Search results

The rise of arts and culture is transforming citizen politics. Though new to many social scientists, this is a commonplace for many policy makers. We seek to overcome this divide by joining culture and the arts with classic concepts of political analysis. We offer an analytical framework incorporating the politics of cultural policy alongside the typical political and economic concerns. Our framework synthesizes several research streams that combine in global factors driving the articulation of culture into political/economic processes. The contexts of Toronto and Chicago are explored as both enhanced the arts dramatically, but Toronto engaged artists qua citizens, while Chicago did not.

The aim of this paper is to create the nexus between political culture, citizens' perception of the political system and democratic order. In academic literature, one of the most important determinants of the democratic order is considered the cultural dimension. Beyond the political institutions and economic indicators, democracy is based on historical heritage, cultural patterns, political attitudes and behaviours. In correlation with all these premises, this article aims to (1) identify associations between social values and political participation; (2) estimate the impact of the political participation in creating premises for tolerance and democracy and (3) observe the relation between political beliefs, ideological position and political participation. Data are collected from secondary sources as World Values Survey, Wave 6. We use as research method the comprehensive case study for post-communist Romania. Empirical results demonstrate weak statistical correlations between personal values and active membership in political and civic associations (r = −0.150, p < 0.001). Traditional dimension of the Romanian post-communist society could be observed in three main variables which reflect personal values and preferences: family, work and religion. Low rates of tolerance are related with the inactivity in the social or political sphere, generating a syndrome of political apathy and alienation. In correlation with personal values, social implication and tolerance we have emphasize the respondents' cognitive bias regarding the meaning and directions of the democratic order.

Does civic participation, especially in the arts, increase democracy? This chapter extends this neo-Tocquevillian question in three ways. First, to capture broader political and economic transformations, we consider different types of participation; results change by separate participation arenas. Some are declining, but a dramatic finding is the rise of arts and culture. Second, to assess impacts of participation, we include multiple dimensions of democratic politics, including distinct norms of citizenship and their associated political repertoires. Third, by analyzing global International Social Survey Program and World Values Survey data, we identify dramatic subcultural differences: the Tocquevillian model is positive, negative, or zero in seven different subcultures and contexts that we explicate, from class politics and clientelism to Protestant and Orthodox Christian civilizational traditions.

Elazar’s typology of political cultures is examined. From his categorization of jurisdictions with aspects of 'moralistic' political cultures, five are selected: Wisconsin, Michigan, New York, Connecticut, and France. Their recent political history is examined and it is demonstrated that these 'moralistic' type polities have abandoned policies which formerly condemned or at least contained legalized gambling. Instead each has responded to commercial pressures for expanded gambling. The reasons why ‘moralistic’ values in making decisions in this arena have been cast aside are examined. The reasons include an international cross-polity homogenization of political cultures, a blurring of the meaning of ‘moralistic’ in today’s politics, and above all, severe economic crises that take precedence over other values.

While the concept of legal culture has been receiving a growing attention from scholars, this research often overemphasizes the similarity of the opinions held by different segments of population. Furthermore, the relationship of migration and the change of legal-cultural attitudes has not received particular attention. Drawing on 70 in-depth interviews with the immigrants of the early 1990s from the former Soviet Union to Israel and the secular Israeli Jews, this chapter provides a comprehensive account of the various aspects of legal culture of these groups. The second important finding is the persistence of the legal-cultural attitudes and perceptions over time.

A longstanding question of American constitutionalism emerges out of the fact that constitutions demand fidelity. By virtue of what is the American Constitution binding? Zevit contends that many of the explanations of constitutional fidelity offered today fail to reconcile Americans’ submission to a Constitution written and ratified by generations of long ago with their claim (or aspiration) to be self-governing as a People today. Zevit introduces one type of explanation (the aptness explanation) that does not contain this flaw, and, drawing on an expansive definition of culture as a notion that encompasses the legal-political, offers the concepts of legal-political culture and baseline community as a framework for assessing the Constitution’s aptness while maintaining the People’s self-rule. She argues that constitutional aptness secures the foundations of constitutional legitimacy.

The purpose of this study is to serve a political-cultural perspective on the environmental movement in Israel through an examination of the organizations’ impact on the shaping of geographic space, the political system, and the general culture. The practical expression of political cultures is examined through an analysis of prominent organizations’ activism as manifested in seven representative environmental campaigns waged over the last four decades. The study is qualitative in nature, and as such is based on in-depth interviews with numerous actors from the environmental arena – institutions, NGOs, the business sector, and academia. The originality of the study is to deeper the cultural aspects of the phenomenon.

Some of the findings regarding the effectiveness of the environmental campaigns are showing that there is significant gap between the political system and the civil society in Israel, relating the environmental issue as a whole: while the first still see it as a marginal sector, the Israeli public and local leadership has made a change in the attitude toward environmental issues. This cultural gap is due to the difference in cultural values, between the local and national level.

Although information technology has been at the centre of attention of political branding for some time, research has traditionally focused mainly on its role in the facilitation of communication. This paper aims to unpack the role of information technology in the emergence of new cyber political brands.

This research uses a dual case study approach that focuses on the relationship between branding, politics and information technology. The analysis focuses on two successful political cyber brands: the Italian Five Star Movement and the Czech Pirate Party. Data collection covering the time frame between their emergence and their political success occurs through netnographic methods.

Cyber political brands emerge and materialize in different forms. The present analysis allows for a delineation of three conceptual elements that characterize the constitutive interrelationship of information technology in the emergence of cyber political brands. The first conceptual element, organization, refers to how political brands become structured around linked activities. The second conceptual element, orientation, describes how the activities of a political brand are directed to build a specific path and legitimize courses of action. The third conceptual element, operation, delineates the processes that anchor and stabilize the political brands in its “own” culture, establishing specific base activities.

Information technology and the techno-culture emerging around the two cyber party brands can be seen as the possible delineations of new “cleavages” in the form of “information technology-culture” which enables potential electoral success.

The present study by offering the conceptualization of the cyber political brand shows how political brands can reflect a type of performative cultural branding where they become able, as a networked-medium, to assemble a specific techno-culture. In terms of political brand development, the current analysis offers a framework that allows us to consider the process of political party development in a new fashion.

This paper aims to examine how a firm’s political party orientation (Republican or Democratic), which is measured as the composite index based on the political party leanings of top managers, affects bank loan contracts. This study also investigates how the political culture of local states has a significant impact on loan contracts.

This research uses various databases including the Loan Pricing Corporation’s DealScan database, financial covenant violation indicators based on the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings, firm bankruptcy filings and political culture index data to examine the impact of political orientation on the cost of debt. This paper also includes the state level of gun ownership and bachelor’s degrees to investigate how local political culture affects the loan contract. To control endogenous concerns, this paper uses an instrumental variable analysis.

Firms that have Republican-oriented political identities pay lower yield spreads for the main costs of debt including all-in-spread-drawn and all-in-spread-undrawn. This pattern is consistent with other fees of bank loans. This paper finds that an increase in conservative political policies toward Republican orientations is negatively associated with the cost of debt. The main findings also show that the political culture in the state where the headquarters of the borrowing firm are located plays an important role in bank loan contracts.

The findings in this paper provide evidence that a firm’s political party orientation significantly affects the loan contract terms in both pricing and non-pricing terms. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study that shows the importance of political party identification on loan contracts by separating the sample into Republican, neutral and Democratic.