Drawing on a broad range of literature in the social sciences, this book deals with one of the most elusive subjects in the study of politics and society: the role of culture. Wilson first develops a definition of political culture and a theoretical argument about how political cultures are formed and how they evolve. He emphasizes the roles of social knowledge and technological development as engines of cultural change and the dialectic between individual reasoning and social norms in the shaping of political values. Stressing the need to understand the interaction of individual and societal...