Date of Award

5-1998

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Political Science & Public Administration

Abstract

This thesis examines the utility of Daniel J. Elazar’s political culture, developed in 1%6. Dr. Ira Sharkansky conceptualized Elazar’s political culture in 1969 by applying measures pertaining to participation; size and perquisites of bureaucracy; and scope, magnitude, costs, and innovative character of government programs. He used simple correlation, Pearson’s r, to determine whether political culture had any influence on the 23 dependent variables that he arranged under the three different measures. Then, he tested for partial correlation, using per capita personal income and the percentage of the population living in areas considered “urban” as controlling variables. Finally, he tested the variables which were found significant at the .05 level, along with his scale of political culture, to see if the scale persists across regional demarcations using analysis of covariance.

This paper replicated these measures for two years, 1996 and 1997, using data from the Statistical Abstract, and compared it to Sharkansky’s study. The hypothesis was that the Traditionalistic culture Sharkansky was studying had changed over time due to changes in southern political culture as a result of increased urbanism and migration from the North. However, this study proves that certain measures still show negative correlations that are consistent with Sharkansky’s study. Future research should take into consideration a closer examination of the variables used in this study.

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