Political culture is "historical experience, the memory of social communities and individuals in politics, their orientation, skills that influence political behavior." (Political Science: Encyclopedic Dictionary. M: Moscow. Commerce. University, 1993, p. 264). Political culture "is a combination of values, attitudes, beliefs, orientation and symbols expressing them, which are generally accepted and serve to streamline political experience and regulate the political behavior of all members of society. It includes not only political ideals, values \u200b\u200band attitudes, but also existing norms of political life. " (Mukhaev R.T. Political science. M.: PRIOR, 1997, p. 258).

Consequently, the political culture of society is a broad concept that characterizes the qualitative side of the political life of a people. Elements of political culture: political views, orientations, ideals, emotions, aspirations; traditions and norms of political life, political and historical experience of the people; ways of political behavior; political socialization, i.e. the degree of conscious participation of citizens in political processes, their awareness, "enlightenment" in these matters.

The concept of political culture is related to the “human factor” of political life. In particular, it helps to understand why the same (or similar) political methods and institutions work well in some countries and turn out to be untenable in others. For example, after independence was declared in many countries of Asia and Africa, orders were established that resembled a parliamentary, presidential republic, or constitutional monarchy, following the example of bourgeois democracies in the West. But these constitutional provisions, as a rule, turned out to be fragile and short-lived. They did not take root in the political cultures of developing countries; they were replaced by authoritarian dictatorships.

Man is a creature with free will. Not always is he an active and conscious creator of his story, but he certainly - to one degree or another - is an interpreter of the social role that he voluntarily performs. Such an interpretation can take place on the basis of knowledge acquired by a person about political life, about the state, parties, and politicians. In this case, the cognitive (cognitive) aspect of the individual’s political orientation is in effect. Understanding of politics and its place in social life can come on the basis of emotions, not always, perhaps, consciously. A person experiences positive feelings or aversion to politics as a whole and to its subjects, and often emotions are more complex. Scientists talk about the affective (passionate) component of political orientation. It can act in conjunction with or without cognitive cognition. There is also an evaluative component of political orientation. It includes faith, adherence to spiritual values, ideals, beliefs, what is commonly called ideology.

The method of combining these components of political orientation, the predominance of any of them largely determines the appearance of political culture. Scientists, for example, talk about more or less secularized (secular) cultures, depending on what factors mainly determine the political behavior of people: reason or faith, knowledge or myths.

Political culture embodies the historical experience, memory and mind of society. She “humanizes” social relations, gives them such features, qualities that correspond to the spiritual image of the people, understanding of her historical path and place in the world.

At the same time, political culture is far from always homogeneous (homogeneous). There is a dominant political culture (one that prevails in society is universally recognized); subcultures (i.e. cultures of social groups); counterculture. If the interests and aspirations of any social group (class, ethnic community, etc.) as a whole coincide or have much in common with the interests of the whole people, then its political culture is a subculture. If contradictions prevail, then we are talking about a counterculture that does not fit into the political culture of society. In many countries of the world there are heterogeneous cultures. To prevent this heterogeneity from developing into antagonism, we need a high level of socio-economic development and a reasonable policy aimed at satisfying all legitimate social interests.

Consider the functions political culture.

Integrating.  Political culture helps people in society to become aware of themselves as a people, remember their history, understand their place in the world, and pass on valuable political experience from generation to generation. In history, there have been many cases in which political culture has helped entire nations survive and maintain their dignity, even during times of severe ordeal.

Communicative  ("connecting" people, uniting like-minded people). Society is pluralistic. This means that, on the one hand, there is a unity of social life, interests, life goals of the people, on the other hand, there are many groups, interests, and wills in society. Political culture helps to express these interests and wills in civilized ways, contributes to the manifestation of legitimate political aspirations. This is the effect of the communicative function.

Regulatory.  In order for the interaction of various, often conflicting interests, not lead to disaster, rules are needed that are recognized by all political forces. The development of these rules and the monitoring of their implementation are the essence of the regulatory function. This means that the most important action of political culture is the establishment and strengthening of the constitutional system.

Valuable.  The political self-determination of a person is an essential aspect of self-realization of a person. In a democratic society, a citizen has the opportunity to identify, realize the system of values \u200b\u200bthat best suits his views and interests.

For all the diversity of political cultures, there are characteristic features by which it seems possible to classify them. One of the first attempts to do this belongs to American political scientists G. Almond and S. Verbe. They carried out a comparative study of the political cultures of the United States, several European countries, as well as Mexico.

  According to the assumption of these scientists, political culture includes three main types of orientation:

a) patriarchal,

b) subject

c) activist.

In society, one of them most often prevails. Recognizing the legitimacy of such a typology, we name the characteristic features of these varieties.

PATRIARCHAL culture exists in countries where the values \u200b\u200bof the clan of the community and tribal communities play a decisive role. In such states there is a despotic monarchy based on religious sanction. The power of the head of state grew out of the authority of the leader. The state is a hypertrophied, overgrown community and relies on the strength of the communal system. The head of state is deified, or at least regarded as a sacred person. He can possess the fullness of absolute power (Saudi Arabia, Oman), which can be limited only by elders, the parliament.

This is the status of the leader of the Samoans in the state of Western Samoa, there is no universally recognized concept of the rights and freedoms of a citizen. In fact, there are no citizens. There are only subjects subject to the authority of the supreme ruler. Power is supported by religious authorities and tribal aristocracy. In such a society, a person is not free to choose political values \u200b\u200bfor himself. On the contrary, he finds himself completely subordinate to order, tradition, officially established religious faith. An individual’s interest in politics is muffled, there are no political parties. Subcultures are influential, tribal, clan, community social ties are of paramount importance for a person. The general social political culture is often supported by the authorities.

It would be inaccurate and incorrect to assert that such a system does not allow self-realization of the individual. She encourages her to the extent permitted by society, and does not exclude respect for the individual. In Saudi Arabia, public criticism is prohibited. It is impossible to criticize not only a high-ranking official (not to mention the king), but also the simplest fisherman or Bedouin. It is believed that criticism is derogatory, and therefore unethical. It is customary to resolve all issues calmly, without drawing attention to contradictions, on the advice of experts.

FRIENDLY political culture exists in countries with an established social class structure (in other words, where social stratification has occurred). But social groups, with the possible exception of the ruling one, have not yet realized their fundamental interests and have not learned to defend them. The authorities are inclined to perceive the people as a simple community, not divided by any conflicting interests and monolithically united. (For example, the CPSU leadership used the slogan "The people and the party are one!"). A citizen perceives power as a guarantor of a fair distribution of social benefits. He is detached from political affairs. The society is dominated by political conformism (uniformity, the desire to adapt to a common standard).

ACTIVIST  political culture (in other words, a culture of participation) is characteristic of democratic societies. Citizens are aware of their rights and obligations, make conscious choices in politics and seek to influence political affairs in legal ways. Society respects the constitutional system and protects it. The people really become a source of political power, the rule of law is being strengthened. Activist culture is diverse. Any country has a unique, distinctive look. Nevertheless, it makes sense to note the difference between the Anglo-American and continental European political cultures and political and legal systems.

According to a number of authors, in English-speaking countries there is a more homogeneous (compared to Europe) and secularized (freed from church dictatorship) political culture. In particular, the American scientist G. Almond writes about this. Indeed, the social systems of the USA, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand perceived and "digested" the influence of various cultures and subcultures. Ethnicly, these nations are heterogeneous, but the spirit of community of culture and a deep sense of commitment to the homeland allow people to proudly call themselves Americans, Australians, Canadians. True, in Canada there is a special situation in the French-speaking province of Quebec.

The features of the Anglo-Saxon political culture can, without a doubt, include a special system of law. In these countries, the so-called case law has been formed over many centuries. The most important source of law is court sentences. A precedent is a court decision binding on courts of equal and lower instances when considering similar cases in the future. The official name of this system is common law. In the process of nation-building, the formation of national political cultures, common law united people, affirmed the principle of the equality of all citizens before the law, and protected the rights of every person, regardless of their ethnic origin.

In continental Western Europe, political culture is more fragmented, composed of numerous ethnic and other subcultures. In many such countries, a single legal system could not be formed for a long time. This took centuries of political and cultural development.

In a number of countries, the problems associated with the presence of subcultures have been and have been solved with great difficulty, some of which have begun to develop into countercultures. In Spain, separatists (secessionists) have been active for several decades in Catalonia and the Basque Country. The French Republic faced the problem of separatism in Corsica. In addition, French nationalists are protesting the presence in the country of millions of people from Asian and African countries. In the UK, the crisis in Ulster (Northern Ireland) has not yet been overcome. There are difficulties in a number of other countries.

Overcoming these contradictions can only a democratic, rule-of-law state. In the countries of continental Europe, Roman law became the cementing force that ensures law and order. It was developed and was enshrined in the laws of most European countries. The Civil Code of Napoleon I Bonaparte (1804) played a large role in this process: it included the main principles of Roman law and was the basis of the legal systems of many countries.

Roman law in many respects determined the characteristic features of the political culture of many countries of the world.

Ancient Roman lawyers, for example, laid the foundation for the concept of natural human rights. They argued that all living things, including man, have the right to life, happiness, love, the birth and upbringing of children. The concept of natural human rights helped to overcome the most severe manifestations of slavery, and in the Middle Ages - serfdom. It formed the basis of the Declaration of Human and Citizen Rights during the French Revolution and the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948

Roman law recognized as one of the fundamental principles of the political system patronage of freedom . In ancient Rome, this principle was, in particular, that, if there is no indisputable evidence that a person is in legal slavery, a person is free. In the modern sense, this means the presumption of a person’s innocence and his right to be free. She admitted in Rome.

Just Romans justified and defended the rule: What is not prohibited by law is allowed. They defended the inviolability of the citizen's personality and his right to commit any legal legal actions

Roman law is not case law, but code law, i.e. it is based largely on the laws adopted by the people. Lawyers have very deeply and accurately defined the essence of the law: the latter is “a common injunction for all, a decision of experienced people, curbing crimes committed intentionally or through ignorance, a common state oath for all citizens” (Papinian, 150-212).

Roman lawyers were able to fill the law with ethical, moral content. It developed on the basis of the concepts of "good conscience", "justice", "natural mind". Judges and legal scholars have created a legal system that resolutely suppresses dishonesty in business relations, violence, deceit, malicious intent. Those who admitted such dishonesty were threatened with heavy fines and civil dishonor declared by the court.

Lawyer Celsus defined the right:  "The art of good and fair."

Roman law is the right of a society based on the principle of private property. In a huge number of different legal relations arising between owners, producers, lawyers in Rome were able to identify the most general, abstract forms, express for them the relevant legal norms. All the main concepts and principles of a market economy came to the modern world from Ancient Rome.

Roman law is a very creative, in this sense flexible law. It overcame formalism, casuistry, and prevented the adoption of legal acts contrary to common sense, the essence of law. Lawyer Julian, for example, said: "To that which is established contrary to the principles of law, we cannot follow as a legal rule."

Moreover, Roman law absorbed all the best, fruitful of the legal systems of many peoples. It represents the quintessence, i.e. basis, the very essence of world political culture. The modern political culture of bourgeois-democratic states has been formed over many centuries. The origins of this process are the legal culture of Rome. It had an impact on English-speaking countries, where there is not a Roman, code, but a case law system. In the developed states of bourgeois democracy, a stable activist political culture has developed.

There is also a classification according to which the following types of political culture are distinguished: authoritarian, totalitarian, democratic.

The word "authoritarianism" literally means "autocracy." Essence authoritarian political culture   consists in the fact that a monopoly of bureaucracy is established on the political mind, the expression of power will, on the means of control, as well as on the interpretation of morality. An authoritarian political culture is formed and functions under the dominant influence of the bureaucracy. The state protecting such a culture is called by some authors a police officer.

The bureaucracy, including the police bureaucracy, is not a bearer of power, but only an official stratum that fulfills the will of the bearer of power, i.e. state. So it should be in a democratic society. Here the bureaucracy should not play an independent political role. But if a market economy is not developed and democracy has no stable foundation, then the situation is different. In this case, the bureaucracy plays a very large independent political role, prepares and imposes its decisions on the authorities.

In such a bureaucratic society, bureaucracy can have a great influence on the political orientations of the people, the traditions and norms of political life, and the ways of political behavior. This influence is by no means negative in everything.

The positive features of bureaucratic influence on society include: law-abiding (even if it is manifested in fidelity not so much to the spirit as to the letter of the law); recognition of a particular social hierarchy (a system in which subordinate elements are subordinate to a superior, precisely established method); observe discipline; controllability of social processes. Outstanding reformers (including P.A. Stolypin) tried to use these positive features of bureaucratic political culture in tsarist Russia in order to break through the pavement and pave the way for the necessary transformations.

An authoritarian culture takes on especially distinctive features when an appropriate political regime is established in a country. This means that the dictatorship of the power of the head of state, executive, administrative power over all other elements of the political system, over the court and legislation is being approved. The dictatorships of F. Franco in Spain (1939-1975), A. Pinochet in Chile (1973-1990), "black colonels" in Greece (1967-1974), etc. can serve as an example of such a situation.

Under the conditions of dictatorial power, more and more negative traits of bureaucratic (authoritarian) political culture are manifested: reverence, cult of the chair (meaning the chair of the boss), narrow political thinking. Serious negative changes are taking place in public consciousness, in the well-being of the people. The German scientist Alfred Weber wrote that a huge apparatus is growing in social life, soulless, striving to subjugate everything free and spontaneously existing. He seeks to schematize and put an end to individuality. Absorption of living forces by a dead apparatus takes place. The worker turns into an appendage of the machine, a man into an appendage of the office. The bureaucracy removes from the working life of the cultural, educated part of the people elements of independence, free courage, and the continuous development of forces. The bureaucratic mechanism requires, on the one hand, a rationalist, and on the other, a limited ambitious person.

In society, therefore, escapiem is growing, i.e. desire to run away from the field of political activity in private life. This is the inevitable result of the negative trends that A. Weber pointed out. Escapism is a phenomenon not only characteristic of authoritarian culture. It is found in democratic states. If democracy becomes a prisoner of demagogy and becomes hypocritical, people can easily be disappointed in democracy and in its value system. In ancient Athens, lived the great philosopher Socrates, who taught goodness and self-knowledge. The Democratic Court (jury, Heliei) on false charges sentenced him to death. Socrates was not an opponent of democracy, but condemned its repulsive, demagogic manifestations. Having previously held senior positions, this thinker found it possible to pronounce the following in court: "No, the one who really stands for justice, that if he is destined to survive at least for a short time, must remain a private person, and should not enter the public arena "

An authoritarian political culture can develop in various directions. If a country has private property and entrepreneurship, a middle class, at least elements of a civil society that are not subordinate to administrative dictatorship, then an authoritarian culture gradually develops into a democratic or activist one. The formation (or restoration) of the political culture of civil society.

This society proclaims and recognizes the following principles:

1. The person and legitimate interests of a person are of high value.

2. Citizens are equal before the law. A citizen is a subject of rights, has duties. He is subject to law, not arbitrariness.

3. In society, there are various, not always coinciding social interests. Citizens have the legal right to unite according to their interests, including political ones, if such an association does not encroach on the constitutional order.

For these principles to work, the following features (features) of civil society are needed:

a) the economy of free producers-owners, developing according to the laws of the market. This does not exclude the regulatory role of the state in the business world: it protects legal rights and guarantees compliance with established rules common to all;

b) political pluralism.

It is a concept of power that recognizes:

Plurality, diversity of social groups and interests;

Democratic competition within the law as the only legitimate way to fight for power;

Consent of the whole society on such important issues: respect and compliance with the Constitution; protection of human rights; protection of sacred and inviolable property; defending the geopolitical interests of the state, the struggle for its worthy place in the world;

c) the rule of law in which the priority of the law exists. The people are the source of power and laws;

d) separation of powers and the principle of federalism. Power in a democratic society is not a monolith, a monopoly acting inseparable mechanism. Power consists of several branches: legislative, judicial, executive. Power is diffuse, i.e. dispersed across various levels of the political structure (e.g., federation - state - municipality). There is the principle of complementarity. It means that subordinate bodies of authority delegate only functions that they themselves cannot perform. Compliance with the principle of complementarity contributes to civic engagement, the conscious expression of legitimate interests;

e) independent, i.e. information network not subject to government (administrative) censorship;

f) ideological emancipation, i.e. lack of an official and binding political ideology for all. The principle of ideological emancipation presupposes freedom of manifestation of political, philosophical and other thoughts, with the exception of misanthropic ideas.

When comparing authoritarian and democratic cultures, it is important to emphasize the following difference. An authoritarian culture is largely nationalized. It is formed and perceived under the great influence and pressure of a bureaucratic state. A democratic culture is created, first of all, "from below" by society itself. Civil society is a complex system of social relations, relations that are not dependent on the state. This does not mean that people do not obey the state. In a democratic system, public and private law are clearly distinguished. Public defines the norms of functioning of state bodies, the status and powers of their leaders and employees. Within the framework of public law, the foundations of the constitutional system, the most important duties of citizens are determined, a circle of prohibited actions is established (the rest, not prohibited by public law, is allowed).

Private law is related to issues related to the interests of individuals. It should not contradict and under normal conditions does not contradict public law. Property issues, law of obligations, civil proceedings, inheritance law are of great importance in society. Private law deals with these issues.

The rules of public law are called imperative, i.e. imperative. They are mandatory for all citizens of the state, as well as foreigners located on its territory. Private law is called empowering (as citizens agree among themselves, so be it). They should not be in conflict with imperative. In normal (not emergency) conditions, the rule of law establishes only the most general rules of civil agreements (business, partnership), of course, determines taxes. Within these limits approved by the state, there is great scope for various manifestations of civic activity, the mutual exchange of services and values, for creativity. Public law does not suppress, much less destroy private. With an authoritarian culture, there is a tendency for such suppression.

An authoritarian culture can develop into a civic, democratic (activist) one. Such a development of political culture took place, for example, in the countries of Eastern Europe, which for a long time were formerly part of the "world system of socialism." The first successful steps in this direction were made by Poland, where in 1989 for the first time in over 40 years a non-communist government was formed. For several years, the "velvet" (not bloody, but peaceful) democratic revolutions in East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria were crowned with victory. The premise of these rapid changes has matured gradually. The dictatorial bureaucratic regimes did not succeed in eradicating entrepreneurship, the middle class, free political and philosophical thought, and the people's orientation toward democratic transformations. Consequently, the life-giving sprouts of civil society have been preserved. The dominant authoritarian political culture has been replaced by an activist, democratic one.

Another example of such a transition is the experience of Chile. In September 1973, as a result of an acute economic and political crisis, the government of the left bloc "Popular Unity" was overthrown and the dictatorship of the military junta was established. For more than 16 years, the country lived in conditions of tough authoritarian rule. The political activity of the people was suppressed, while economic transformations were gradually carried out on the advice of liberal experts - experts in economic theory. In the course of these transformations, the nutrient soil of the revolution narrowed, strengthened and became a large middle class, launched an attack on poverty, hit inflation.

Over time, the junta began to appeal to the opinion of the people, resorting to a referendum (popular vote, the results of which are binding, legal consequences). All items of the transformation program, proclaimed in 1974, to the beginning of the 1990s. were done. Naturally, one might even say systematically, an authoritarian culture has given way to a democratic one. In 1990, as a result of general elections held with great voter turnout, the military dictatorship self-relinquished and transferred power to the government of the Christian Democratic Party. True, until 1998, General A. Pinochet remained the "guarantor" of the Constitution and Order.

If civil society does not have solid foundations, then an authoritarian political culture can transform into totalitarian . This is precisely what happened in Russia, China and a number of other countries as a result of the victory of the "proletarian revolutions."

Totalitarianism  - this is not limited to any laws and political forces, the omnipotence of the bureaucracy. Social relations and connections independent of the state (legal entrepreneurship, social movements and associations) are suppressed and destroyed. Non-economic coercion prevails. There is a nationalization of the economy and society. An "atomized" society arises in which a person deprived of the opportunity to enter into social relations uncontrolled by the government is brought under control and "in sight" of this power. Private law can be suppressed and even destroyed.

The main, most significant feature of a totalitarian culture was explained as follows by V.I. To Lenin: “We don’t recognize anything“ private ”, for us everything in the field of economy is public law, not private. We allow capitalism only to state, and the state is an opportunity to apply not a set of laws of Roman law to“ civil legal relations ”, but our revolutionary sense of justice. " (Poln. Sobr. Soch., T. 44, p. 398).

Thus, the scope of private law is reduced to almost zero. The economy is considered as a single state factory, management is considered as a single state office, citizens turn into hired workers of this factory and this office. Socialism was seen as a system of comprehensive accounting and control.

In contrast to the democratic political culture, secular (non-religious, non-church) in spirit, the totalitarian culture is imbued with religious (more precisely, pseudo-religious) content. But the object of worship in this "religion" is not God, but power. She seeks (or pretends to be) violently and as soon as possible to make man and mankind happy. This is characteristic of power in any strongly ideological society. Extreme conceit, attempts to arbitrarily solve complex problems, "conquer" nature, faith in the omnipotence of power - these are the features of a totalitarian culture.

The world is perceived by totalitarian consciousness as simple, completely open and accessible to rational cognition and alteration according to plan. And since in reality this is not so, the attempts of the totalitarian power to direct the development of the world at its “scientific” discretion inevitably fail. The more miserable are the results of politics, the stronger is the ambition of the government and its desire to explain the difficulties with the machinations of enemies. Therefore, a totalitarian outlook on life is characterized by black and white, a simplified perception of reality, a confrontational approach to humanity. For example, the former dictator of the African state of Guinea A. Sekou Toure divided people into “people” and “anti-people”.

The political culture of totalitarianism is characterized by univariate thinking, which rejects everything that contradicts the "only true" doctrine. One of the Russian scientists exploring this phenomenon, the philosopher prof. M.P. Kapustin, called such a one-brain thinking. The human brain consists of two hemispheres. One “knows” rational thinking, cognition, the other - emotions, imagination, fantasy. If one hemisphere is seriously ill or even dies, or is underdeveloped, the entire mental load falls on the other hemisphere. Such a person can talk, work, have children, but mentally he is inferior, although he may not be aware of this inferiority. This disease of unilateral hemisphere thinking is known to neuropathologists.

Such a disaster can happen to both man and society. In the history of culture, one can see two series of concepts: finite - infinite, material - ideal, reason - passion, atheism - religion, human - divine, knowledge - faith. Both of these rows are inextricable with each other. Forcibly seizing one of them would make sense of the culture.

What happens when power comes in, with the intention of “abolishing” order and violence, to cross out one of the ranks, one of the “hemispheres”? A society that has lost such a figuratively understood full-fledged brain just like a person is doomed to a wretched, miserable existence. Dream, fantasy, spirituality are being killed. The belief in something high, eternal, irreducible to "accounting and control" is destroyed. And then the situation becomes possible, about which the Roman philosopher-stoic of the 1st century spoke. L.A. Seneca: "What were vices, now morals."

The remarkable words of the poet O.E. Mandelstam: “Yes, Europe went through the labyrinth of delicate culture, when abstract being, unadorned with personal existence, was valued as a feat. Hence the aristocratic intimacy connecting all people, so alien in spirit to the“ equality and fraternity ”of the great revolution. A noble mixture rationality and mysticism and the omission of the world as a living equilibrium, makes us related to this era and encourages us to draw strength in works that arose on Roman soil around the year 1200. "

This "labyrinth of delicate culture", this connection of times existed in our country. And all this was destroyed. Humanistic culture was often forced to become a "counterculture", to survive underground. She was dangerous in unibrand thinking. In China, supporters of the Chairman of the CPC Central Committee, Mao Tse-tung, repeated as a spell: "Politics is a team force, politics can do anything." In our country they sang: "We conquer space and time." In this case, what remains of such a "smallness" as the human soul? It costs nothing to free her from the "chimera" called conscience. Human consciousness is a “blank board” on which you can write anything you like. Instead of fair justice - "revolutionary justice". Instead of conscience - "class instinct." Instead of “Question everything” (the words of K. Marx) - blind faith in the authority of the leader. "And instead of the heart - a fiery motor" ...

In a totalitarian society, free creativity and independent philosophical and political thinking are preserved at the cost of tremendous effort. This happens contrary to the power that imposes “care” on people about the upbringing of the individual according to the established ideological scheme.

In the long-term historical perspective, a totalitarian political culture is doomed because it contradicts the objective laws of nature and history. But spontaneously it will not leave the historical scene. Such a system leads society to self-isolation from the surrounding "imperfect" world. She is inclined to lock herself in, to preserve her qualities and functions, to reproduce herself, supporting, let's say, dynamic equilibrium in the system. This condition is called homeostasis. It can last a very long time.

The initial tasks of this structure can be forgotten or faded into the background. The system increasingly reveals its barrenness. The great Russian historian V.O. Klyuchevsky wrote: "The bureaucracy is a force that has lost the purpose of its activity and therefore has become aimless, but has not ceased to be strong." K. Marx noted: "The bureaucracy is a circle from which no one can jump out." (Marx K., Engels F. Soch., 2nd ed., Vol. 1, p. 271).

Serious failures in the work of the totalitarian system can occur as a result of the action of both subjective factors (gross errors and miscalculations of power), and objective ones (the impact of world economic processes, worsening geopolitical situation). But the decisive importance is the growth of enlightenment of the people and their desire for progressive changes. The time of such changes has come in Russia.

In our country, authoritarian political culture has long historical roots. Russia developed as a military feudal power. Serfdom existed longer than in other countries. It was first abolished by Emperor Alexander II (reform of 1861), and a century later, under the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU N.S. Khrushchev - the second and, hopefully, its final cancellation occurred.

The influence of the official and the bureaucracy as a whole was traditionally strong in Russia. A popular proverb is known: "The tsar wishes, but not the kennel" ... Russia was not able to completely overcome the negative features of an authoritarian culture. Nevertheless, after the reforms of Alexander II, the Russian monarchy moved slowly and hard towards the constitutional order. After 1917, the foundations of civil society disappeared, shock absorbers collapsed, softening the dominance of the bureaucracy. All the turbidity rose from the bottom of the society, which received a fierce shake-up. There was a rapid decline in morals. How not to recall two statements: “The progress of mankind is very slow, and the regression is instantaneous. It’s worth losing humanity, and you are again a savage”; "Yes, this dangerous business is a revolution in the hands of the ignorant!" (Chinese writer Lao She).

Social aspirations prevailed, based on envy, prejudice, inability and unwillingness to earn money and on the desire to "rob the loot." At the head of the revolutionary forces was a group of intellectuals who thought with the concepts of "scientific socialism." Private property was destroyed, and the foundations of civil society were gone. Capitalism was destroyed, but there were no objective conditions for a more advanced system. In the new bureaucratic class of "nomenclature" that arose after the revolution, unprincipled careerists, "limited ambitious people" (the expression of A. Weber) could not but prevail, and a generation of sincerely believing revolutionaries was almost completely knocked out during the Stalin purges. As a result of revolutionary changes and the policy of "building socialism", an authoritarian political culture naturally developed into a totalitarian one.

In modern Russia, which has embarked on the path of democratic transformation, elements of a totalitarian, authoritarian, and activist culture are fantastically combined. Crucial for the victory of the still very timid shoots of civil society being revived in the country will be the ability of the authorities to maintain favorable economic conditions for them. People should have real opportunities for self-expression within the legal framework, for self-activity, for the protection of their fundamental interests. We need guarantees from any "expropriation" experiments. The more space there is in society for amateur activity, creative activity, the less is the possibility of bureaucratic usurpation of power. The political culture of civil society has sufficient means to protect the individual from any encroachment, to defend human rights and dignity.

Theme 23. Political Culture

1. The essence and content of political culture

1.1. The concept and essence of political culture

Much of what is currently related to political culture was still contained in the Holy Scriptures, analyzed and described by ancient thinkers Confucius, Plato, Aristotle. However, the term itself appeared much later - in  XVIII   in. in the works of the German philosopher-educator I. Herder. The theory, describing this group of political phenomena, was formed only in the late 50s - early 60s.XX   century in line with the Western political science tradition.

The American theorist G. Almond, exploring the political system, identified two levels of its analysis: institutional, characterizing institutions and their functions, norms and mechanisms of public policy formation, and orientation, expressing special forms of population orientation to political objects . These orientations contained “cognitive” (representing as knowledge about the structure of the political system, its main institutions, mechanisms of organization of power), “emotional” (expressing people's feelings for those who ensured the functioning of power institutions and personified power in the eyes population), as well as “appraisal” (acting as judgments based on value criteria and standards for assessing political phenomena) aspects. In the aggregate, these orientations characterize, according to Almond, such a specific phenomenon as political culture.

An analysis of these aspects of a person’s attitude to the political system, focusing on shared values, local mythologies, symbols, mental stereotypes and other similar phenomena, made it possible to understand why, for example, the institutions of state power are identical in form in different ways. countries act sometimes in completely different ways. Thus, the idea of \u200b\u200ba political culture made it possible to study more deeply the motivation for the political behavior of citizens and institutions, to identify the causes of many conflicts that could not be explained on the basis of traditional reasons for politics: the struggle for power, the redistribution of resources, etc.

Subsequently, the Americans S. Verba, L. Pai, V. Rosenbaum, the British Chanas R. Rose and D. Cavanach, the German theorist C. von Boimet, the Frenchman M. Duverger and R.J. Schwarzenberg, the Dutchman I. Inglehart and other scholars substantially supplemented and developed the doctrine of political culture. Moreover, despite the fact that almost all scholars associated political culture with the presence of value motivation, beliefs inherent in the national character of ideals and beliefs that involve a person in political life, nevertheless, for many of them, this concept has become a symbol of a generalized -Characteristics of the entire subjective context of politics.

Nevertheless, the concept of political culture gradually gained its place in science, more and more manifesting its specific character in the reflection of political phenomena. At present, in political science there are three main approaches to the interpretation of political culture. One group of scientists identifies it with the entire subjective content of politics, implying by it the entire totality of spiritual phenomena (G. Almond, S. Verba, D. Devine, Yu. Krasnov, etc.). Another group of scientists sees in political culture the manifestation of normative requirements (S. Byte) or the totality of typical patterns of human behavior in politics (J. Plaino). In this case, it appears as a certain matrix of human behavior (M. Douglas), orienting it to the most common norms and rules of the game in society and, thus, as it pulls up its actions to prevailing standards and forms of interaction with the authorities.

The third group of scientists understands political culture as a way, a style of a person’s political activity, which implies the embodiment of his value orientations in practical behavior (I. Shapiro, P. Sharan, V. Rosenbaum). This understanding reveals the practical forms of human interaction with the state as an expression of his most profound ideas about power, political goals and priorities, preferred and individually mastered norms and rules of practical activity. Characterizing the inextricable connection of a person’s practical actions in the sphere of power with the search for his political ideals and values, the political culture is interpreted as a kind of constantly reproduced in practice spiritual program, a model of human behavior that reflects the most stable individual features of behavior and thinking that are not subject to instant changes under the influence of conjuncture or emotional experiences.

In this sense, the style of a person’s political activity reveals political culture as a combination of the most stable forms, “spiritual codes” of his political behavior, indicating the degree of free assimilation of generally recognized norms and traditions of public life, a combination of his daily activity creative and standard for a particular society methods of realization of rights and freedoms, etc. In this sense, political culture is a form of a person’s experience of the past mastered by a person, of that positive legacy left to him by previous generations. And since in the thinking and behavior of a person there is always a certain gap between the basic military and unexplored norms and traditions of the political game, the traditions and customs of civic activity that have developed in society, he also retains a powerful source of re-evaluation and refinement of his guidelines and principles, and consequently, and the development of their political culture.

At present, the concept of political culture is increasingly enriched by meanings derived from "culture" as a special phenomenon that is opposed to nature and expresses the integrity of the life manifestations of society. By virtue of this, the political culture is increasingly viewed as a political dimension of the cultural environment in a particular society, as a characteristic of the behavior of a particular people, the characteristics of its civilized development. In this sense, political culture expresses the movement of traditions inherent in the people in the field of state power, their embodiment and development in the modern context, the impact on the conditions for shaping the future policy. Expressing this “genetic code” of the people, their spirit in the symbols and attributes of statehood (flag, coat of arms, anthem), political culture integrates society in its own way, ensures stability in relations between people of the elite and non-elite strata of society.

Thus, the understood political cultures of various societies are interconnected not by the “lower — higher” type, but as independent spiritual systems that reject or absorb (assimilate) one another or interpenetrate and assimilate one another’s language and values \u200b\u200b(accommodation). Therefore, it is impossible to recognize the presence of high or low political cultures; to consider that one culture can be a stepping stone or a development goal of another; that the culture in society can be more or less. Political culture is an organically characteristic of society characteristic of its qualitative integrity, manifesting itself in the sphere of public authority.

By rationally summarizing the described approaches, political culture can be defined as a combination of typical forms and patterns of people’s behavior in the public sphere, typical of a specific country (group of countries), embodying their value ideas about the meaning and goals of the development of the world of politics and reinforcing the norms established in society and traditions of the relationship between the state and society.

However, despite its neutrality (the impossibility of applying the criteria of one culture for evaluating another), political and cultural phenomena nevertheless have a certain value certainty. In other words, if the subject is guided by ideas that disregard the value of human life, feelings of hostility and hatred, focuses on violence and the physical destruction of another, then the very fabric of political culture disintegrates. In this case, in the sphere of power, cultural guidelines and methods of political participation give way to other methods of political mutual relations. Therefore, fascist, racist, chauvinistic movements, genocide and terrorism, ochlocratic forms of protest and the totalitarian dictatorship of the authorities are not able to maintain and expand the cultural space in political life.

Thus, stating the impossibility of constructing all forms of citizen participation in politics on cultural samples, as well as recognizing the varying degree of conditionality of the institutions of power in society, it should be recognized that political culture can narrow or expand the zone of its real existence. As a result of this, it cannot be recognized as a universal political phenomenon that permeates all phases and stages of the political process. Developing according to its own laws, it is able to influence the forms of organization of political power, the structure of its institutions, and the nature of interstate relations.

At the same time, political culture embraces an extremely wide range of humanistically oriented values \u200b\u200b(and the forms of behavior determined by them) that distinguish the diversity of life of specific societies, segments of the population, their customs and traditions. In relation to a separate society, this also means that its political culture contains various subcultures, i.e. local, relatively independent groups of values, norms, stereotypes and methods of political communication and behavior, supported by individual groups of the population.

1.2. The functions of political culture

Embodying a holistic-semantic de-termination of a person’s activity in the sphere of power, a political culture characterizes his ability to understand the specifics of his imperiously significant interests, to act in pursuit of goals not only in accordance with the rules of the political game, but also creatively restructuring techniques and methods of activity when changing needs and external circumstances. Combining value motivation with sensual and rational motivations of human actions, political culture not only contains elements that allow a person to simultaneously look “logical”, “illogical” and “illogical” (V. Pareto), but also manifests itself in the most diverse forms. In particular, it can exist in the form of spiritual motives and orientation of a person, in objectified forms of his practical activity, as well as in an institutionalized form, i.e. being fixed in the structure of bodies of political and public administration, their functions. Since not all values \u200b\u200bare simultaneously embodied practically and especially institutional, there are always certain contradictions between the mentioned forms of manifestation of political culture.

Political culture is characterized by certain functions in political life. The most important include the following functions:

identification revealing the constant need of a person to understand his group affiliation and to determine acceptable methods of participation in the expression and defense of the interests of this community;

orientation characterizing a person’s desire for meaningful reflection of political phenomena, understanding their own capabilities in the exercise of rights and freedoms in a particular political system;

prescriptions (programming),expressing the priority of certain orientations, norms and ideas that define and determine a certain orientation and boundaries of the construction of human behavior;

adaptation expressing a person’s need for adaptation to a changing political environment, the conditions for the exercise of his rights and power;

socialization characterizing the acquisition by a person of certain skills and properties that enable him to exercise his civil rights, political functions and interests in a particular power system;

integration (disintegration), providing various groups with the possibility of coexistence within a certain political system, maintaining the integrity of the state and its inter-ethnic relations with society as a whole;

communications, ensuring the interaction of all subjects and institutions of power based on the use of generally accepted terms, symbols, stereotypes and other means of information and the language of communication.

In the process of fulfilling its functions, political culture is capable of exerting a triple influence on political processes and institutions. Firstly, under its influence, traditional forms of political life for society can be reproduced. Moreover, due to the stability of value orientations in the human mind, this possibility persists even in the event of a change in external circumstances and the nature of the ruling regime. Therefore, even during the period of reforms carried out by the state, entire layers of the population can maintain the old political order, counteracting new goals and values. This ability of political culture well explains that most revolutions often end either with a certain return to the previous order (meaning the impossibility of the population to internally learn new goals and values), or terror (only capable of forcing people to lizization of principles of political development new to them)

Secondly, political culture is able to generate new forms of social and political life that are not traditional for society, and thirdly, to combine elements of the old and perspective political structure.

In various historical conditions, and most often during unstable political processes, some functions of a political culture may fade and even cease to exist. In particular, the communicative ability of political norms and traditions of state life can be very significantly reduced, as a result of which the controversy between varioussocial groups, and especially those that hold opposing positions with respect to the government course. At the same time, in transitional processes, the ability of a political culture to disintegrate governance systems based on goals and values \u200b\u200bunusual for the population often increases.

1.3. The structure of political culture

Political culture is a multi-layered phenomenon. The many-shaped connections of political culture with various social and political processes predetermine its complex structure and organization. The diverse internal structures of political culture reflect the technology of the formation of political behavior of the subjects, the stages of the formation of the political culture of a particular country, the presence of diverse subjects (elites, electorate, residents of individual countries and regions), but the main thing is the different nature and proportion of different values .

Thus, V. Rosenbaum believes that people's orientation with respect to the political system is “the basic components of a political culture”. In particular, he suggests differentiating orientations on the following blocks:

orientation with respect to government institutions; this block includes orientations regarding the regime (state institutions, norms, symbols, officials) and regarding the “inputs” and “outputs” of the political system, expressing an assessment of various requirements for state power, its decisions, the effectiveness of their implementation;

Orientations regarding “others” in the political system, including political identification (awareness of belonging to nations, states, residents of certain areas, etc.), political faith (meaning a person’s belief in the positive or negative consequences of actions of people interacting with him) and development of subjective preferences regarding the "rules of the game" and the prevailing rule of law;

Orientations regarding one's own political activity, including an assessment of one’s political competence (with participation in political life, the use of certain resources), faith in one’s ability to exert a real influence on government institutions.

Political guidelines and values \u200b\u200bcan structure a political culture and taking into account their different meanings and roles for the formation of a person’s political activity. In this sense, worldview, civic, and actually political values \u200b\u200bcan be distinguished.

So, a person’s value orientation at the worldview level embeds ideas about politics in his individual picture of the world, an individual perception of life. This forces him to correlate his moral and ethical ideas (about good, the meaning of life) with the characteristics of the political sphere, to form ideas about the role of politics in achieving his main life goals. Within the framework of civic orientations, a person is aware of his abilities as a participant in public relations in which special bodies and institutions (government bodies, courts, etc.) operate, whose activities affect the existence and exercise of his rights and freedoms. From the point of view of political ideas per se, a person develops his attitude to the practical forms of activity of a particular government, parties, officials, etc.

At each of these levels, a person can have rather conflicting ideas. Moreover, the attitude to specific political events changes, as a rule, much faster than philosophical principles, due to which the perception of new goals and values, rethinking of history, etc. carried out extremely unevenly. All this gives the processes of formation and development of political culture additional complexity and inconsistency. And the degree of correspondence of the levels of value orientation directly determines the nature of the integrity and internal disequilibrium of political culture.

A typical way of structuring a political culture is to distinguish values \u200b\u200band methods of political conduct depending on people belonging to social, national, demographic, territorial, confessional, role (elite and electorate) and other public groups. Thus, political culture appears as a set of subcultural entities that characterize the presence of their carriers of significant (and non-essential) differences in their attitude to power and the state, ruling parties, in the methods of political participation, etc.

This approach allows us to see that in specific countries and states, for example, religious (in Northern Ireland and Lebanon), ethnic (in Azerbaijan) or elite (in transition societies) subcultures can have the greatest political influence. In this sense, the most important elements of the subcultural differentiation of political culture are the personal characteristics of leaders and the elite, which characterize their ability to express the interests of ordinary citizens and the effective management and growth of the legitimation of power.

1.4. Political Culture Concepts

Active development of the idea of \u200b\u200bpolitical culture in Western political science began in the 50s  XX   in. It was supposed that it would become that universal that would be able to explain the nature of rapid political changes in the world and help prevent their negative consequences. A global factor in the world development of that time was the massive involvement of broad sections of the previously passive population in active political activity. However, the political participation of the masses ran into a low level of their political culture, which gave rise to political tension in Western countries. The saturation of the material needs of the majority of the population of industrialized countries was accompanied by an increase in their diversity, structural shifts in favor of intangible values. The institutes of parliamentary democracy did not always respond effectively to the processes of complication, increase in number, differentiation of interests and needs, which gave rise to distrust of the population. Finally, unsuccessful attempts to transfer Western political institutions to the new independent states of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, which were in a situation of choice of forms of government, significantly increased attention to the cultural component of political development. The predisposition of some societies to the ideas of democracy and the immunity of others to the principles of tolerance, political competition, pluralism were determined by the ideals, attitudes, beliefs that prevailed in them, which prescribed the population to be oriented toward certain patterns of political behavior. The use of the methodology of comparative (comparative) studies of the interactions between the authorities and the individual, the practice of functioning of political institutions of various countries contributed to the rapid establishment of the concept of political culture.

However, the desire to present political culture as a universal explanatory principle of all processes of political life led to the fact that the content of the concept was gradually eroded and threatened to be completely elusive. This is evidenced by the presence in Western political science of about 50 definitions of the term. The context of the study of political culture is quite wide. It is considered both as an integral part of the general culture, and as a psychological phenomenon (i.e., as a combination of orientation toward political objects), and as an element of political life (i.e., as a set of norms and standards of political behavior). expression), and as a property of a social group, class, etc. It is obvious that in each of the approaches its various aspects and characteristics come to the forefront every time.

Political culture is a qualitative characteristic of the political sphere, a criterion of its maturity. The introduction of the term “political culture” at one time was caused by the need to measure the direction of political activity (constructive or negative, constructive or destructive). Determining the nature and content of political interactions, political culture is the ultimate determinant of politics, the fundamental explanatory principle.

The greatest controversy in the process of establishing the concept of political culture caused the problem of determining its content. The discussion revealed two points of view: according to the first, political culture is a combination of political positions; supporters of the second viewed political culture through behavior. Determining the nature of political culture either through position or through behavior remains relevant for political science today. In addition, an insurmountable obstacle to the convergence of these points of view does not exist. If we consider political culture as a value-based type of attitude of the subject of politics to political objects - the political regime, political forces, society, etc., it is easy to notice that this attitude can take the form of cognitive, emotional, evaluative and practical activities .

The priority in developing the idea of \u200b\u200bpolitical culture belongs to the American political scientist G. Almond, who created the original concept, in the development of which the members of the Comparative Politics Committee headed by G. Almond L. Pai, S. Verba, headed by G. Almond, J. Powell.

In the analysis of political culture, G. Almond used a functional approach, from the standpoint of which political culture was considered mainly as a psychological phenomenon. “Each political system,” notes G. Almond, “is included in a special model of orientation toward political actions. I found it useful to call this a “political culture." S. Verba proposed the most complete definition of political culture with a list of its most important components: “The political culture of society consists of a system of empirical beliefs, expressive symbols and values \u200b\u200bthat determine the situation in which political action takes place. It forms a subjective orientation toward politics. ” Acknowledging that there are many competing political orientations in society, the authors of the concept found that various political cultures are determined through the superiority of certain basic political positions. The political position determines the predisposition to certain types of behavior within the existing political system.

The political orientations (or political positions) of the individual, according to G. Almond and J. Powell, include three types of components: 1) the cognitive component, that is, the knowledge gained by the individual about politicians, political institutions and parties; 2) the affective component, that is, the feelings that determine the individual’s reaction (feelings of sympathy or antipathy, attraction or disgust, admiration or contempt); 3) the evaluative component, i.e., values, beliefs, ideals, ideology. Depending on the dominance of one of the three components, G. Almond and J. Powell identified to a greater or lesser extent secularized cultures, i.e., the extent to which the individual’s political behavior is based on rational knowledge or beliefs.

1.5. Criteria for typologizing political culture

Over the course of the development of diverse states and peoples, many types of political culture have been developed expressing the predominance of certain values \u200b\u200band standards, forms of relations with the authorities, as well as other elements that have developed under the dominant influence of geographical, spiritual, eco-style in the style of political behavior of citizens. -nomic and other factors.

The typology of political cultures can be based on sufficiently mundane factors, reflecting, for example, the specifics of diverse political systems (X . Ecstine), countries and regions (G. Almond, S. Verba), types of orientation of citizens in the political game (in particular, moralistic, individual or traditional - D. Elazar), openness (discursiveness) or closed political values \u200b\u200bto foreign cultural contacts (R. Schwarzenberg), the internal integrity of cultural components (D. Kavanakh), ideological differences (E. Vyatr), etc.

The classification of political culture proposed by G. Almond and S. Verba in the book “Civilian Culture” (New York, 1963) gained particular fame in science. Analyzing and comparing the main components and forms of functioning of the political systems of England, Italy, Germany, the USA and Mexico, they identified three “pure” types of political culture: parochial (parish, “small-town”, patriarchal); sub-tributary; participatory (from English,  participation   - participation). The authors emphasized that in practice these types of political culture interact among themselves, forming mixed forms with the predominance of certain components. Moreover, the most popular and at the same time optimal, from the point of view of ensuring the stability of the political regime, is the synthetic culture of “citizenship”, in which subservient attitudes and corresponding forms of people's participation in politics prevail.

Given the varying degree of development by citizens of various values, norms, standards that are characteristic of different countries, in science there are consensual and polarized types of political culture. In a political culture of the consensual type, there is a very high cohesion of the population on the basis of relativelyleading values, goals that confront the state and society. Therefore, here, as a rule, the loyalty of citizens to the ruling circles and the goals of the regime is high.

In a polarized political culture, the subcultures that have developed in society are distinguished by a sharp discrepancy between the basic values \u200b\u200band guidelines of the political activity of the population (a break in horizontal subcultures), the elite and the electorate (break in vertical subcultures). In countries with a fragmented political culture, the population most often lacks strong agreement regarding the goals of social development, the basic methods of reforming the country, and models for the future.

The degree and depth of mutual misunderstanding usually do not coincide, therefore, within the framework of this type of political culture, peculiar subtypes are also distinguished. For example, we can talk about fragmented (segmented) political cultures within which, unlike relations within a polarized political culture, there is a certain public consensus about the most basic - national - values. At the same time, as V. Rosenbaum emphasizes, here local loyalty often prevails over national, the effectiveness of legal, legitimate procedures is weak, there is a widespread distrust of social groups towards each other, and therefore governments that come to power are unstable and short-lived.

The presence of segmented political cultures is very typical of transition societies or those in which the process of forming a titular nation is ongoing. In these conditions, a large proportion of the apathetic and alienated from the power layers of the population, there are sharp political discussions about the goals and methods of social transformation.

Given the special role of the state and other political institutions in the reproduction of patterns of political thinking and behavior, science also distinguishes between an official, supported by state institutions, and a real political culture, embodying values \u200b\u200band the corresponding forms of practical behavior of the majority or significant parts of the population. Thus, in a number of countries in Eastern Europe, where the ideas of socialism were largely introduced under state pressure, during the first democratic transformations (“velvet revolutions”) they gave way to official indicators of the commitment of these countries to Marxism-Leninism real benchmarks and values \u200b\u200bof citizens .

At the same time, the types of political culture can be determined on more general grounds that can reveal the most universal features of various styles of political behavior of citizens in certain countries. For example, we can talk about a market political culture, in which politics is understood by people as a kind of business and is seen as an act of free exchange of citizens' activities, and statist, which is characterized by the predominant role of state institutions in organizing political life and determining the conditions for political participation of the individual (E. Batalov).

2. Types of political culture

2.1. Classification of G. Almond and S. Verba

In 1958 - 1962 G. Almond and S. Verba undertook a comparative empirical study of the political cultures of Great Britain, the USA, West Germany, Italy and Mexico. In each country, an average of about a thousand people belonging toto different social strata of society. The subject of the study was the political orientation (cognitive, affective, evaluative) of individuals to four main objects - the political system as a whole, government, national elections, and the individual himself. The direction of the analysis was consistent with the hypothesis of the authors, according to which political culture was understood as “specific political orientations - settings regarding the political system and its various parts, as well as regarding the role of political culture in this system itself” -. According to the version of G. Almond and S. Verba, political culture consists of three types of political orientation that can dominate in a particular society - patriarchal, citizenship, and orientation to active participation. These three “pure” (ideal) types of orientation, in turn, form the basis of three types of political culture - patriarchal, subservient, and a culture of participation.

Patriarchal Political Culturecharacterized by a focus on local values \u200b\u200b(values \u200b\u200bof the clan, tribe, clan) and can manifest itself in the form of local patriotism, nepotism, corruption. The individual is not very sensitive to the global political culture; he does not fulfill specific political roles. This type of culture is characteristic of young independent states in which political culture is a stratification of local subcultures.

Subjugated Political Cultureinvolves a passive and detached attitude of the individual to the political system. He focuses on tradition, although politically conscious. Submitting to power, the individual expects various benefits from it (social benefits, guarantees, etc.) and fears its dictatorship,

Culture of participation characterized by political activity, involvement and rationality. Citizens strive to actively influence political power, to direct its activity with the help of legal means of influence - elections, demonstrations, etc.

However, the ideal types of political orientation in a pure form are not found in practice, they coexist and do not crowd out each other. For example, for the political culture of Great Britain  XX   in. a combination of citizenship (personified by the institution of the monarchy) and participation is characteristic.

According to the concept of G. Almond and S. Verba, the political culture of the countries studied represents a special kind of mixed culture, which they called the "culture of citizenship." The most characteristic feature of the culture of citizenship is the rationally active behavior of citizens, which corresponds to a democratic political system.

The results of an empirical study made significant adjustments to the theoretical assumptions of G. Almond and S. Verba. The assumption of the general participation of citizens in politics turned out to be utopian. As they noted, “in an ideal culture of citizenship, the activity and involvement of citizens should be balanced by a dose of passivity and non-participation.” The results of the survey revealed the "imperfection" and "imperfection" of the American and English models of political culture, which were endowed with the status of the most developed cultures.

Thus, the bearer of a culture of citizenship was characterized by a number of advantages: 1) a general positive assessment of the importance of the activities of the national government for him personally and a deep awareness of this fact; 2) a high level of interest in government activities and good awareness in this area; 3) a sense of pride in the political institutions of their nation; 4) the expectation that he will be given an equal and careful attitude on the part of officials; 5) a desire to discuss policy issues in public or among friends and acquaintances; 6) an open and loyal manifestation of opposition sentiments; 7) a sense of satisfaction in connection with the holding of national political events, for example, election campaigns; 8) competence in judgments about government policy and a clear understanding of the obligation to influence this policy in person or jointly with one of fellow citizens; 9) competence in using laws to successfully counter acts of arbitrariness; 10) the belief that participatory democracy is a necessary and desirable public administration system.

The criticism of the concept of political culture of G. Almond, and it boiled down to dissatisfaction with the predominantly psychological interpretation of the phenomenon, does not detract from its revolutionary influence on political science. The introduction of the idea of \u200b\u200bpolitical culture into political science analysis made it possible to formulate a universal explanatory principle: “the ultimate cause of politics is the culture system of a particular society”. Thus, an impetus was given to the development of comparative political science. In the context of the concept of political culture, it was possible to explain the different efficiencies of similar political institutions operating in different countries. It is explained by the dominant political culture in society, the level of its homogeneity. This allowed G. Almond to distinguish, depending on the nature of culture, four types of political systems:

1) Anglo-American political systems characterized by a homogeneous and secularized political culture;

2) continental Western European systems with a fragmented political culture consisting of mixed political subcultures;

3) pre-industrial and partially industrial political systems with differentiated political cultures;

4) totalitarian political systems with a homogeneous political culture, "in which homogeneity is artificial."

For example, despite the autonomy of the participants in the political process in the UK, the stability and effectiveness of the political system is explained by citizens' commitment to one political value: traditionalism, elitism, individual dualism, political loyalty, law obedience, political activity and Victorian values.

No less important is the fact that the definition of political culture through a combination of political orientations made it possible to logically distinguish between the variables of political interactions and provided the possibility of their qualitative and quantitative measurement.

2.2. Marxist typology of political culture

An alternative concept of political culture was developed by Marxist authors. In identifying the nature of political culture, they focused on the economic and class foundations of political culture. Political culture was determined through political action. The Marxist concept unilaterally extolled the virtues of the political culture of the working class as historically progressive, as well as its allies. The content of the political culture of socialism was reduced to the ability of working people to rise “to independent participation not only in voting and elections, but also in everyday management” (V. I. Lenin). At the same time, the structure of the political culture of socialism was seen as an alloy of class-oriented political consciousness (ideology) and the legal consciousness of individual citizens.

A simplified model of class political culture was based on the possibility of universal participation of the population in politics, the interchangeability of political roles and functions that could be performed by each individual. And the most significant flaws of the concept consisted in simplifying the process of political socialization, underestimating the complex relationship of variables that influence the formation of political orientations, including individual views and experiences. Political preferences do not automatically follow from the material foundations of life, are not rigidly determined by the prevailing ideology, and are not "brought into the consciousness" of an individual solely by means of propaganda. The presence of these flaws in the concept led to significant discrepancies in its conclusions with world trends in political development.

2.3. Features of political cultures of the western and eastern types

The ideals of a Western-style political culture go back to the polysnoy (urban) organization of power in Ancient Greece, which assumed that citizens should participate in resolving common issues, as well as to Roman law, which affirmed the civil sovereignty of the individual. In general, the values \u200b\u200band standards of Western political culture were formed to the extent and on the basis of a consistent increase in the role and importance of the individual in the political life of society, the establishment of civil society control over the state. The religious values \u200b\u200bof Christianity, especially its Protestant and Catholic branches, as well as the special role of philosophy, which emerged as an autonomous spiritual force and embodied a critical attitude as a social reality, had a tremendous influence on the content of these values \u200b\u200band standards. so to the religious picture of the world.

The economic foundation of the Western way of life, in the bosom of which the basic ideas, institutions and relations of political life were formed, became the industrial type of production relations, which, combined with the spiritual influence of Catholicism, and especially Protestantism, approved the most important principles of social and political interaction. For a person of Greco-Roman civilization, the basic principle of his attitude to reality was his attitude to work as a guarantee of prosperity in life. Rational attitude to life, ideas of competitiveness, striving for progress: “work and succeed”, “compete and become famous” - these are the ethical maxims that dominated relations between the state and society, promoted the development of Western civilization, forced the West to constantly making breakthroughs in the development of production, led to a steady increase in the welfare of its population.

Due to this type of civilizational development, the main values \u200b\u200band guidelines of the political culture of the West primarily reflected the understanding of a person’s self-sufficiency for exercising power and his attitude to politics as a kind of conflicting, but quite rationally organized activity in which people perform various roles and functions. The state was perceived as an institution protecting human rights and freedoms, supporting its social initiatives. At the same time, there were no value limitations that blocked the possibility for an ordinary person to perform managerial functions. The status of the most important regulator of the political game has been established for law and law. A focus on the rule of law and constitution has shaped the predominance of consensus power technologies, a centrist type of state policy.

This value motivation of political actions of the elite and non-elite strata led to the development of a democratic form of organization of power, entrenched in the separation of powers, the creation of a system of checks and balances aimed at systematic public control of the ruling circles. Currently, stable democratic traditions allow Western countries to flexibly adapt to many changes in the world, to resolve conflicts in the spirit of integrity and integration of their communities.

The specificity of the eastern norms and traditions of political culture is rooted in the life features of the communal structures of the agrarian Asian society that developed under the influence of the values \u200b\u200bof the Arab-Muslim, Confucian and Indo-Buddhist cultures. The basic values \u200b\u200bof this world were formed with the constant dominance of the ruling structures in the life of society, the dominance of collectivist forms of organizing private life, and the centralized structures pushed the conditions for individual entrepreneurial activity, the emergence and development of private property. The undivided dominance of religious ideas, embodying not only sacred ideas, but also morality, law, aesthetics, social teachings, led to the fact that religious doctrines practically absorbed the critical function of secular philosophical science in these countries.

The resolution of conflicts in such conditions did not provide for the promotion of legal norms, but an appeal to the moral authority of senior managers. Therefore, the ethical maxim of the political culture of the eastern type was not the law, but the custom, not the constitution, but the opinion of the leadership. On the whole, the long domination of the patriarchal-clan structure of society led to the extreme weakness of the individual in the face of the community and especially the state. The status of a person was determined by its usefulness for a particular community, and therefore power, politics were always perceived as a sphere of activity of heroes and prominent persons.

Such conditions contributed to the establishment, as the basic value of this type of political culture, of the belief in the necessity of a mandatory mediator between an ordinary person and the government (guru, teacher, elder). Man considered political power as an area of \u200b\u200bdivine government. Competitiveness, pluralism, freedom were excluded from the attributes of this area of \u200b\u200blife, and recognition of the dominant role of elites was supplemented by the lack of need for control over its activities. The main destiny of man was recognized as performing functions, maintaining the ideas of justice, order, harmony of the upper and lower classes. It is not surprising that such norms constantly generated tendencies for isolation of the upper and lower classes, authoritarian tendencies, and simplification of the forms of organization of power and political relations.

The opposite of the basic orientations of the western and eastern types is extremely stable, which even serious political reforms cannot shake. For example, in India, where the country inherited a fairly developed party system, parliamentary institutions, etc. from the colonial rule of Great Britain, the archetypes of eastern mentality still dominate. And therefore, the main role in the elections is played not by party programs, but by the opinions of village elders, princes (heads of aristocratic families), leaders of religious communities, etc. In turn, in a number of Western European countries, even an increased interest in Eastern religions and a way of life also does not affect the parameters of political culture in any way, nor does it lead to a change in it.

True, in some states a certain synthesis of Western and Eastern values \u200b\u200bhas nevertheless formed. For example, Japan’s technological breakthrough into the club of leading industrial powers, as well as the political consequences of the post-war occupation of this country, have strengthened its political culture with a significant charge of liberal democratic values \u200b\u200band patterns of political behavior of citizens. A very intensive interaction between West and East takes place in the political life of countries that occupy a middle geopolitical position (Russia, Kazakhstan, etc.) - a certain symbiosis of value orientations and methods of political participation of citizens is formed there. Nevertheless, the qualitative features of the aforementioned world civilizations, as a rule, determine the mutually non-transformable foundations of political cultures, the convergence of which will obviously occur in the distant future.

2.4. Center-economic political culture

A.S. Panarin offers the following definition of the field of cultural choice in modern politics: economic-centrism - as a choice that gives an appropriate (economic-centrist) type of political culture; sociocentrism - as a choice, giving a societal type of political culture; ethnocentrism - as a choice that gives an ethnocentric political culture. Each of these types forms a certain ensemble, uniting in a whole known cognitive, motivational, normative and projective attitudes that differ from the corresponding attitudes of other cultural types.

When it comes to economic-centrism in relation to political culture, we have in mind not only and not so much the peculiarities of the methodology as the value priorities. Consistent economic centrism is characterized by the ideology of modern liberalism, which has become both the methodological and value credo of this way of perceiving the world. At the same time, although the economic-centric political culture finds ideological support in liberal theory, one cannot equate this theory with the political culture legitimized by it.

Economic centrism in political culture is the result of a choice associated with a willingness to sacrifice evidence of other types of social experience or to subordinate it to oneself. The higher the level of awareness that the primacy of economic rationality over all others is not a natural, naturally accepted fact, but a position that others can be opposed to, the more active are the cognitive, normative, motivational and projective components of political culture, acting under the sign of domineering the will.

In a cognitive sense, the economic-centric political culture gravitates to the picture of the world that was formulated by the European Enlightenment with its central thesis about "natural man." The cognitive contradictions of this political culture are far from harmless; it constantly rumbles between the optimistic-humanistic version of the market "natural state" as accessible to all and its pessimistic social-Darwinist version as the destiny of the fittest minority. Hence the so frequent and almost instantaneous transition from democratic complacency associated with the prospect of a single universal human future to a political fear of an unadapted majority that should not be given freedom of political choice, since it will not choose those who need it.

Its motivational core is the individualistic morality of success. But there is a distance between success as a finish and a well-known starting state, which can be covered in different ways: a more difficult legal way or a more easy illegal one. In other words, success appears as a category related to different types of culture: mobilization, justifying the intense creative efforts of the individual, and hedonistic, which turns away from all efforts and all diligence.

In normative terms, modern economic-centrism demonstrates a complete gap between individual and public (collective) benefits. Old-fashioned liberals believed in an “invisible hand,” miraculously directing the spontaneous individual efforts of “rational egoists” to public benefit.

The globalization project, to which the economic-centrist political culture has linked itself, promises the world an unprecedented polarization of a new type: the minority is called upon to enter an ultramodern world combining utmost planetary mobility with technically provided comfort; the majority - to return to the beyond archaic, combining isolation and immobility with the absence of any guarantees of normal existence. Modern economic-centrist theories act as a project of "liberating" the individual from all social and moral duty

Economic centrism carries an extreme form of self-expression of an anonymous large society in which all national, ethnic, cultural guises have sunk and the communal warmth of life has finally eroded. Economic centrism began with criticism of the community in the name of a single national society, and ended with criticism of the community in the name of a totally impersonal and devoid of internal borders global society.

2.5. Ethnocentric Political Culture

The cognitive foundations of this political culture are revealed by comparing it with the classical culture of national sovereignty and citizenship.

In ethnocentric political culture, the main motivating value was not development, but ethnic "independence". The role of political avant-garde here is played by politicized philologists who raise the problems of the purity of the national language, scolded shrines and values, forgotten, but today newly demanded national rituals and traditions. All this politicized ethnography hastily turns into an ideology, the purpose of which is to model a "large society" according to the model of "community".

If in this culture they talk about the future, then only about one that is carefully reserved for its own and has nothing to do with the universalist installations of classical humanism and Enlightenment. But nevertheless the theme of the past prevails; all political rhetoric concerning the present and the future forms a kind of “search for the lost time” - the golden childhood of the nation, whose sweet dreams they are trying to resurrect.

In normative terms, the peculiarity of the new ethnocentrism manifests itself in the denial of economic, political, legal, and educational information universals in favor of local norms, local communities, and local experience.

Politically, this directly leads to a violation of the legal universals of modern citizenship in favor of new privileges associated with the status of a "titular ethnic group." The division of citizens into “indigenous” and “non-indigenous”, “titular” and “non-titular” brings society back to the old class division and the associated privileges and discrimination.

Ethnocentric culture encroaches on the big world of anonymous forces, trying to impose on a modern person a family model of society, in which service and affection, external duty and personal care, urging and care merge together. Such a merger in the modern world cannot be permanent: it is possible only during periods of specific social arousal, reminiscent of a collective delusion.

2.6. Sociocentric Political Culture

Sociocentrism means owning a mechanism that, instead of tearing apart the economy, culture, and morality, makes it possible to recognize their interdependence within an indissoluble whole called sociality. The new political culture, designed to remove the extremes of economic-centrism and ethnocentrism, corresponds to the concept of post-economic culture.

In a cognitive sense, it is cosmocentric, clearly aware of the responsibilities of society to nature.

In a motivational sense, a sociocentric political culture becomes ethical-centered, inspired by the ideals of the common good, social solidarity of cooperation and responsibility. It is aimed at ensuring that social relations are not tribal, but social in nature, but at the same time they are not neutral in value and moral relations.

Within the framework of this type of culture, it is advisable to talk about political solidarity on the basis of amateur civic initiatives. The current comprehensive weakening of the social state does not dictate to the world a rejection of the social idea as such, but its transfer down to an amateur civil society.

The idea of \u200b\u200bsocial protection is not as statist, but as a civil one, associated with social initiative, with grassroots political creativity - this is the credo of a new political culture. Such a culture is called upon to discover the unity and similarity of people where economic and ethnocentrism were seen and encouraged only by differences and oppositions.

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The term “political culture” was introduced into the scientific circulation by I. Herder. It was introduced into political science by the American political scientist G. Almond. The classical definition was formulated by G. Almond and G. Powell. A comprehensive study of political culture as a system of value orientations and political actions began in the 1950s.

Political culture –– this is a set of individual positions and orientations of participants in a given political system; it is a subjective sphere that forms the basis of political actions and attaches importance to them; it is a system of political experience, knowledge, stereotypes, patterns of behavior and functioning of political actors.

Political culture is an integral part of a nationwide culture and, above all, the political experience of mankind gained in the course of historical development. Existing in certain forms, this experience affects the formation of the political consciousness of people and is ultimately expressed in their political orientations and attitudes, which, in turn, determine the political behavior of people. In this definition, three interrelated concepts are combined: political experience, consciousness, political behavior. Ethostructural elements of political culture.

Political Historical Experience (supranational and national communities) is the basis for the development of political culture. It captures the history of the development of political relations in various forms: historical, literary, scientific monuments, political traditions, political ideology; in the form of a functioning political system with its institutions, norms, principles, socio-political relations. On the basis of historical knowledge, political consciousness and the social memory of society are formed, political guidelines and patterns of political behavior are affirmed.
  On the basis of the political experience of many generations of people, their political consciousness is formed as a system of political knowledge, values \u200b\u200band ideological and political convictions, which take into account the development of stable and significant political orientations and attitudes towards the political system and their place in it.

IN political consciousness   two main components can be distinguished: ideological and emotional-psychological.

Ideological component. Any citizen correlates his political knowledge, beliefs with existing political organizations and procedural institutions (the political system as a whole, the political regime, parties, organizations, legislation, bureaucracy, leaders, etc.). There is an analysis of institutions and the political system in terms of its ability to satisfy political needs. All this is called the instrumental aspect of political culture.

Ideological component
Political knowledge	People's knowledge of politics; about the political system; about various political ideologies; about institutions and procedures by which citizens participate in the political process
Political values	Ethical and normative judgments about political life, about political goals that political activity is aimed at (for example, legality, order, system stability; social justice)
Political beliefs	People's ideas about what a political system should be (ideological preferences): direct or representative democracy based on private property; socialist democracy; totalitarian system based on the idea of \u200b\u200bnational superiority

. Taking into account the possibilities of the political system, people form political orientations and attitudes, which make up the second component of political consciousness - emotional and psychological. These orientations and attitudes determine the form of human participation in the political process.

Emotional-psychological component
Political Institutions and structures	The state as an organ of coercion either as an organizing and regulatory tool
Regulatory system	§ Respect for or neglect of the law
Political Events	Understanding of their necessity or chance; determination of the quality of decision making
Separate political roles	Attitude to the institution of the presidency, leadership in political organizations, parties in terms of loyalty or rationality, etc .; attitude to specific political figures (political ratings); The citizen’s attitude to himself as a participant in the political process, i.e. determination of one’s place in the political system

Political behavior   - this is the practical interaction of a person with the political environment, expressed in a certain form of political participation. It is caused, on the one hand, by political consciousness, and on the other, by the level of political development of society as a whole. Political behavior is manifested in the political activities of people. For example, a person may be interested in politics and be well informed, regard the activity of his government as incorrect and even harmful, but be indifferent to political life. This allows us to talk either about the lack of a sense of civic responsibility in his political consciousness, or about the absence in the political system of acceptable forms of influence on the authorities.

Forms of political behavior can vary from active participation to non-participation.

A person’s participation in the political process can be predetermined from above (for example, participation in non-alternative elections in a one-party system; participation in organizations under the full control of the government) and not influence politicians and decisions made.

Degree of activity	Acceptable form	Unacceptable form
Active participation	Pre-election activity; participation in elected bodies; lobbying activities; organizational activities (participation in political organizations and parties); participation in political demonstrations and other political actions	Violence; bribing officials; disorganization
Passive participation	Participation in the vote; obedience to law Neglect of the law; law violation
Nonparticipation

Autonomous participation involves the free expression of the will of a citizen (in a democratic society with a high development of political culture, autonomous participation of citizens in politics is a priority).

High political culture is distinguished by three main criteria, which are manifested in the political behavior of people: involvement in political activity; positive activity; rationality.

Through participation in the political process, both the citizen and society as a whole gain new political experience that contributes to the further development of political culture. Each new generation is responsible for maintaining the political culture of society and enriching it with new positive experiences. Each person should feel and understand this responsibility, since the basis and condition for the progressive development of society is precisely the high political culture of the individual.

Thus, in the structure of political culture it is advisable to distinguish: cognitive elements; moral-evaluative elements; behavioral elements.

Each structural element assumes the presence and use of the common achievements of mankind in the political sphere of society. Mastering political culture is possible at the level of theory and at the level of practice. The gap between them cannot but affect the political culture of each individual and the whole society.

Political culture is a structural element of the political system, although it functions relatively independently.

Culture  (from lat. "cultivation", "education") - a way of social self-reproduction of man and humanity, a historically defined level of development of society, the creative forces and abilities of a person, expressed in types and forms of organization of life and activities of people, as well as in the material and spiritual values.

Political culture  - this is a set of typical patterns of political ideas, value orientations, attitudes and political behavior that are typical for a given society or social group.

The essence of political culture  is a combination of political knowledge, individual positions, orientation, values \u200b\u200band actions of subjects of the political life of society. The political culture of our time is the result of the development of the riches of modern civilization, political education, political consciousness. It is an important component of the spiritual life of society, finds expression in political consciousness and political behavior. Behavior is the way culture exists.

The structure of political culture:

- political views;

- political values \u200b\u200band value orientations;

- political attitudes - the attitude of the subject to political phenomena;

- political behavior;

- Political traditions - a way of transmitting patterns of political consciousness and people's behavior.

Political culture affects the behavior of people and the activities of various organizations, their upbringing, the phenomena of domestic and international politics, the assessment of political leaders, a person's determination of his place in the political life of society.

Characteristic features of political culture:

1) is a product of the historical development of society, the result of collective political creativity;

2) consolidates stable ties between the elements of the political process, stable sides of the political experience;

3) has a comprehensive character, permeating the political life of a particular country;

4) guarantees the integrity and integration of the political sphere;

5) coordinates the life of society as a whole, combines the interests of various social groups, classes, the state and the individual;

6) characterizes the political consciousness and political behavior of the bulk of the population.

The functions of political culture:

1) cognitive - forms the necessary socio-political knowledge, views among citizens, increases political education;

2) communicative - allows you to establish a connection between participants in the political process, as well as transmit elements of political culture from generation to generation and accumulate political experience;

3) integrative - helps to achieve agreement within the existing political system and the political system chosen by society, joins forces to achieve certain socially significant goals;

4) educational - makes it possible to form a citizen, a person as a full-fledged subject of politics, promotes political socialization;

5) regulatory - consolidates in the public consciousness the necessary political values, attitudes, motives, goals and norms of behavior.

Culture "appeared in the 18th century. This term was used in his writings by Johann Herder (German philosopher-educator). However, the theory itself, which provided for the study of the political world through culture, was formed much later. It was formed only in the 50-60s.

Political culture is considered a complex of images and forms typical of a particular state in the public sphere. These forms and images embody the values \u200b\u200bof the population. They reflect the idea of \u200b\u200bpeople about goals and meaning. At the same time, established traditions and norms of relations between society, people and the state are fixed.

Representations of power are mainly inculcated in a person with education. Based on these ideas, the individual interacts with the state. Thus, the most stable and unchanging traits in character are visible, the style of human behavior is manifested, the political culture of the individual is determined.

However, decisions are often made "not by the head, but by the heart." People’s intentions do not always coincide with their actions. The emerging contradictions that enter during the course give an internal contradiction to the political culture. At the same time, this ambiguity allows us to simultaneously support both active and passive forms of participation in the life of the power of each individual.

Defining political culture as a specific sphere of phenomena, it should be noted that it is able to influence the course of the process, the dynamics of changes in the government sector, as well as the state of the actors involved. Among the most stable functions, reflecting different directions of action on power, it should be noted:

1. An identification that reveals a person’s constant desire to understand his group affiliation and determine acceptable methods of participation in upholding and expressing the interests of the entire relevant community.
2. Socialization - obtaining some properties and skills for the realization of their own civic interests and tasks.
3. Integration (disintegration), providing different groups the opportunity to coexist within the established system.
4. Communication facilitating the interaction of all institutions and subjects of power through the use of generally accepted stereotypes, symbols, terms and other information tools.
5. The orientation that characterizes the human desire for the semantic expression of the phenomena of power, understanding of their personal capabilities in the implementation of freedoms and rights in a particular system.
6. Prescription (programming), reflecting the priority of specific norms, orientations and ideas, defining and explaining a separate orientation and boundaries of the formation of human behavior.

There are three main (ideal) types of political culture. However, in the ideal form, they do not occur in the real world. Theoretically, there is a subservient and patriarchal culture, as well as a culture of participation. For young states that are independent, the second type is characteristic. Moreover, the patriarchal political culture is oriented towards national values \u200b\u200band can manifest itself in the form of local patriotism, mafia, corruption.