The Study of Political Culture

Abstract

Though its antecedents go far back to the very origins of political science (Almond and Verba, 1980) political culture theory in its modern form and version arose out of the collapse of Weimer democracy and the rise of Nazism (Verba 1965, p. 131). The effort to find an intellectual solution to this tragic historical puzzle — both the theories and the methods — came primarily out of American social science, then enriched by the creativity of German scholarly refugees form National Socialism (NS). We ought not to forget this strong German—American connection in the origins of modern political culture research. My interest in the subjective aspects of politics were greatly stimulated by the study of Max Weber under the tutelage of Albert Salomon and Hans Spier at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research, the ‘University in Exile’ as it was then called. Other scholarly refugees from Germany whom I came to know in the 1930s and 1940s, such as Otto Kircheimer, Franz Neumann, Herbert Marcuse, Paul Lazarsfeld, Erich Fromm and Else Fraenkel-Brunswick, among others, drew my attention to the ‘authoritarian personality’ research which came via Frankfurt to New York and Berkeley.