A brief historical overview

by Hans O. Melberg

Introduction
This is a short and informal observation on the history of the use of culture as an explanatory variable in politics - with particular emphasis on Russia. In short, I shall argue that the interest in cultural explanations can be divided into four major peaks.

The peaks
Elements of cultural explanations can be traced back to Aristotle and the old classical thinkers. A more sustained effort to explain politics using culture, can be found in the so-called travelers' accounts. A famous example is Marquis de Custine's "Journey of Our Times" from 1839 (first published in 1843). In these books we find statements like "the love of these people for slavery" (p. 75) to explain Russian authoritarianism.

The next wave came with the so-called national-character approach. Major examples in this school include N. Leites (1940s and 50s), H. W. Dicks, G. Gorer and A. Inkles. The approach was more scientific in the sense that it was a systematic attempt to explain behaviour. The approach was never very successful since mainstream academics simply thought it too implausible. Explaining Russian expansionism and/or violent historical shifts with the practice of swaddling was soon named "diaperology." Even more difficult to swallow was the use of Freudian terms such as "oral-anal-complex" and so on to explain political outcomes.

The next major development occurred in 1963 with the publication of G. Almond and S. Verba's seminal work "The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations." Instead of using culture as a general term, they now focused on political culture. Moreover, instead of speculation on deep psychological connections, the focus was on large surveys of attitudes.

The political culture approach is alive today, and I would argue that it has been revitalized in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The failure of the market reforms and the relative failure of democracy in Russia made many academics once again turn to culture as an explanatory variable. Examples include T. McDaniels (The Agony of the Russian Idea), the many articles of A. Finifter and E. Mickiewicz and R. Inglehart's systematic study of stable cultural differences. Outside Russia, R. Putnam's book (Making Democracy Work) once again placed culture on the agenda, arguing that cultural differences explained the success and failure of reforms at the local level in Italy.

In sum
1. Pre-modern writings
2. Journalistic impressions, travelers' accounts
3. National-character approach (social-psychology)
4. Political culture (quantitative focus)
5. Political culture revival in the late 1980s.

A tentative explanation
It seems to me that the popularity of culture as an explanatory variable depends greatly on outside circumstances like the development of new academic tools or outside events in need of explanation. For instance, the failure of democracy in the newly independent colonies stimulated thinking about political culture. The same happened in the 1980s; academics wanted to explain the different paths that emerged in the many new states since the collapse of the Soviet Unions, and cultural differences seemed like an obvious variable. Hence, external events - like the need to explain divergent outcomes - has stimulated the cultural approach.

Technical and conceptual tools may also explain some of the peaks in the history of the cultural approach. It was only after World War II that it became technically feasible for academics to do major statistical survey studies of attitudes in different countries. Conceptually the development and popularity of psychoanalysis in psychology probably inspired the national-character approach in politics.

Final comments
The aim of this observation was to create some structure in the field of cultural explanations. Sometimes it is important to distinguish between these schools. For instance, when one argues against using culture as an explanatory variable it is not good enough to attack the travelers' account or the national-character approach. These targets are dead. They have been criticised over and over again. The political culture approach, however, is not dead and within this camp there are worthy opponents. Moreover, the ebb and flow of culture as an explanatory variable may hold some lessons as to the reliability of its use: If it is mainly popular in the immediate aftermath of event when the "need" for an explanation is large, we may suspect that it is one of those explanations that come easily to our minds, but which is rejected on closer examination as time goes by. This last sentence is not meant as a firm conclusion, only a conjecture to be investigated.

_{See the paper: "The cultural approach to Russian history" for references.}