Culture and Contemporary Political Preferences

This chapter reviews the literature on the relationship between culture and political preferences. We distinguish conceptually between the direct cultural transmission of political ideology and the transmission of more primitive preferences and beliefs that influence preferences over policies, parties, and forms of government. While there is substantial evidence that political preferences persist across generations and within communities, the literature often does not specify which primitive values and beliefs drive this persistence. A growing body of work points to a multifaceted mapping from underlying preferences and beliefs over the material world and social relations to political ideology. In this chapter, we summarize these studies, organize their findings in a coherent framework, and suggest possible directions for future research.