Democracy and Civic Culture

Abstract This article attempts to take stock of the state of research on democracy and culture by providing answers to several sets of questions. It seeks to improve the understanding of the relationship between culture and action, and between political culture and democratic outcomes. The article begins by exploring the way the literature has dealt with the possible meaning of culture and political culture and their relationship to action. It also suggests why there has been little contribution to democracy derived from political culture research, and identifies how the efforts to rethink how and why the subject matter is approached in certain ways led many analysts to break out of established epistemological demarcations. This eventually led to the reinvigorated tools of investigation and research on democracy and civic culture. The article concludes with a discussion on the implications of improved tools of investigation for future research.