Lecture 6-1

The Processes of Political Socialization

• Political socialization is the process by which citizens come to think what they think about politics

• People learn to repeat behavior patterns that are rewarded and not to repeat patterns that are not rewarded or that are punished

The Agents of Political Socialization

• The family

• The school

• Peer groups

• The mass media

Effects of Various Agents of Socialization

The Effects of College

• College tends to liberalize a person’s views – he/she may still be a conservative, but less conservative than before

• Bennington College study – 1935-39 Prof

Theodore Newcomb • College students today are more

tolerant on major social issues

Political Ideology

• It is an integrated set of ideas

• These ideas deal with what constitutes the most equitable and just political order

• Or, that is to say, how should power and economic resources be allocated in a society

Concerns of Political Ideologies

• The proper function of government

• The issues of liberty and equality

• The distribution of goods and services

Classical Liberalism

• Liberalism assumes that individuals are mainly rational and capable of overcoming obstacles to progress without resort to violence

• Roots of liberalism go back to John Locke

• “The government that governs least, governs best”

Classical Liberalism

• Classical liberalism differs from contemporary liberalism because how something functions in an agrarian society like will not function the same way in an industrial one.

• Advocates of the former like Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson believed that government was the chief threat to liberty and therefore the less government the better

Populism and Progressivism

• In the late nineteenth century populism and progressivism revised classical liberalism by seeing private concentrations of power, not government, as the main threat to liberty

• Government would be the source of political and economic reform

Contemporary Liberalism

• Under FDR, contemporary liberalism produced the welfare state

• Liberals are usually Democrats

• Believe that a strong central government is necessary to protect people from the inequities of a modern industrial and technological society.

Contemporary Liberalism

• They have turned their backs on an interventionist, military oriented foreign policy, but support economic aid to developing countries

Neoliberalism

• Neoliberals believe that liberalism does not respond to contemporary concerns

• They do not turn their backs on Roosevelt’s New Deal and Johnson’s Great Society

• They want government to increase the overall productivity of the American economy, to reform costly entitlement programs, and to develop more cost-effective military

Neoliberalism

• They want government to increase the overall productivity of the American economy, to reform costly entitlement programs, and to develop more cost-effective military

• Neoliberalism appeals to upwardly mobile middle-class voters