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The Political Culture Of Politics

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The term ‘politics’ itself has changed over many years. To ask if the evolution of political culture changes how people participate in politics is simple. The answer is yes. To begin with, let’s define political culture; ‘Authors define the term political culture as the particular distribution of patterns of orientation towards political objects among the members of a nation’ (Almond and Verba 1963: 13 cited in Welzel and Inglehart, 2014 p.285). Now let’s define culture; ‘the term culture covers a broad set of phenomena. It includes traditions, habits, and patterns of behaviour shaped by a society’s prevailing beliefs, norms and values’ (Nolan and Lenski, 1999 cited in Welzel and Inglehart, 2014 p.285). Taking this into account, examples of culture could be how to play hopscotch in a playground or following the rules to a game of tennis or badminton. To address the question, this essay will firstly assess how any capable individual is able to participate in politics and secondly if the growth of political culture has increased or decreased participation.

A question that is frequently asked is how can one be involved in politics? There are many options. One option can be by joining a political party which interests them and that has a good manifesto with policies that they would like to see take place and therefore taking part in elections and voting. A second option can be by being part of a pressure group for example, one that represents those against smoking called

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