Culture and Politics: A Comparative Approach

Whether and how culture matters in the current age of globalization are the questions pursued in this comparative empirical study. From a newer cultural analysis approach to political science (as vs. the prevailing rational choice framework), Lane (U. of Geneva, Switzerland) and Ersson (Umea U., Sweden) overview concepts of culture and investigate trends in the macro- and micro-level impact of culture on political and socioeconomic outcomes. To identify regional variations by ethnicity and religion, they studied the US, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, and India. For individual values, they analyzed data from World Values Surveys from the 1980s to mid-1990s. A longitudinal analysis traces legacies of colonial heritages. Data set descriptions are appended. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Jan-Erik Lane, University of Freiburg, Germany and Svante Ersson is Associate Professor at University of Umeå, Sweden.