Political culture revisited

TLDR: A review of the early history may be helpful in ensuring that the revival will proceed on a solid basis as mentioned in this paper, which is the case of most of the work on political culture in the social sciences.

Abstract: Although culture is one of the most powerful concepts in the social sciences, the discipline of political science was slow to exploit it in spite of its obvious relevance for many basic concerns in the discipline, such as legitimacy, tradition, constitutional norms, and basic national values. However, once the concept was accepted in the 1950s there was a decade of intense interest in cultural analysis during which leading figures in all the social sciences engaged in bold theory-building. For various reasons interest in political culture declined in the 1970s, but recently there has been a revival of work on political culture. A review of the early history may be helpful in ensuring that the revival will proceed on a solid basis.