Political culture of the United States

Political culture is a part of a society for which shared attitudes and beliefs establish a unique identity with regard to public and private governance. In the United States, at least three political cultures took root during the colonial period. They were formed in New England by religious refugees from England, in the Mid-Atlantic region by Dutch settlers, in Virginia by English adventurers seeking fortune in the New World, and in Carolina by English investors who envisioned a model constitutional society. In Virginia and Carolina, and later elsewhere in the South, Scots-Irish settlers influenced the cultural hearth that created the American South. Each began with established cultures of the British Isles and the Netherlands, evolving into unique cultures that remain in existence today in the United States.

The political scientist Daniel J. Elazar identified three primary political cultures, generally consistent with those of Tocqueville. Moralistic political culture evolved out of New England and is characterized by an emphasis of community and civic virtue over individualism. Individualistic political culture arose from Dutch influence in the Mid-Atlantic region; it regards multiculturalism as a practicality and government as a utilitarian necessity. Traditionalistic political culture arose in the South, which elevates social order and family structure to a prominent role. It accepts a natural hierarchy in society and where necessary to protect society, authoritarian leadership in the political and religious realms.

The formation of traditionalistic political culture is often thought to have arisen principally out of Virginia, the first and most populous southern colony. Virginia was also the most politically powerful state after the Revolution: pursuant to the first census of the United States in 1790 it held a greater percentage of congressional representatives than any other state has ever enjoyed up to the present day. Nevertheless, others argue that South Carolina had the greater influence as a result of its Grand Model enabling slaveholders from Barbados to establish a durable aristocracy. That unique convergence produced a slave society with a majority black population rigidly controlled by the plantation elite. Maintaining such a society required intense political resolve and the development of a mythology of white racial supremacy. The South Carolina hybrid model ultimately spread across the Deep South and was unwavering in its promotion of southern culture, whereas Virginia and other Upper South states were less comfortable with the region’s “peculiar institution” of slavery.

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