Political Culture in France and Germany/a Contemporary Perspective - Hardcover

"Political Culture in France and West Germany" assesses the extent to which attitudes, political orientations and social values have changed during five decades of post-war development and to what extent the unspoken assumptions which shape people's views and actions have retained a country-specific flavour. Political culture, it is argued, is more than stocktaking of opinion polls and a concern with system stability: in the contemporary setting political and social behaviour increasingly reflects individual preferences and the influences which come to bear in personal living environments. As traditional reference points fade, the media, the appeal of parties, socioeconomic anxieties and a variety of salient issues have emerged as potent political forces and as important facets of political culture. In the contemporary perspective, the notion of one dominant political culture no longer reflects the newly flexible link between society or polity and political behaviour or social orientation; political culture has a range of "sites" and modes of articulation, and is diversified within and between countries. In the book, case studies focus on key "sites of political culture": of the extreme right, the cinema, the impact of media personalities and changes in political discourse, the decline of regional identities, the emergence of feminist issues and the concern of political parties with the effectiveness of language. The case studies are supported by broader analyses of political culture change: the fading of conflict politics in France and the fading of political conformity in Germany. "Political Culture in France and West Germany" breaks new ground as an interdisciplinary study of the diversified political culture of contemporary societies with specialist evaluations of political, socioeconomic, cultural and linguistic aspects of the communicative process linking institutional settings and individuals in contemporary societies. It provides new insights into the way French or German people see themselves, and proposes an approach to the study of political culture which goes beyond traditional empirical data and branches out to cover informal processes, images, and expectations and their impact on people, their views and behaviour.