Session 8: Pakistan's civic culture

Civic culture, a word first mentioned in Sidney Verba and Gabriel Almond's book 'The Civic Culture', now constitutes a vital part in the discipline of  political sciences having being widely debated. Civic Culture is a political culture that exists within a society, it is a set of political and social attitudes which is paramount in maintaining the success of democratic politics. The three types of political cultures identified by Almond and  Verba are : Participant culture, subject culture and parochial culture. They are of the view that even though all three cultures exist simultaneously,  participant culture largely dominates world political cultures in order to uphold democracy. However, it is important for us to understand Pakistan's political culture if we are to analyze the democracy in our country.

After going through this topic I developed a view that one of the reasons why Pakistan has not experienced democracy in it's purest sense is because of the political culture we have developed. Participant culture as advocated by Veba and Almond, is largely missing from our civic culture, which is actually dominated by the parochial political culture. Parochial political culture is one where the people do not possess the willingness nor the ability to participate in the political process. Tribal societies of Pakistan fail to relate to the social structure of the country which is beyond their family and area. These people are not only disinterested but also, unaware of the matters that do not concern their immediate circle. Therefore, we can say that their values and political sentiments are different,national interest is unknown to them and they lack a sense of nationhood. They swear allegiance and loyalty to their cast, tribe, biradiries and local community rather than to the State, hence, compromising the common cause. In fact, they become parochial participants by participating in the electoral process in favor of their parochial groups such as voting for their feudal lords. This kind of political culture is not only found in Pakistan, but also, in parts of Africa and America. 

The urban areas are characterized by the subject and participant cultures because people in cities largely do not relate themselves to tribes or biradiries and have more political awareness due to the provision of education. However, this group constitutes only a minor part of our voting population that fails to bring democracy in national rather than personal interests.