest means less outside of a social context: Culturalcontributions to a theory of rational choices.Journal of Theoretical Politics,6, 131-159.

Wills, Gary. (1978).Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. Garden City,NY: Doubleday.

Wilson, Richard W. (1992).Compliance ideologies: Rethinking political culture. New York:Cambridge University Press.

Wilson, Richard W. (1997). American political culture in comparative perspective.PoliticalPsychology, 18, 483-502.

Wirt, Frederick. (1980). Does control follow the dollar: Value analysis, school policy, and state-local linkages.Publius,10, 69-88.

Wood, Gordon S. (1969).The creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787. Chapel Hill: Uni-versity of North Carolina Press.

Zapf, Wolfgang. (1986). Development, structure, and prospects of the German social state. InRichard Rose & Rei Shiratori (Eds.),The welfare state East and West(pp. 126-155). NewYork: Oxford University Press.

Zey, Mary (Ed.). (1992).Decision making: Alternatives to rational choice models. NewburyPark, CA: Sage.

Zisk, Betty. (1992).The politics of transformation: Local activitism in the peace and environ-mental movements. New York: Praeger.

Zuckerman, Alan S. (1997). Reformulating explanatory standards and advancing theory in com-parative politics. In Mark Irving Lichbach & Alan S. Zuckerman (Eds.),Comparative poli-tics: Rationality, culture, and structure(pp. 277-310). New York: Cambridge UniversityPress.

Charles Lockhart is a professor of political science at Texas Christian University. In thepast few years, his long-term research interests involving both political theory and com-parative public social policy have produced a focus on comparative political culture. Hehas published a number of articles that apply and extend the Douglas-Wildavsky grid-group theory.




10CPS99.VP:CorelVentura 7.0 - CiteSeerX

Documents

Transcript of 10CPS99.VP:CorelVentura 7.0 - CiteSeerX