The transition of Political Culture to Democracy: Slovenian Case Study

Abstract

The results of all three dimensions of political culture (subjective, social and objective) show that social complexity, especially in the transitional period, is increasing rapidly. This contributes to the advancing increase of the instability of the political system and as such represents as objective obstacle for its consolidation and democratization. The specific role and the importance of subjective factors of political culture could increase only on the basis of consolidation of the political system. Consequently, only the efficient functioning of agents of political socialization could reduce the established increase of corn plexity of the social system to its reasonable control. This process could make way to different forms of modernization and rationalisation of society.

Only then, when the modern forms of social and political action prevail in social life, is it possible to expect the development of more rational ways of thinking and acting. Only in this way can patterns of democratic, civic and participatory political culture be developed.

Increasing social and political changes, which are mostly initiated from »the top« can accelerate processes typical of the transitional period and at the same time consolidate and reduce the dispersed effects of influential objective factors of political culture. But on the other hand, they can contribute to the fact that the process of »democratic political socialization of citizens« is much slower than it could be, if the occurring changes were co-ordinated at lower levels of the social system.

In fact, a long-term foresight shows to us that the same process of changes can have also completely contradictory results, which can have an especially negative influence on the activity of subjective and social factors of political culture, especially on those which influence only implicitly form values and standards of political culture (for example: families, peer groups, kindergartens, mass media, schools, trade unions and enterprises).