American Political Culture Analysis

Political culture within the United States is dramatically varied from one state to another due to the origins of each regions’ source of affluence and immigrating communities. Political scientist, Daniel Elazar, categorizes these political cultures in his publication American Federalism: A View from the States as moralistic, individualistic, and traditionalistic. Moralistic regions like the New England states grew from a Puritan culture that now views the government’s role is to work at public services which improve living conditions and create a just and well-adjusted society. With a heightened sense of duty, this type of political culture encourages political participation as it is essential to keeping a righteous governing body. Individualistic …show more content…
How a country chooses to educate the commonwealth is a direct reflection of how the governing body views its citizens. But within a democratic republic like that of the U.S., this is also dependent on how much control the citizens would like the government to have over education. A moralistic political culture would have schools all publicly funded with standardized testing as a backing of a school’s reputation and worth. Due to their strong sense of political obligation, parents would be very much involved in the policies passed on a local level as well retaining an active presence with each district’s Parent-Teacher Associations. Because of this, moralistic states like Minnesota and Iowa have much higher test scores and high school graduation rates (Smith, 2003, p. 43). In contrast, individualist regions have lower graduation rates and test scores due to their focus on economic success rather than affluence in the education field. These regions opt instead to support private institutions that are not as scrutinized by the federal eye. On the extreme end, traditionalist states like Arkansas and New Mexico have had consistently low state test scores and graduation rates due to their political culture’s enforcement of policies that are intrinsically designed to preserve social classism. This results in low activity within school boards meetings and state legislation elections ultimately resulting in low …show more content…
But observing regions by their political culture reveals exactly what one would expect with previous knowledge about each state’s political climate. Moralistic regions like the Northern and New England states boast the least amount of federal executions since 1976 (DPIC, "Facts about the Death Penalty", 2018). These states see capital punishment as inhumane. In fact, many of these states have passed legislation to ban the death penalty all together. In 2004, Governor Mitt Romney proposed a bill to reinstate the death penalty in Massachusetts which was quickly rejected by the House of Representatives. Representative Eugene O’Flaherty repeatedly defeated the bill insisting that no system that relies on scientific evidence can truly be developed that would separates the guilty from the innocent (City of Boston, "EUGENE L. O’FLAHERTY Corporation Counsel", 2014). Individualistic regions like those in the Midwest have either banned the death penalty all together or passed bills to make this ruling much less common. These states support the older fundamentalist ideology of “an eye for an eye” while at the same time fearing the possibility of the federal government using the death penalty as a deterrent for any actions viewed as rebellious to the ruling elite. On the other end of the ideological spectrum rests the traditionalist pollical culture. Within Southern