Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Poverty Of Political Culture, Robert W. Jackman, Ross A. Miller

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

The analyses reported by Granato, Inglehart, and Leblang (1996; hereafter GIL) are a major improvement over the studies that we examined in our paper. Especially notable is their explicit evaluation of the cultural explanation against a major rival, as represented by endogenous growth models of scholars like Barro (1991), Levine and Renelt (1992), and Helliwell (1994). These models regress economic growth rates over a given period on a set of initial economic, human capital, and other variables. It is in the context of such models that GIL report a significant, independent effect of culture on growth.

GIL's attention to the …

A Renaissance Of Political Culture?, Robert W. Jackman, Ross A. Miller

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

Theory: Cultural differences drive significant elements of political and economic life.

Hypotheses: (1) effective govemance hinges critically on traditions of civic engagement; (2) political culture fundamentally drives economic performance and democratic stability.

Method: Reanalysis of two data sets: (1) the first includes information collected by Putnam (1993) on a variety of political, economic and social indicators for the 20 Italian regions; (2) the second includes comparable information collected by Inglehart (1990) for the industrial democracies.

Results: We find little evidence to indicate a systematic relationship between political culture and political and economic performance.

Ever since Max Weber, many social scientists …