Critically assess the usefulness of Gabriel Almond's political Essay

Critically assess the usefulness of Gabriel Almond's political cultural approach in his 1956 article Comparative Political Syste - Essay Example Various regimes in Europe have experienced such political unrest due to conflicts among the nations’ different leaders, giving rise to political instability and eventual economic breakdown, which include France’s Third and Fourth Republic, Germany’s Weimar Republic, and Italy’s Post-World War II government. The rise and fall of such regimes in these countries can be explained through two lines of thought: one is Gabriel Almond’s comparative political systems which differentiate the various kinds of governance in countries according to how the country is run by the government; and another is Giovanni Sartori’s theory of polarised plural systems, which points out the importance of political parties needing to work together and not strongly-opposing one another. By combining these two concepts, it will better explain why political instability plays a major role in governance, both in the past such as in France’s Third and Fourth Republic and Germany’s Weimar Republic, as well as the persistence of this issue in Italian governance for a much longer time. Comparative Political Systems by Gabriel Almond Gabriel Almond published a classification system which compares various kinds of political systems, how each one governs the nation, as well as stating where such kinds of governance are mostly found. ... ssible that the kind of governance in each country may depend on their internal resources, customs and ideologies, and other factors that may or may not align with the definitions of the extant classification systems (Almond, 1956). Thus Almond proposes other kinds of political systems which are much more defined by the culture where each one is based on: Anglo-American political systems, usually composed of a uniform and secular group of people; Pre-industrial political systems, wherein there is a mixture of political systems due to the proliferation of traditional ideas and culture amidst modernist views; Totalitarian political systems in which leadership is centralised and there is actually no need for an overall consensus due to the dominance of only one party or one leader; and the Continental European political systems, wherein the lack of a unified political culture is due to the persistence of various cultures, both new and old and their wide gaps in terms of growth, developm ent and acceptance among the leaders, various parties, and among the citizens. According to Almond, France, Germany and Italy belong to the Continental European political systems due to high variations between the ruling parties and of differing views within the leadership system (Almond, 1956, p. 406). In explaining the political instability in France during the Third and Fourth Republic, of Germany during the Weimar Republic and of Italy after World War II, their respective politics are included in the Continental European political systems because of the various subcultures that exist within each country that causes disunity within the leadership itself. In the case of France, in both the Third and Fourth Republic issues such as the distrust between the leftists and the rightists were