The 24th of September

Political Culture - A set of shared beliefs, values and norms concering the ways that political and economic life is carried out.

American P. C. - Is full of multiple different Political Cultures.

1. Conflicting Political Culture - Different groups clash with differant beliefs
2. Consensual P. C. - Not as many clashes. All groups have values that overlap and conflict with other groups' values.

American values - livery, equality, equal opportunity and equal law, individualism, Democracy, rule of law, civic duty, etc.

Values can change, one change in America is decrease in Political efficiency. A citizen's capacity to understand and influence politics.

• Internal Efficiency - The ability to get out there and do stuff in your own gov.
• External efficiency - The belief that the gov. will respond to his needs.

American's aren't doing so well on the whole trusting the gov. thing right now.

Gov. Action and Public Opinion sometimes do and don't go together.
The Characteristics of the contemporary relationship between gov. policy and public opinion in US include

• The public being fickle as always
• Public opinion places boiundries on allowable types of public policy
  
• If asked by anyone, American will surely tell you what they don't know
  
• The gov can sometimes respond to P.O.
• But other times Public Opinion is too radical for a healthy gov. action