During the 1960s and on into the 1970s, they study of political culture flourished. Ideas, values,beliefs and overall political culture were all thought to be important and worthwhile subjects of inquiry, either by themselves or in conjunction with other factors.
The main criticisms leveled against the political culture approach include the following.
Political culture is used as a “residual category”. That is, whenever we can’t find any other explanation for a country’s behaviour, we blame it on “political culture.
The concept of political culture is too vague. It seems to include everything: literature, art, music, values, political ideas, religion, history, behaviour, whatever. In this sense, political culture become a kind of grab bag of everything.
In tis focus on culture, the political culture approach was accused of ignoring structure. The structure in this care meant the class system and the owner ship of the means of production and distribution.
Another criticism of political culture was that it ignored international influences. The focus in the early political culture literature was almost exclusively on domestic values and influences shaping political culture.
political culture was also criticized as being ethnocentric. The values and ideas that were set forth as “most developed” or “most modern” always seemed to bear an uncanny resemblance to the united states or great britain and democratic, participatory political cultures.
Finally, the civic culture was criticized for its methodology. There methodological problems obviously need correcting. The Renaissance of the Political culture