Richard W. Wilson

Reconciling Universalism and Relativism in Political Culture: A View Based on Economic and Psychological Perspectives

The concept of political culture was formulated in the postwar period as a way of bringing human motivation more sharply into account in cross-cultural analyses of behavior. A persistent difficulty, however, has involved validating its theoretical premises and methodological criteria. So frustrating has this problem proved to be that many have relegated political culture to a residual category of explanation. Indeed, a major reason for the popularity of the rational-actor paradigm is its effort to circumvent these difficulties by utilizing a value-maximizing dimension for motivation.