RONALD INGLEHART

Cultura politica e democrazia stabile

N. 146

Summary — The purpose of this essay is the reaffirmation of the importance of cultural factors to the comprehension of political phenomena against the dominant tendency which privileges interpretative models founded on economic variables. Although abundant and immediately available, these latter alone cannot provide an exhaustive picture of the various political realities, mainly from a comparative point of view. On the other hand, the concept of political culture
boasts of an important tradition, which consolidated in 1963 with the publication of The Civic Culture by Almond and Verba. From that moment, attitudes such as interpersonal trust and a favourable predisposition towards one’s own institutions are regarded as elements of great importance to the stability of a democratic system. And it is in this perspective, that the a. considers fundamental notwithstanding the various critical revisions of which it has been the object, that develops the a.'s argumentation tending to demonstrate the influence on modern democracies of a series of attitudes synthesized into the expression "level of life satisfaction". Briefly, satisfaction of one's own life, feelings of happiness and trust show on the part of the individual a favourable disposition in respect of the h surrounding world, included therein the political regime in which he lives. Making use of the results of the Euro-Barometer surveys carried out from 1973 to the present in nine European Community nations, the a. demonstrates that things stand just like this: in particular the correlation between level of personal satisfaction and good working of a democracy is evident. But what reasons cause the citizens of a certain nation to feel more satisfied in respect of those of another one? Once again, economic variables have little weight. Not necessarily the "richer" nations are also the "happiest", neither the level of satisfaction follows in some way the fluctuations of the economic contingency. Better, the more or less positive perception of one’s own condition seems highly connected with long term cultural tendencies such as historical experience or tradition.