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...ical cultures, NPC, class politics, and clientelist, where cultural membership is a better predictor of protest than any other type of organizational participation (religious, community, or professional). Culture on the Rise this will probably translate into political terms as a predisposition to, say, sign petitions and to adopt a rights-claiming attitude. Interestingly, it will not foster as much trust in other persons as in the government. These findings not only corroborate past work suggesting that social and political trust are different attitudes explained by different variables (e.g., Coleman 1988; Newton 2001), but also reflect the nature of this specific political culture, i.e., a combination of socially liberal attitudes with fiscal conservatism that is particularly salient in large, cosmopolitan urban settings (e.g., Boshcken 2003). Four Cultural Traditions/Civilizations Our focus so far on political cultures could lead some to consider either that behind our model lies some sort of evolutionary framework, guiding the analyst from the class politics and clientelism of the past to the NPC of today's global cities and cosmopolitan democrats, or that we are solely concerned with the s...

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...most ignored in the West—what are the conditions for democracy to flourish? To answer this, political scientists rediscovered Alexis de Tocqueville. Chief among them was Robert D. Putnam, who in Bowling Alone enshrined Tocqueville as “patron saint” of the social capital approach to emphasize the civic Int J Polit Cult Soc DOI 10.1007/s10767-013-9170-7 F. C. da Silva (*) : T. N. Clark : S. Cabaço University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal e-mail: fcs23@ics.ul.pt T. N. Clark e-mail: tnclark@uchicago.edu S. Cabaço e-mail: slfcab@essex.ac.uk virtues of participation in voluntary social organizations (Putnam 1995). The influence of this Putnam-Tocqueville model has been substantial. “Trust” and “social capital” have become buzzwords of early twenty-first century political science. Social capital has been critiqued in many ways, but one main point here is that its use encouraged analysts to lump together all forms of organizational membership—unions, churches, and political parties. Thus, “participation” or “membership” in the exemplary research usually sums up activities of each of these sorts (Verba et al. 1993; Zukin et al. 2006). Yet, if we break out participation into its components, we find dramat...

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...al repercussions of cultural membership. Korean reading club members, for instance, are more likely to engage in protest activities and endorse a model of citizenship that emphasizes engagement. And the more educated they are, the more likely this is to occur.33 Furthermore, cultural membership seems to be part of an expanded scope of individuality at the expense of solidarity. First, cultural membership 31 Using religion as a prime historical indicator of traditional basic values and culture is classic in social science, from Max Weber's works on sociology of religion (1958, 1964) to Talcott Parsons (1951), to Henri Mendras (1971), and even Daniel Bell (1973). 32 Due to data availability, this last context is analyzed only for three countries (India, Japan, and South Korea). Future waves of the World Value Survey and similar cross-national surveys should try to enlarge the number of countries from this part of the world. 33 “More educated” refers here to the positive and statistically significant regression coefficient correspondent to the direct effect of the variable predicting the dependent variables (concerning the highest level of education attained by the respondent). Silva et al. in this...

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...lub members, for instance, are more likely to engage in protest activities and endorse a model of citizenship that emphasizes engagement. And the more educated they are, the more likely this is to occur.33 Furthermore, cultural membership seems to be part of an expanded scope of individuality at the expense of solidarity. First, cultural membership 31 Using religion as a prime historical indicator of traditional basic values and culture is classic in social science, from Max Weber's works on sociology of religion (1958, 1964) to Talcott Parsons (1951), to Henri Mendras (1971), and even Daniel Bell (1973). 32 Due to data availability, this last context is analyzed only for three countries (India, Japan, and South Korea). Future waves of the World Value Survey and similar cross-national surveys should try to enlarge the number of countries from this part of the world. 33 “More educated” refers here to the positive and statistically significant regression coefficient correspondent to the direct effect of the variable predicting the dependent variables (concerning the highest level of education attained by the respondent). Silva et al. in this context decreases one's solidarity towards the worst-...

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...aterialism),14 clientelism,15 and the new political culture (or post-materialism).16 The central element of our second axiom, cultural traditions, helps us understand the shaping influence of broad, civilization value systems on political behavior and beliefs. In line with the “multiple modernities” paradigm developed by Eisenstadt (2008) and his associates, these cultural traditions can be traced back to the religious culture that historically has dominated each country we are studying. We use this as a measure of the multiple civilizational configurations that compose the world today (e.g., Norris and Inglehart 2004). Our model includes four of these cultural–civilizational traditions, namely Protestantism, Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity, and Eastern religions.17 The expectation is that the greater the influence of principles such as individual autonomy and personal expression in a certain cultural tradition, the more likely it is for it to be associated with norms of citizenship and types of political participation that emphasize critical engagement and creative self-realization. To be concrete, we expect, for instance, that cultural membership in Protestant countries to be more highly correlated wit...

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... individual and contextual levels in predicting participation, attitudes, and norms of citizenship in democratic countries around the world. The results corroborate 20 One other concern relates to the fact that in each country, the levels of culture membership are a relatively small part of the national sample. Our solution was not to conduct single country analyses, but to group countries by cultural type, which raised the Ns. 21 This is a particularly sensitive issue as we focus on a broad population of cases - democratic countries - in diverse political and/or cultural contexts. See, e.g., King et al. (2004). 22 We are aware of the potential reciprocity bias that exists in the general model we are testing—our general model analyzes if social participation impacts democratic politics, but the inverted relation might also hold. We tested this possibility and, in fact, the levels of political participation, trust, and the adherence to norms of citizenship predict membership in voluntary organizations. The variation explained by these models—measured by the adjusted R2—is inferior to our model of interest. 23 In addition, in order to test for the possible contamination of the measurement of arts part...

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...buildings and factories. They have three-point scale: 1, “would never do”; 2, “might do”; and 3, “have done” (source:WorldValues Survey 1999–2004). Culture on the Rise and empirical political science, is often insensitive to the variety of normative understandings regarding citizenship. For example, neo-republicanism often suggests that there is one ideal set of civic virtues: in the civic republican tradition back to Cicero, Harrington, and Machiavelli, contemporary political theorists try to deduce the civic virtues that the citizens of contemporary nation-states should strive toward (e.g., Pettit 2000). In the empirical tradition, albeit less philosophically sophisticated than their fellow political theorists, political scientists are arguably more sensitive to the heterogeneous nature of the normative fabric of citizenship. Hence, empirically oriented political scientists such as Dalton (2007) and Denters et al. (2007) identify several different norms of citizenship in the USA and Europe. We adopt some of those norms here. Specifically, our model includes the “duty-based,”8 “engagement,”9 and “solidarity”10 norms of citizenship. In addition, we use a second cleavage that has received some ...

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...tting certain products for ethical reasons. Together with voting and trust, protest is one of the three dimensions of democratic politics our model seeks to explain. If we no longer consider the New England, town meeting model of civic participation as the sole yardstick of democratic politics, but we include all three types just listed, we find no general decline in political participation. While some forms of political action become less popular (e.g., voting in certain countries), others are growing, and still others have emerged in recent years (e.g., political blogs or online petitions) (Dalton 2007). Whereas we try to overcome the conservative bias of the Putnam-Tocqueville model by enlarging what counts as democratic participation to include protest activities along with trust and voting, we try to avoid its parochialism by enlarging the scope of norms of citizenship with which it operates. Norms of citizenship encompass the values and representations individuals have of their relation with democratic authorities qua citizens. What are the civic virtues that one should exhibit to be considered an exemplary citizen? The existing literature, both in political theory 4 We thus restrict our...

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...S. Cabaço e-mail: slfcab@essex.ac.uk virtues of participation in voluntary social organizations (Putnam 1995). The influence of this Putnam-Tocqueville model has been substantial. “Trust” and “social capital” have become buzzwords of early twenty-first century political science. Social capital has been critiqued in many ways, but one main point here is that its use encouraged analysts to lump together all forms of organizational membership—unions, churches, and political parties. Thus, “participation” or “membership” in the exemplary research usually sums up activities of each of these sorts (Verba et al. 1993; Zukin et al. 2006). Yet, if we break out participation into its components, we find dramatic differences from the “bowling alone” story. Voting and participation in general politics has declined in many countries since the 1980s, as has been widely reported. But barely noted is the rise of the arts and culture in these same years, even though someWorld Values Survey items suggest massive increases in arts and culture participation in various countries.1 This is all the more surprising given its ubiquitous character. From mayors' agendas for urban renewal to the general population's practices...

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...ss philosophically sophisticated than their fellow political theorists, political scientists are arguably more sensitive to the heterogeneous nature of the normative fabric of citizenship. Hence, empirically oriented political scientists such as Dalton (2007) and Denters et al. (2007) identify several different norms of citizenship in the USA and Europe. We adopt some of those norms here. Specifically, our model includes the “duty-based,”8 “engagement,”9 and “solidarity”10 norms of citizenship. In addition, we use a second cleavage that has received some theoretical treatment in recent years (Habermas 1994, 2001). We refer to the distinction between identity politics and the rule of law, i.e., between “thick” and “thin” norms of citizenship (Lewin-Epstein and Levanon 2005). Concomitantly, we distinguish between “identity-based” norms of citizenship and “legal-civic” ones.11 By adding an ethnic vs. civic axis to our model, wewish to add an important corrective to analyses largely based on socioeconomic (civic) norms. Contextual and Independent Variables In what follows, we discuss the several contextual12 and independent variables in our model of the impact of cultural membership in democratic p...

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...l spending points in the same direction, by finding that one of the few items that show significant change between 1994 and 2010 is support for “arts and culture,” which climbed from 15 to 30 %. See http://www.queensu.ca/cora/_files/fc2010report.pdf 2 Most studies on the arts are case studies whose authors have not sought to explore the broader and the political implications of arts participation: see, e.g. Lloyd (2006). Since finding these results in the World Values Survey, we have looked for other studies that might have reported similar results and found them inconsistent. An exception is Stolle and Rochon (1998), even though it is limited to three case-studies. 3 The main source of the data used in our statistical analysis is the World Values Survey (1999–2004 wave). Since our main variable of interest—belong to education, arts, music, or cultural activities—is not included in the fifth wave of the WVS (2005–2007), we do not use data from that wave. A slightly different model was implemented on vote (on the social participation bloc, we only had information for religious and cultural groups): in this case, we used the International Social Survey Programme 2004 data. We also run the same model using a...

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... NPC, class politics, and clientelist, where cultural membership is a better predictor of protest than any other type of organizational participation (religious, community, or professional). Culture on the Rise this will probably translate into political terms as a predisposition to, say, sign petitions and to adopt a rights-claiming attitude. Interestingly, it will not foster as much trust in other persons as in the government. These findings not only corroborate past work suggesting that social and political trust are different attitudes explained by different variables (e.g., Coleman 1988; Newton 2001), but also reflect the nature of this specific political culture, i.e., a combination of socially liberal attitudes with fiscal conservatism that is particularly salient in large, cosmopolitan urban settings (e.g., Boshcken 2003). Four Cultural Traditions/Civilizations Our focus so far on political cultures could lead some to consider either that behind our model lies some sort of evolutionary framework, guiding the analyst from the class politics and clientelism of the past to the NPC of today's global cities and cosmopolitan democrats, or that we are solely concerned with the socioeconomic p...

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...te has not gone unchallenged, however. First, as Laurent Fleury notes, by according to the experience of the working classes the kind of attention previously reserved to the culture of the highly literate and by taking an interest in design, advertizing, audiovisual products, the transmission and exploitation of knowledge, as well as recreational activities, leisure, and tourism, “cultural studies” played a part in promoting the ubiquity of the “cultural” (Passeron et al. 2003; Fleury 2013, p. 49). Second, Bourdieu has been challenged by the work of Peterson and Simkus on “culture omnivores” (Peterson and Simkus 1992), which showed that people of higher social status were not averse to participation in activities associated with popular culture. Indeed, high status people were adding practices and cultural forms to their cultural repertoire at an accelerating rate: they were omnivores because they were developing a taste for everything. Research on cultural omnivores focuses on the individuals and their practices, while our past work has focused instead on their political culture (NPC). Despite the different analytical focuses, we are both tapping into the same rising pattern: cultural omnivores, who tend ...

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... in activities associated with popular culture. Indeed, high status people were adding practices and cultural forms to their cultural repertoire at an accelerating rate: they were omnivores because they were developing a taste for everything. Research on cultural omnivores focuses on the individuals and their practices, while our past work has focused instead on their political culture (NPC). Despite the different analytical focuses, we are both tapping into the same rising pattern: cultural omnivores, who tend to adopt a NPC, “tend to be more politically engaged” (Chan 2013). Consistent with DiMaggio (1996), Chan uses the British Household Panel Survey to suggest that “omnivores are quite distinctive in their social and political attitudes. Compared with visual arts inactives, omnivores are more trusting and risk taking. They are also more supportive of the supranational European Union, and they tend to eschew subnational and ethnic identities, which suggests a more open and cosmopolitan outlook. Omnivores are more egalitarian in their gender role attitudes, and they are more liberal on homosexuality. Omnivores are greener regarding the environment and climate change which can be interpreted as ...

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...nder the influence of Putnam's well-known jeremiad: civic participation is said to be in decline since the 1960s, with serious implications for the health of democracy. We suggest that this decline covers only part of what has happened in the last half a century. Another part of the change is a structural differentiation of political participation patterns accompanying the generational shift, societal value change, and socioeconomic modernization in dozens of countries around the world since the 1960s. Political repertoires of younger cohorts are larger than those of their predecessors (e.g., Tilly 2006, pp. 30–59). Our stress on expanded democratic repertoires joins the structural differentiation to overcome a narrow and conservative understanding that informed part of the communitarian revival of Tocqueville in the 1990s. For example, even Welzel, Inglehart, and Deutsch's recent discussion of elitechallenging repertoires shows a bias towards protest activities. Strikes, which enjoy constitutional protection in virtually all consolidated democracies, are excluded from their model under the grounds of their alleged “violent” nature (Welzel et al. 2005). To make our conception of democratic p...

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...of voluntary organizations and activities and say…which if any do you belong to? Education, Arts, Music or Cultural Activities.” In Canada, a study on citizens' preferences regarding federal spending points in the same direction, by finding that one of the few items that show significant change between 1994 and 2010 is support for “arts and culture,” which climbed from 15 to 30 %. See http://www.queensu.ca/cora/_files/fc2010report.pdf 2 Most studies on the arts are case studies whose authors have not sought to explore the broader and the political implications of arts participation: see, e.g. Lloyd (2006). Since finding these results in the World Values Survey, we have looked for other studies that might have reported similar results and found them inconsistent. An exception is Stolle and Rochon (1998), even though it is limited to three case-studies. 3 The main source of the data used in our statistical analysis is the World Values Survey (1999–2004 wave). Since our main variable of interest—belong to education, arts, music, or cultural activities—is not included in the fifth wave of the WVS (2005–2007), we do not use data from that wave. A slightly different model was implemented on vote (on...

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... Class Politics Consider the class politics context. This context is ideal—typically characterized by hierarchical institutions (the Church, political parties, and unions), materialist values (related to security and economic development), and a model of citizenship defined by the fulfillment of civic duties such as serving in the military and paying taxes and receiving classparty-driven state benefits. Our aim here is to discuss how and why belonging to a cultural organization influences political beliefs and conduct in this specific context. We build on recent work on class politics such as Evans (1999), Clark and Lipset (2001), and Achterberg (2006). The most interesting finding here is that cultural membership increases voting turnout (Table 3). This is the only context in which this happens. Why does arts participation in class politics contexts lead one to vote, while it suppresses voting in other contexts? A political cultural explanation is that in class politics contexts, the “rules of the game” distinctly favor turnout more than in other contexts. The role of collective organizations in mobilizing turnout seems key: unions, stronger political parties, and civic groups closely tied to...

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...ty4.htm. 5 “Representative democracy” is an index composed of the following variables: “voted in last election” and “political action: attend political meetings or rally” (source: International Social Survey Programme 2004). 6 “Social trust” is an index composed by the variables: most people can be trusted; do you think people try to take advantage of you ((1) “can't be too careful,” (2) “most people can be trusted”). Trust in political institutions corresponds to the variable confidence in the government (1 “none at all” to 4 “a great deal”) (source: World Values Survey 1999–2004; see, e.g., Rothstein and Stolle 2008). 7 “Protest” is an index composed by the following variables: political action—sign petition; joining boycotts; attending lawful demonstrations; joining unofficial strikes; and occupying buildings and factories. They have three-point scale: 1, “would never do”; 2, “might do”; and 3, “have done” (source:WorldValues Survey 1999–2004). Culture on the Rise and empirical political science, is often insensitive to the variety of normative understandings regarding citizenship. For example, neo-republicanism often suggests that there is one ideal set of civic virtues: in the civic republican traditio...

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...it methodologically controversial 1997 Use or Ornament? The Social Impact of Participation in the Arts (1997), has recently suggested that Axel Honneth's theory of recognition provides an explanation for his findings (2010, p. 5). To better appreciate the pragmatic origins of Honneth's proposal, consider Belfiore's and Bennett's The Social Impact of the Arts. An Intellectual History. From classic Greece and turn of the century American pragmatism, they review many theories that suggest the arts' positive impact in promoting “man's sense of well-being and his health, as well as his happiness” (Belfiore and Bennett 2008, p. 102). They cite contemporary studies that show a link between cultural participation and longevity. While these studies have not established a causal relation between cultural participation and the beneficial physiological processes associated with longevity, they suggest nonetheless that if democracy is not merely a form of government, but a “way of life, social and individual” (Dewey [1937] 2008, LW11, p. 217), then it depends on the widespread participation of a community in a dialogue over its ends, the quality of which would depend upon the quality of that community's democratic cult...

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...Political Philosophy (1982), where she describes the human condition of action as the “political” that is both existential and aesthetic, and Jacques Rancière in Disagreement (2004). By contrast, echoing Nietzsche, Max Weber suggests that aesthetics is close to eroticism and largely follows subjective, deep dynamics relatively distinct from the economy and politics. Consider empirical studies on the relationship between cultural membership and political participation. Several authors suggest that the more intense forms of civic participation are more strongly correlated with political action (Rosenblum 1998; Wilson 2000). Our hypothesis here, following Tocqueville, is that social participation fosters political participation. However, pace Putnam but still following Tocqueville, we qualify this claim: we presuppose that not all types of voluntary organizations are equally beneficial to democratic life. Some, in fact, can be harmful (de Tocqueville 1945), while others might be irrelevant. The dynamic between different types of civic organizations is important to our purposes as we wish to find out the extent to which each of these types is correlated with the several dimensions of democratic life...

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...e larger than those of their predecessors (e.g., Tilly 2006, pp. 30–59). Our stress on expanded democratic repertoires joins the structural differentiation to overcome a narrow and conservative understanding that informed part of the communitarian revival of Tocqueville in the 1990s. For example, even Welzel, Inglehart, and Deutsch's recent discussion of elitechallenging repertoires shows a bias towards protest activities. Strikes, which enjoy constitutional protection in virtually all consolidated democracies, are excluded from their model under the grounds of their alleged “violent” nature (Welzel et al. 2005). To make our conception of democratic politics more empirically realistic and theoretically sound, we consider three broad categories of democratic political participation. First, we include voting and political campaigning,5 the traditional mechanisms of political participation in representative democracies whose symbolic and non-instrumental functions have become recently re-appreciated. Second, we explore the work of Putnam, Kenneth Newton, Francis Fukuyama, and others in considering citizens' attitudes of trust in each other (social or interpersonal trust) and in the government and other ...

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...cts with environmental concerns; and post-materialism four-item scale (maintain order; greater democracy; curb inflation; greater freedom of speech), in which items 1 and 3 express a materialist orientation, whereas 2 and 4 indicate post-materialist values. 17 In the case of cultural traditions (Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox Christianity, and Eastern religions), each respondent is linked to each one of these four types depending on the dominant cultural tradition in his/her country. Culture on the Rise and deliberately or not, to fulfill a social function of legitimating social differences” (Bourdieu 1979, p. 7). Bourdieu's elite-mass model of cultural taste has not gone unchallenged, however. First, as Laurent Fleury notes, by according to the experience of the working classes the kind of attention previously reserved to the culture of the highly literate and by taking an interest in design, advertizing, audiovisual products, the transmission and exploitation of knowledge, as well as recreational activities, leisure, and tourism, “cultural studies” played a part in promoting the ubiquity of the “cultural” (Passeron et al. 2003; Fleury 2013, p. 49). Second, Bourdieu has been challenged by the ...

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... context. This context is ideal—typically characterized by hierarchical institutions (the Church, political parties, and unions), materialist values (related to security and economic development), and a model of citizenship defined by the fulfillment of civic duties such as serving in the military and paying taxes and receiving classparty-driven state benefits. Our aim here is to discuss how and why belonging to a cultural organization influences political beliefs and conduct in this specific context. We build on recent work on class politics such as Evans (1999), Clark and Lipset (2001), and Achterberg (2006). The most interesting finding here is that cultural membership increases voting turnout (Table 3). This is the only context in which this happens. Why does arts participation in class politics contexts lead one to vote, while it suppresses voting in other contexts? A political cultural explanation is that in class politics contexts, the “rules of the game” distinctly favor turnout more than in other contexts. The role of collective organizations in mobilizing turnout seems key: unions, stronger political parties, and civic groups closely tied to political parties. These are the classic organi...

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...tes social trust; in Eastern religious countries, it has individualistic and engaged political implications; in NPC contexts, it is linked to protest activities and the engagement norm; in class politics contexts, to voting and political campaign; and in clientelist settings, to the duty-based and identity citizenship norms. One type of social participation, seven cultural contexts and seven different political consequences, if put in a word, would 38 “Cultural determinants” refer to structural features of each context, in the sense of Raymond Boudon's “operative” definition of structure (see Boudon 1971). 39 The complete list of major Protestant countries in our analysis is Australia, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Iceland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, Great Britain, and the USA. 40 Still, it has to be said that the sources of political trust are conservative and hierarchical, i.e., low income, rightwing self-positioning, and belonging to a religious organization most increase trust. 41 Standardized regression coefficients (cultural membership predicting protest activities, social trust, and engagement norm of citizenship): β=0.029 (p<0.001), β=0.056 (p<0.001), and β=0.023 (...

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...ism often suggests that there is one ideal set of civic virtues: in the civic republican tradition back to Cicero, Harrington, and Machiavelli, contemporary political theorists try to deduce the civic virtues that the citizens of contemporary nation-states should strive toward (e.g., Pettit 2000). In the empirical tradition, albeit less philosophically sophisticated than their fellow political theorists, political scientists are arguably more sensitive to the heterogeneous nature of the normative fabric of citizenship. Hence, empirically oriented political scientists such as Dalton (2007) and Denters et al. (2007) identify several different norms of citizenship in the USA and Europe. We adopt some of those norms here. Specifically, our model includes the “duty-based,”8 “engagement,”9 and “solidarity”10 norms of citizenship. In addition, we use a second cleavage that has received some theoretical treatment in recent years (Habermas 1994, 2001). We refer to the distinction between identity politics and the rule of law, i.e., between “thick” and “thin” norms of citizenship (Lewin-Epstein and Levanon 2005). Concomitantly, we distinguish between “identity-based” norms of citizenship and “legal-civic” ones.1...

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...the normative fabric of citizenship. Hence, empirically oriented political scientists such as Dalton (2007) and Denters et al. (2007) identify several different norms of citizenship in the USA and Europe. We adopt some of those norms here. Specifically, our model includes the “duty-based,”8 “engagement,”9 and “solidarity”10 norms of citizenship. In addition, we use a second cleavage that has received some theoretical treatment in recent years (Habermas 1994, 2001). We refer to the distinction between identity politics and the rule of law, i.e., between “thick” and “thin” norms of citizenship (Lewin-Epstein and Levanon 2005). Concomitantly, we distinguish between “identity-based” norms of citizenship and “legal-civic” ones.11 By adding an ethnic vs. civic axis to our model, wewish to add an important corrective to analyses largely based on socioeconomic (civic) norms. Contextual and Independent Variables In what follows, we discuss the several contextual12 and independent variables in our model of the impact of cultural membership in democratic politics, as well as the axioms behind each of them. The model's first axiom concerns socioeconomic development. Democratic politics is associated with higher levels of in...

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...lation extensively studied by S. Eisenstadt). These traditions correspond to the historically dominant religious culture associated with each country (Protestantism, Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity, and Eastern religions). Each country in our sample was classified by its dominant cultural tradition and, in each regression analysis, the countries that did not belong to the tradition were filtered out. 13 In a recent article, Amy C. Alexander and Christian Welzel similarly point out that “empowering socioeconomic conditions” are conducive to make “people capable of practicing democracy”: see Alexander and Welzel (2011). Silva et al. form an opinion and express it coherently, to show interest in affairs that transcend the immediate private sphere, and to make political claims in public are all instances of political conduct that presuppose an educated, motivated, and informed citizenry. The shift from class politics to the new political culture, or post-materialism in Ronald Inglehart's parlance (1977), was driven by the economic and social development of democratic countries in the second half of the twentieth century. As societies become more affluent and democratic regimes consolidate, materialist concern...

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...l system breakdown illustrates, concerns with equality and transparency are gradually rising on political agendas around the world. Three of the model's contextual variables are thus political cultures associated with socioeconomic modernization processes: class politics (or materialism),14 clientelism,15 and the new political culture (or post-materialism).16 The central element of our second axiom, cultural traditions, helps us understand the shaping influence of broad, civilization value systems on political behavior and beliefs. In line with the “multiple modernities” paradigm developed by Eisenstadt (2008) and his associates, these cultural traditions can be traced back to the religious culture that historically has dominated each country we are studying. We use this as a measure of the multiple civilizational configurations that compose the world today (e.g., Norris and Inglehart 2004). Our model includes four of these cultural–civilizational traditions, namely Protestantism, Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity, and Eastern religions.17 The expectation is that the greater the influence of principles such as individual autonomy and personal expression in a certain cultural tradition, the more li...

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...eractive design, animation). Still, there is by no means consensus here: rather many if not most writings on the arts suggest a decline rather than growth in recent decades. The main resolution of this conflict is to focus on what types of art and culture. The more established “high” art like classical music concerts, opera, and museum attendance show stability or decline in many countries. This has led to a sense of crisis in many arts organizations, like theU.S.National Endowment for theArtswhich commissionedmultiple studies. Many showed the classic decline of the “benchmark” high arts, but Novak-Leonard and Brown (2011) showed high participation and growth in some nontraditional activities. And the French Ministry of Culture studies document this pattern with more detail, growth in media related film, music, and more, especially among young persons who create personal entertainment libraries. These have often beenmissed as they are not classic benchmark items, but many are captured in the World Values Survey item which permits the respondent to include all arts and culture items in which she participates.3 We hope to nudge social scientists to catch up to these developments. 1 Data from World Values Survey o...

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...ly translate into political terms as a predisposition to, say, sign petitions and to adopt a rights-claiming attitude. Interestingly, it will not foster as much trust in other persons as in the government. These findings not only corroborate past work suggesting that social and political trust are different attitudes explained by different variables (e.g., Coleman 1988; Newton 2001), but also reflect the nature of this specific political culture, i.e., a combination of socially liberal attitudes with fiscal conservatism that is particularly salient in large, cosmopolitan urban settings (e.g., Boshcken 2003). Four Cultural Traditions/Civilizations Our focus so far on political cultures could lead some to consider either that behind our model lies some sort of evolutionary framework, guiding the analyst from the class politics and clientelism of the past to the NPC of today's global cities and cosmopolitan democrats, or that we are solely concerned with the socioeconomic processes of societal change. Both inferences would be wrong. Although we do not deny the profound impact of socioeconomic change in individuals' attitudes and practices, we also attend to possible effects of “civilizations,” broa...

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... not averse to participation in activities associated with popular culture. Indeed, high status people were adding practices and cultural forms to their cultural repertoire at an accelerating rate: they were omnivores because they were developing a taste for everything. Research on cultural omnivores focuses on the individuals and their practices, while our past work has focused instead on their political culture (NPC). Despite the different analytical focuses, we are both tapping into the same rising pattern: cultural omnivores, who tend to adopt a NPC, “tend to be more politically engaged” (Chan 2013). Consistent with DiMaggio (1996), Chan uses the British Household Panel Survey to suggest that “omnivores are quite distinctive in their social and political attitudes. Compared with visual arts inactives, omnivores are more trusting and risk taking. They are also more supportive of the supranational European Union, and they tend to eschew subnational and ethnic identities, which suggests a more open and cosmopolitan outlook. Omnivores are more egalitarian in their gender role attitudes, and they are more liberal on homosexuality. Omnivores are greener regarding the environment and climate ch...

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...ocial function of legitimating social differences” (Bourdieu 1979, p. 7). Bourdieu's elite-mass model of cultural taste has not gone unchallenged, however. First, as Laurent Fleury notes, by according to the experience of the working classes the kind of attention previously reserved to the culture of the highly literate and by taking an interest in design, advertizing, audiovisual products, the transmission and exploitation of knowledge, as well as recreational activities, leisure, and tourism, “cultural studies” played a part in promoting the ubiquity of the “cultural” (Passeron et al. 2003; Fleury 2013, p. 49). Second, Bourdieu has been challenged by the work of Peterson and Simkus on “culture omnivores” (Peterson and Simkus 1992), which showed that people of higher social status were not averse to participation in activities associated with popular culture. Indeed, high status people were adding practices and cultural forms to their cultural repertoire at an accelerating rate: they were omnivores because they were developing a taste for everything. Research on cultural omnivores focuses on the individuals and their practices, while our past work has focused instead on their political cultu...

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...is significantly more data for “western” societies. To measure change in arts and culture, the number of countries was reduced to those in the 1999-2004 WVS waves (and the ISSP 2004 wave for voting).21 Other challenges include the potential impact of time and the identification of trends in the data; the operationalization of “thick” concepts as political cultures (e.g., the new political culture) and cultural traditions (e.g., Protestantism); and the more general reciprocity22 and omitted-variable bias. In addition, there are diverse potential threats to the reliability of measurement (e.g., Jackman 2008). We also faced operationalization challenges of all secondary analyses: limitations in geographical scope, time period, and, more importantly, the wording of each survey item. A case in point is one of our key variables: membership in cultural or artistic voluntary organizations. The only available item in the WVS is question A066, which reads “Please look carefully at the following of voluntary organizations and activities and say…which if any do you belong to? [the list included] Education, Arts, Music or Cultural Activities.” Aware of the potential measurement error due to the inclusion of...

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...or not, to fulfill a social function of legitimating social differences” (Bourdieu 1979, p. 7). Bourdieu's elite-mass model of cultural taste has not gone unchallenged, however. First, as Laurent Fleury notes, by according to the experience of the working classes the kind of attention previously reserved to the culture of the highly literate and by taking an interest in design, advertizing, audiovisual products, the transmission and exploitation of knowledge, as well as recreational activities, leisure, and tourism, “cultural studies” played a part in promoting the ubiquity of the “cultural” (Passeron et al. 2003; Fleury 2013, p. 49). Second, Bourdieu has been challenged by the work of Peterson and Simkus on “culture omnivores” (Peterson and Simkus 1992), which showed that people of higher social status were not averse to participation in activities associated with popular culture. Indeed, high status people were adding practices and cultural forms to their cultural repertoire at an accelerating rate: they were omnivores because they were developing a taste for everything. Research on cultural omnivores focuses on the individuals and their practices, while our past work has focused instead on their po...

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...lfcab@essex.ac.uk virtues of participation in voluntary social organizations (Putnam 1995). The influence of this Putnam-Tocqueville model has been substantial. “Trust” and “social capital” have become buzzwords of early twenty-first century political science. Social capital has been critiqued in many ways, but one main point here is that its use encouraged analysts to lump together all forms of organizational membership—unions, churches, and political parties. Thus, “participation” or “membership” in the exemplary research usually sums up activities of each of these sorts (Verba et al. 1993; Zukin et al. 2006). Yet, if we break out participation into its components, we find dramatic differences from the “bowling alone” story. Voting and participation in general politics has declined in many countries since the 1980s, as has been widely reported. But barely noted is the rise of the arts and culture in these same years, even though someWorld Values Survey items suggest massive increases in arts and culture participation in various countries.1 This is all the more surprising given its ubiquitous character. From mayors' agendas for urban renewal to the general population's practices, the arts have beco...