At about the same time, Lucian Pye, one of the early pioneers in the political culture approach, published a major work on Chinese political culture. That much of the traditional Chinese political culture, founded on the Confucian belief system, had persisted into the modern era and continued to bind and limit China’s Marxist-Leninist leadership form changing the system as rapidly as they wished.
In Asia the debate waxed strong over the emphasis on the what were termed “Asian values”. The Islamic political culture and model of development Edward Said’s Orientalism and studies similarly asserted Islamic cultural and political values as well as criticising the West including Western models of development for attempting to impose its values and model on the area.
Perhaps the most impressive of the new political culture projects done during the period was the comparative study carried out by Ronald Inglehart. Like the original Civic Culture volume, Inglehaert found that the peoples of different countries and areas not only have quite durable political culture attributes but that these often have major economic and political consequences as well.