Many political scientists first learned of anthropologist Mary Douglas's cultural theory (CT) through Aaron Wildavsky's APSA presidential address (Wildavsky Reference Wildavsky1987), in which he sought to explain the value of this theoretical approach for political science.Footnote 1 Since then, much additional work has been done to develop CT as an ambitious general theory of politics.
This symposium showcases CT's current explanatory power and discipline-wide reach with contributions that provide answers to questions of great interest to political scientists specialized in American politics, comparative politics, international relations, political theory, public law, and public policy. Additional CT contributions to these subfields, as well as to public administration, are surveyed in the text that follows.
At the outset, it is important to note that unlike many other cultural theories, CT is highly complementary to rational choice (RC) and institutional theories of politics and in fact will allow these theories to make significant advances. Unlike most other cultural theories, CT also includes a theory of political change. These distinguishing characteristics of CT are discussed briefly here.
ADVANCING RATIONAL CHOICE AND INSTITUTIONAL THEORIES OF POLITICS
“Thin” versions of RC theory assume that individuals are rational utility maximizers. This assumption of rationality is reasonable across a variety of cultural settings, but without a theory of culture thin versions of RC theory cannot predict which utilities an individual will attempt to maximize.
“Thick” versions of RC theory try to solve this problem by additionally assuming that the utility individuals seek to maximize is their own well being, frequently defined largely in material terms. CT reveals these thick RC assumptions about individual utility to be ones associated with an individualistic political culture. These assumptions are reasonable in such cultures and help predict which utilities individuals will seek to maximize in them. As CT-based and other analyses demonstrate (see Chai et al. Reference Chai, Dorj, Hampton and Liu2011, this issue), however, these thick RC assumptions are not reasonable in more collectivist cultures, such as hierarchical or egalitarian cultures, or in cultures that are neither individualistic nor collectivist, but rather fatalistic.Footnote 2
Thus, CT simultaneously pluralizes and bounds rationality. CT pluralizes rationality because it recognizes that there can be more than one objective that is culturally rational to maximize. CT bounds rationality because it posits that there are only a limited number of objectives that are culturally rational to maximize. In RC terms, CT specifies multiple equilibria—that is, multiple solutions to the universal human challenge of living together—but does not allow an infinite number of such solutions. Each of the four cultural types specifies who gets to do what to and with whom under what circumstances, and thus specifies the kinds of behavior that have high utility and the kinds of behavior that have low utility in particular cultural settings. CT consequently achieves the explanatory breadth of thin versions of RC theory while retaining the explanatory depth of thick versions of RC theory (for related discussion, see Chai Reference Chai, Ellis and Thompson1997; Lockhart Reference Lockhart1999; Lockhart and Coughlin Reference Lockhart and Coughlin1992, Reference Lockhart, Coughlin, Chai and Swedlow1998; Swedlow Reference Swedlow2002b, Reference Swedlow and Swedlow2006; Wildavsky Reference Wildavsky1991b, Reference Wildavsky1994a).
The concrete advantages of adopting CT's pluralized and bounded conception of rationality are suggested by CT analyses of RC and political economy concepts such as self-interest, altruism, externalities, public goods, and the prisoner's dilemma (Fogerty, Jeanrenaud, and Wildavsky Reference Fogerty, Jeanrenaud, Wildavsky, Chai and Swedlow1998; Lockhart and Wildavsky Reference Lockhart, Wildavsky, Chai and Swedlow1998; Malkin and Wildavsky Reference Malkin and Wildavsky1991; Wildavsky Reference Wildavsky1991b, Reference Wildavsky1992, Reference Wildavsky1994a) and by CT studies of the RC politics of violence, voting, public goods, bargaining, and trust (Chai and Wildavsky Reference Chai, Wildavsky, Coyle and Ellis1994, Reference Chai, Wildavsky, Chai and Swedlow1998; Chai et al. Reference Chai, Dorj, Hampton and Liu2011, this issue).
In CT, culture and institutions are not seen as competing concepts or mutually exclusive explanations (Chai Reference Chai, Ellis and Thompson1997; Grendstad and Selle Reference Grendstad and Selle1995; Lockhart Reference Lockhart1999). Rather, institutions are seen as manifestations of social and political relations or orders, which are one aspect of political culture. The other aspect is cultural bias, or political values and beliefs about human nature, the environment, and economics, among other things. Cultural bias is similar to ideology in some respects but not in others (Gastil et al. Reference Gastil, Braman, Kahan and Slovic2011, this issue; Michaud, Carlisle, and Smith Reference Michaud, Carlisle and Smith2009; Song et al. Reference Song, Ripberger, Nowlin, Jones and Jenkins-Smith2011; Swedlow Reference Swedlow2002b, Reference Swedlow2008; Swedlow and Wyckoff Reference Swedlow and Wyckoff2009). Thus, cultural theorists do not distinguish culture from institutions but rather distinguish cultural bias from institutions, while also hypothesizing that cultural biases and institutions come in distinct packages of values, beliefs, and relations called political cultures.
CT contributes significantly to institutional accounts of politics by specifying the types of institutions that can exist (Grendstad and Selle Reference Grendstad and Selle1995; Hendriks Reference Hendriks1999; Lockhart Reference Lockhart1999; Swedlow Reference Swedlow2011b, this issue) as well as some conditions that can lead to institutional change (Coyle and Wildavsky Reference Coyle and Wildavsky1987; Lockhart Reference Lockhart, Ellis and Thompson1997, Reference Lockhart1999; Swedlow Reference Swedlow2011a, Reference Swedlowb, this issue; Wildavsky Reference Wildavsky1985). Relations are structured differently in hierarchical, egalitarian, individualistic, and fatalistic institutions. Both hierarchical and egalitarian institutions have strong external group boundaries. But hierarchical collectives are also strongly demarcated internally, usually from top to bottom, whereas egalitarian institutions typically strive to avoid internal differentiation, especially hierarchical stratification. Individualistic and fatalistic institutions, meanwhile, do not rely on organizational boundaries. Individualistic institutions, such as free markets and protections of civil liberties, however, emphasize strong boundaries around individuals. This emphasis on strong individual boundaries may manifest as conceptualizing individuals as rights-bearing entities who can defend freedom of choice and their property and bodily integrity. Individuals in fatalistic institutions can defend neither collective boundaries nor personal ones; their choices are made by others and their lives are subject to forces beyond their control.
EXPLAINING POLITICAL CHANGE AND DEVELOPMENT
Unlike many other cultural theories, this cultural approach not only explains change but theorizes that change can come from within a culture as well as from outside it. CT allows experience with culture and adult socialization processes to cause cultural change, both for individuals and for institutions (Lockhart Reference Lockhart, Ellis and Thompson1997; Schwarz and Thompson Reference Schwarz and Thompson1990; Thompson, Ellis, and Wildavsky Reference Thompson, Ellis and Wildavsky1990, 69–81; Wildavsky Reference Wildavsky1985). CT's primary theory of change is based on the idea that cultures themselves are theories about the way the world works. Cultures constitute promises and predictions that are tested in a practical way by everyday experience (Lockhart Reference Lockhart, Ellis and Thompson1997; Wildavsky Reference Wildavsky1985). To the extent adherents follow cultural prescriptions and are not properly rewarded, or do not follow cultural prescriptions and are not properly punished, they may come to question their cultural commitments.
Events and behavior that are anomalous from one cultural perspective, and/or better explained or understood from another, can be catalysts of cultural change for both individuals and institutions. Because these “cultural surprises” take predictable forms for each culture (see figure 4 in Thompson, Ellis, and Wildavsky Reference Thompson, Ellis and Wildavsky1990, 71, for a typology), they can specify the causes of “punctuated equilibria” in policy, scientific, and cultural change, as I argue in my contribution to this symposium and elsewhere (Swedlow Reference Swedlow and Swedlow2001, Reference Swedlow2002a, Reference Swedlowb, Reference Swedlow and Swedlow2006, Reference Swedlow2011a, Reference Swedlowb). CT and its theory of change can thus explain not only cultural changes, but generally many kinds of political change and development (Chai and Wildavsky Reference Chai, Wildavsky, Chai and Swedlow1998; Coyle and Wildavsky Reference Coyle and Wildavsky1987; Ellis Reference Ellis1998; Ellis and Wildavsky Reference Ellis and Wildavsky1990; Hammer Reference Hammer, Coyle and Ellis1994; Lockhart Reference Lockhart, Ellis and Thompson1997, Reference Lockhart1999, Reference Lockhart2001a; Malecha Reference Malecha, Coyle and Ellis1994; Wildavsky Reference Wildavsky1985, Reference Wildavsky1991c, Reference Wildavsky and Swedlow2001, Reference Wildavsky and Swedlow2006).
CONTRIBUTING TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF SUBFIELD EXPLANATIONS AND UNDERSTANDINGS
American Politics and Political Development
CT goes beyond the liberal-conservative continuum in American politics to specify ideological and institutional sources of conflict and coalition in two dimensions of social and political relations, and consequently CT provides a more accurate basis for characterizing ideological and institutional sources of partisanship. Among other things, this two-dimensional conception of ideology creates a place for libertarians or individualists and allows analysts to understand statists and religious and social conservatives as sometimes allied, sometimes conflicting types of hierarchs (Chai and Wildavsky Reference Chai, Wildavsky, Chai and Swedlow1998; Gastil et al. Reference Gastil, Braman, Kahan and Slovic2011, this issue; Jones Reference Jones2011, this issue; Michaud, Carlisle, and Smith Reference Michaud, Carlisle and Smith2009; Ripberger, Jenkins-Smith, and Herron Reference Ripberger, Jenkins-Smith and Herron2011, this issue; Song et al. Reference Song, Ripberger, Nowlin, Jones and Jenkins-Smith2011; Swedlow Reference Swedlow and Swedlow2006, Reference Swedlow2008; Swedlow and Wyckoff Reference Swedlow and Wyckoff2009; Wildavsky Reference Wildavsky and Swedlow2006).
Since CT was first introduced to US political science by Wildavsky, and he specialized in studying American politics, most of the applications of the theory in this area reflect his interests and those of his students and collaborators. The theory helped Wildavsky make new contributions to topics on which he was an expert, such as the politics of the budgetary process (Reference Wildavsky1986a, Reference Wildavsky and Swedlow2001), the American presidency (Ellis and Wildavsky Reference Ellis and Wildavsky1989, Reference Ellis and Wildavsky1991; Wildavsky Reference Wildavsky1991a, Reference Wildavsky1993a), and federalism (Reference Wildavsky, Schleicher and Swedlow1998a), as well as allowed him to delve into areas that were new to both him and the theory, both inside American politics and beyond it (as discussed below). Wildavsky and his students and collaborators conducted CT analyses of American political development on topics as varied as the development of town and church in Puritan New England (Hammer Reference Hammer, Coyle and Ellis1994), the role of abolitionists in the coming of the civil war (Ellis and Wildavsky Reference Ellis and Wildavsky1990), the cultural foundations of populism (Malecha Reference Malecha, Coyle and Ellis1994), the rise of radical egalitarianism (Ellis Reference Ellis1998; Wildavsky Reference Wildavsky1991c, Reference Wildavsky and Swedlow2006), the dilemmas of presidential leadership (Ellis and Wildavsky Reference Ellis and Wildavsky1989, Reference Ellis and Wildavsky1991), and cultural influences on the ideology, partisanship, and voting behavior of political activists and the public (Chai and Wildavsky Reference Chai, Wildavsky, Chai and Swedlow1998; Wildavsky Reference Wildavsky1991c, Reference Wildavsky and Swedlow2006; see also Ellis and Thompson Reference Ellis and Thompson1997; Gastil et al. Reference Gastil, Braman, Kahan and Slovic2011, this issue; Jones Reference Jones2011, this issue; Ripberger, Jenkins-Smith, and Herron Reference Ripberger, Jenkins-Smith and Herron2011, this issue; Swedlow Reference Swedlow2008; Swedlow and Wyckoff Reference Swedlow and Wyckoff2009). Charles Lockhart provides a nice overview of CT explanations of American political development with linkage to RC theory (Reference Lockhart2001a).
Comparative Politics
CT is ideally suited for comparative political studies because its theoretical dimensions and the cultural types they generate—along with the values, beliefs, and relations that constitute these cultural types—create a framework for structured, focused comparison. This framework is pitched at a sufficiently abstract level to travel through time and space while being concrete enough to prevent undetectable conceptual stretching (as further discussed in Swedlow Reference Swedlow and Swedlow2001, Reference Swedlow and Swedlow2006). CT analyses have been used to compare supranational organizations, nation states, and sub-national political units, including nongovernmental organizations and civil society social structures, including the family, as well as individuals. Cross-national or cross-state comparative political research using CT includes studies of budgeting (Wildavsky Reference Wildavsky1986a, Reference Wildavsky and Swedlow2001), environmental and financial regulation (Carriere and Scruggs Reference Carriere and Scruggs2001; Lodge and Wegrich Reference Lodge and Wegrich2011, this issue; Verweij Reference Verweij2000), political culture and ideology (Grendstad Reference Grendstad1999, Reference Grendstad2003), and democratic institutions (Lockhart Reference Lockhart2011, this issue). There are also a range of comparative policy studies—on mental health (Swedlow Reference Swedlow, Coyle and Ellis1994), language (Mamadouh Reference Mamadouh2002), aging (Lockhart Reference Lockhart2001b; Ney Reference Ney2010), transportation (Hendriks Reference Hendriks1999; Hoppe and Grin Reference Hoppe, Grin, Vig and Paschen2000; Ney Reference Ney2010), technology (Hoppe and Grin Reference Hoppe, Grin, Vig and Paschen2000), economics (Intriligator, Wedel, and Lee Reference Intriligator, Wedel, Lee, Verweij and Thompson2006), and foreign and domestic policy (Grendstad Reference Grendstad2001). In addition to studies of American politics, CT also has been applied to numerous area studies topics in many other countries in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Australia (see bibliography in Wildavsky Reference Wildavsky and Swedlow2006).
International Relations
CT is also ideally suited for studying international relations because key components of political cultures as they are conceived in CT are social and political relations. Moreover, the social and political relations of the four ways of life specified by CT are simultaneously specifications of four ways of making decisions, constituting authority, and exercising power. These are core concepts and concerns shared by those who study and engage in politics in general and international politics in particular. Marco Verweij uses CT to analyze the cultural biases of realist, neo-realist, social constructivist, and other theories of international relations (Reference Verweij1995, Reference Verweij, Grendstad, Selle and Thompson1999b, Reference Verweij2011). He also suggests how various problems in international relations might be solved by constructing culturally “clumsy” institutions that draw on the wisdom of all the cultural biases (Reference Verweij1995, Reference Verweij1999a, Reference Verweij2011; Verweij and Thompson Reference Verweij and Thompson2006). A variety of other applications are being developed. Veronica Ward (Reference Ward, Oros, Jacquin-Berdal and Verweij1998) proposes an integrated theory of state and non-state actors. Sun-Ki Chai and his collaborators are pioneering the use of CT to analyze and anticipate the outbreak of political violence around the world (for some foundational analysis, see Chai and Wildavsky Reference Chai, Wildavsky, Coyle and Ellis1994 and Herron and Jenkins-Smith Reference Herron and Jenkins-Smith2006). And Hank Jenkins-Smith and his collaborators analyze the cultural bases for shifting national security coalitions in US public opinion regarding terrorist threats and nuclear weapons (Ripberger, Jenkins-Smith, and Herron Reference Ripberger, Jenkins-Smith and Herron2011, this issue).
Political Theory
In striving for a general theory of politics, CT builds on similar efforts reflected in the history of political theory, extending through more recent social and political theory, including contemporary efforts being made by RC, institutional, bio-political, and other theorists. Accordingly, CT should attract the attention of political theorists whose stock-in-trade is to analyze a theory's elements, structure, assumptions, premises, inconsistencies, antecedents, proponents, and influences, and compare the theory to others of its kind. Indeed, cultural theorists themselves have compared CT to the theories of Baron de Montesquieu, Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Bronislaw Malinowski, A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, and Talcott Parsons (Thompson, Ellis, and Wildavsky Reference Thompson, Ellis and Wildavsky1990). Contemporary social and political theorists whose work cultural theorists have critically examined and compared to their cultural approach include Gabriel Almond, Edward Banfield, Daniel Elazar, Jon Elster, Ronald Inglehart, Lucian Pye, Robert Merton, Arthur Stinchcombe, and Sidney Verba (Carriere and Scruggs Reference Carriere and Scruggs2001; Grendstad and Selle Reference Grendstad, Selle, Ellis and Thompson1997, Reference Grendstad, Selle, Grendstad, Selle and Thompson1999; Lockhart Reference Lockhart2011, this issue; Thompson, Ellis, and Wildavsky Reference Thompson, Ellis and Wildavsky1990; Wildavsky Reference Wildavsky1991b).
Cultural theorists have also used their theory to analyze the cultural biases and coherence of the theories of classical liberal political theorists, such as Thomas Hobbes (Enzell and Wildavsky Reference Enzell, Wildavsky, Chai and Swedlow1998) and John Stuart Mill (Lockhart Reference Lockhart2000; Lockhart and Wildavsky Reference Lockhart and Wildavsky1993); to help construct democratic political theory (Hendriks Reference Hendriks2010; Lockhart Reference Lockhart2011, this issue; Verweij and Thompson Reference Verweij and Thompson2006; Wildavsky Reference Wildavsky1993b, Reference Wildavsky1994b); and to analyze the shortcomings of various contemporary works of normative political philosophy (Wildavsky Reference Wildavsky1989), as well as to assess the normative implications of CT (Lockhart and Franzwa Reference Lockhart, Franzwa, Coyle and Ellis1994).
Public Administration
CT is fundamentally an organizational theory—or, more dynamically, a theory of organizing and disorganizing (Thompson Reference Thompson2008)—and consequently should be of significant interest to scholars of public administration and organizations. Among other things, CT can help these scholars specify and study organizational types that are significantly different from the hierarchical organizations with which they are most familiar while also allowing them to identify important hierarchical continuities among traditional, feudal, patronage based organizations and modern Weberian bureaucracies. CT can also help these scholars understand New Public Management as an effort to make hierarchical government agencies operate on individualistic market principles and Collaborative Management as an effort to transform these bureaucracies in an egalitarian direction (see also Swedlow Reference Swedlow2002a, Reference Swedlow2011a, Reference Swedlowb, this issue). The most comprehensive attempt to articulate what CT can contribute to studying organizations can be found in Christopher Hood's work (Reference Hood1998). Some of Wildavsky's efforts in this area can be found in his studies of budgeting (Reference Wildavsky1986a, Reference Wildavsky and Swedlow2001), and in several essays on problems, leadership, information bias, and responsibility in organizations (Reference Wildavsky and Swedlow2006). A number of other organizational theory and public administration scholars have contributed significant insights and analyses as well (e.g., Coyle, Reference Coyle, Ellis and Thompson1997, Reference Coyle and Swedlow2006; Grendstad and Selle Reference Grendstad and Selle1995; Hendriks Reference Hendriks1999; Maesschalck Reference Maesschalck2004).
Public Law
To the extent that CT captures basic sources of social and political conflict and coalition, public law may be frequently expected to record the victories, defeats, and compromises of these cultural struggles. At any historical moment, of course, cultural battles occur on a legal terrain that is shaped by the victors and treaties of previous cultural wars, so that the legal manifestations of these cultural legacies differentially advantage current cultural combatants. Wildavsky's applications of CT to public law topics are collected in Wildavsky Reference Wildavsky and Swedlow2006, to which Robert Kagan has written a foreword articulating the general value this approach holds for public law scholars (Kagan Reference Kagan and Swedlow2006a). Legal scholars have found CT helpful in explaining why US legal institutions and practice in the United States are more adversarial than those in Europe and Japan (Kagan Reference Kagan2001); relationships among criminal behavior, law, and penal approaches in the United States and Europe (Giles-Sims and Lockhart Reference Giles-Sims, Lockhart, Donnelly and Straus2005; Mars Reference Mars1982, Reference Mars2000; Mars and Weir Reference Mars, Weir, Canter and Alison2000, Reference Mars and Weir2001a, b; Sparks Reference Sparks2001; Vaughan Reference Vaughan2002a, Reference Vaughanb, Reference Vaughan2004); types of administrative justice (Halliday and Scott Reference Halliday, Scott and Adler2009); adjudication of legally relevant facts in the United States (Kahan Reference Kahan2010; Kahan et al. Reference Kahan, Hoffman, Braman, Evans and RachlinskiN.d.; Kahan, Hoffman, and Braman Reference Kahan, Hoffman and Braman2009); development of US tort law (Kagan Reference Kagan2006b; Polisar and Wildavsky Reference Polisar and Wildavsky1989); land use decisions made by US courts (Coyle Reference Coyle1993; Swedlow Reference Swedlow2002a, Reference Swedlow2009, Reference Swedlow2011a, Reference Swedlowb, this issue); and environmental, health, safety, and financial regulation in the United States and Europe (Coyle Reference Coyle, Coyle and Ellis1994; Lodge and Wegrich Reference Lodge and Wegrich2011, this issue; Lodge, Wegrich, and McElroy Reference Lodge, Wegrich and McElroy2010; Swedlow et al. Reference Swedlow, Kall, Zhou, Hammitt and Wiener2009; Verweij Reference Verweij2000).
Public Policy
CT specifies the kinds of policy processes that different political actors consider to be most legitimate and the political values and beliefs that these actors seek to transform into public policy. In other words, CT specifies the contents of four means-ends pairings that should be at the heart of political conflict and coalition over public policy. As the founding Dean of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Policy, Wildavsky turned to CT because it promised to help him analyze public policy (Swedlow Reference Swedlow2002b, Reference Swedlow and Swedlow2006). Policy scholars have articulated the general value of this cultural approach for policy analysis (Geva-May Reference Geva-May2002; Hoppe Reference Hoppe2002a, b; Kahan and Braman Reference Kahan and Braman2006; Klitgaard Reference Klitgaard, Ellis and Thompson1997; Swedlow Reference Swedlow2002b) and have also used CT to understand, explain, and predict policies regarding industry and economic development (Intriligator, Wedel, and Lee Reference Intriligator, Wedel, Lee, Verweij and Thompson2006; Wildavsky Reference Wildavsky, Barfield and Schambra1986b), technology (Hoppe and Grin Reference Hoppe, Grin, Vig and Paschen2000; Kahan et al. Reference Kahan, Braman, Slovic, Gastil and Cohen2009), transportation (Hendriks Reference Hendriks1999; Hoppe and Grin Reference Hoppe, Grin, Vig and Paschen2000; Ney Reference Ney2010), language (Mamadouh Reference Mamadouh2002), abortion (Stenvoll Reference Stenvoll2002), aging (Lockhart Reference Lockhart2001b; Ney Reference Ney2010), mental illness (Kahan et al. Reference Kahan, Braman, Cohen, Gastil and Slovic2010; Swedlow Reference Swedlow, Coyle and Ellis1994), land use (Coyle Reference Coyle1993, Reference Coyle, Coyle and Ellis1994; Swedlow Reference Swedlow2009, Reference Swedlow2011a, Reference Swedlowb, this issue), water and flood control (Gyawali Reference Gyawali, Verweij and Thompson2006; Lach, Ingram, and Rayner Reference Lach, Ingram, Rayner, Verweij and Thompson2006; Linnerooth-Bayer, Vari, and Thompson Reference Linnerooth-Bayer, Vari, Thompson, Verweij and Thompson2011), climate change (Jones Reference Jones2011, this issue; Rayner and Malone Reference Rayner and Malone1998; Verweij Reference Verweij, Verweij and Thompson2006), firearms (Kahan, Braman, and Gastil Reference Kahan, Braman, Gastil, Verweij and Thompson2006), and myriad other environmental, health, and safety risks (Jenkins-Smith and Smith Reference Jenkins-Smith, Smith, Coyle and Ellis1994; Kahan et al. Reference Kahan, Braman, Cohen, Gastil and Slovic2010; Ney Reference Ney2010; Peters and Slovic Reference Peters and Slovic1996; Schwarz and Thompson Reference Schwarz and Thompson1990; Swedlow et al. Reference Swedlow, Kall, Zhou, Hammitt and Wiener2009; Wildavsky and Dake Reference Wildavsky and Dake1990). Policy scholars interested in the implications CT and symposium contributions have for policy theory and public policy should look for related forthcoming articles by symposium authors in the Policy Studies Journal.
CONCLUSION AND INVITATION
We hope that you enjoy reading symposium contributions and that they spark your interest in learning more about CT and how it might help advance the study of topics in which you are interested. If you would like to see further work by symposium authors on symposium topics, the Policy Studies Journal, as indicated, will be featuring a number of related pieces with roughly twice the data and analysis found here. We welcome comments on symposium contributions that will help us develop these analyses.
Symposium contributions and the studies surveyed in this introduction represent only a fraction of CT applications in political science. More disciplinary contributions can be found in the bibliography included in the most recent volume of Wildavsky's collected papers (Reference Wildavsky and Swedlow2006). Among other things, the bibliography includes many applications to traditional cultural studies topics that have not been much referenced or discussed here. CT has been applied to study the role high culture, popular culture, and many other kinds of culture—and many other kinds of civil society and nongovernmental organizations—play in politics. Indeed, significant evidence for CT's explanatory power and reach as a political theory is found in CT analyses of literature, language, art, music, film, food, sport, family, sexuality, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, identity, religion, science, and many other topics.
As the contributions to this symposium and the foregoing survey of theoretical and subfield contributions indicate, much work has been done since Wildavsky's Reference Wildavsky1987 APSA address to develop CT as a general theory of politics. But much more remains to be done (see, e.g., Swedlow Reference Swedlow and Swedlow2001, Reference Swedlow2002b, Reference Swedlow and Swedlow2006, Reference Swedlow2011a; Swedlow et al. Reference Swedlow, Kall, Zhou, Hammitt and Wiener2009; Verweij et al. Reference Verweij, Luan and Nowacki2011, this issue, for discussion of some directions for further research). This symposium represents an open invitation to all political scientists to invest in further developing CT. This effort promises to pay significant dividends in developing a general theory of politics while advancing the study of subfield topics. This undertaking will require the time, talent, and energy of scholars from every part of the discipline. Political science's other general theories of politics, such as RC, institutional, and bio-political accounts, should be rigorously compared to CT, and efforts to integrate complementary aspects of these theories need to be made while jettisoning weaker elements of each. Seemingly competing theories and concepts often explain different aspects of what a fuller theory would encompass. Consequently, seemingly competing theories frequently can be synthesized to specify unspecified aspects of each other's accounts of politics.
Attentive readers of CT applications will notice differences in the way CT is theorized, conceptualized, and operationalized. This variation creates challenges for those who are interested in understanding, applying, and assessing CT. These variants also suggest the maturity of CT, because, as political theorists know, it is typical for general theories like CT to develop differing interpretations over time. Moreover, as the contributions to this symposium demonstrate, CT is robust against these differences, with significant findings being produced regardless of the variant being used. This suggests that CT is actually tapping and explaining important political variation. Nevertheless, efforts to compare and reconcile other general political theories with CT should be extended to comparing and reconciling variants of CT. So, if you want to try applying CT, I would suggest you choose a variant that makes sense for the topics on which you work, apply it, and then, having applied it, see if you like the results. If you do, then you are welcome to see what you can contribute to reconciling differences among variants.
Symposium Authors
Donald Braman is an associate professor of law at the George Washington University Law School and a co-founder of the Cultural Cognition Project. His research looks at crime, punishment, and cultural conflict, and his writings include Doing Time on the Outside: Incarceration and Family Life in Urban America (University of Michigan Press). He can be reached at dbraman@law.gwu.edu.
Sun-Ki Chai is a professor in the department of sociology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. His main theoretical interests are the study of formal, computational models of culture, as well as their integration with choice-theoretic models of action and network models of structure. His main substantive interests are in international development, with more specific studies on the social construction of ethnic identity and its role in collective action and conflict, as well on the role of cultural institutions in the economic development of East Asian industrializing economies. He can be reached atsunki@hawaii.edu.
Dolgorsuren Dorj is an associate professor in the Academy of Management at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She uses experimental methodology to study economic behavior and exchange. Recent research includes the effect of free mobility on common pool resource use, the effect of minimum wage control on health insurance, and the influence of culture on public good provision and trust. She can be reached at dolgorsu@hawaii.edu.
John Gastil is head and professor in communication arts and sciences at The Pennsylvania State University. He studies in political deliberation and group decision making and his recent books include The Jury and Democracy, The Group in Society, and Political Communication and Deliberation. He can be reached at jgastil@psu.edu.
Kyle Hampton is a director for the Center of Alaska Economic Education and is an associate professor in the department of economics at the University of Alaska, Anchorage. His current research focuses on modeling innovation and experimentation in the laboratory by observing subjects solving puzzles under a variety of incentive conditions. He can be reached at afkh2@uaa.alaska.edu.
Kerry G. Herron is a research scientist with the University of Oklahoma's Center for Applied Social Research and a retired USAF Colonel. His research focuses on nuclear security, terrorism, and energy and environmental security. He can be reached at kherron@swcp.com.
Hank C. Jenkins-Smith is a professor at the University of Oklahoma, jointly appointed to the department of political science and the Center for Applied Social Research. His research focuses on environmental policy, energy policy, and national security. He can be reached at hjsmith@ou.edu.
Michael D. Jones received his PhD from the University of Oklahoma in 2010. He is currently a research fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. His interests include public opinion, metrics for assessing belief systems, the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF), and, more generally, theories of the policy process. He can be reached at Jonemic1@gmail.com.
Dan Kahan is the Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Law at Yale Law School and visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. He studies risk and science communication in law and public policy. He can be reached at dan.kahan@yale.edu.
Ming Liu is an assistant professor in the department of finance at Nankai University. His interests cover international economics, pharmaceutical economics, economics of intellectual property rights, technological change, quantitative analysis, and cross-cultural comparison. He can be reached at liuming@nankai.edu.cn.
Charles Lockhart is professor of political science at Texas Christian University. He studies comparative politics and public policy across advanced industrial societies and the American states. His most recent book (with Jean Giles-Sims) is Again across the United States published in 2010 by Pennsylvania State Press. He can be reached at c.lockhart@tcu.edu.
Martin Lodge is a reader in political science and public policy at the department of government and the Centre for Analysis of Risk and Regulation, London School of Economics. His research interests are in executive politics and regulation. He can be reached at M.Lodge@lse.ac.uk.
Shenghua Luan is a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Germany. He investigates human judgment and decision-making using both analytical and experimental approaches. He is working on integrating theories of rationality and decision-making from multiple social science disciplines. He can be reached at shluan@mpib-berlin.mpg.de.
Mark Nowacki is assistant professor of philosophy at Singapore Management University. His latest book (with T. Brian Mooney) is Understanding Teaching and Learning (2011). His present research concerns formal skill acquisition within social groups, particularly thinking skills. He can be reached at nowacki@smu.edu.sg
Joseph T. Ripberger is a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of Oklahoma. His research focuses on national security policy, public attention, opinion formation, and the policymaking process. He can be reached at atjr@ou.edu.
Paul Slovic is a founder and president of Decision Research and a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon. He studies human judgment, decision-making and risk analysis. He and his colleagues have developed methods to describe risk perceptions and measure their impacts on individuals, industry, and society. He can be reached at pslovic@uoregon.edu.
Brendon Swedlow is an associate professor of political science and a founding faculty associate of the Institute for the Study of the Environment, Sustainability, and Energy at Northern Illinois University; a research associate of the Centre for Analysis of Risk and Regulation at the London School of Economics; and a fellow of the Center for Governance at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research is directed toward developing theory, concepts, methods, and evidence that advance the study of American politics, public law, public policy, and the politics of science. He can be reached at bswedlow@niu.edu.
Marco Verweij is professor of political science at Jacobs University in Germany. He just published Clumsy Solutions for a Wicked World: How to Improve Global Governance (2011). Currently, he is combining political theory with brain research. He can be reached at m.verweij@jacobs-university.de.
Kai Wegrich is a professor of public policy and administration at the Hertie School of Governance, Berlin. His main research areas are in executive politics and public management reform. He can be reached at wegrich@hertie-school.org.
