Politics is downstream from culture: lasting political change follows changes in culture rather than the reverse.
Andrew Breitbart made it a slogan of American conservative media in the 2000s, arguing that the right lost political battles because it had ceded entertainment, journalism and education to the left. The idea echoes, from the other side of the spectrum, Gramsci's argument about cultural hegemony.
In practice
- Public attitudes to same-sex marriage shifted through film and television for a decade before courts and legislatures followed.
- A company's formal policy on remote working changes only after its staff have worked that way for years.
- Possible explanations
- One explanation is that political choices express values formed earlier in families, schools, entertainment and religion. Another is that politicians follow public opinion more than they lead it.
- In its favour
- Consistent with cases in which cultural change came before legal change, and with Gramsci's parallel argument on the left, which suggests the insight is not partisan.
- Against it
- Causation also runs the other way: civil rights legislation and court decisions changed attitudes after they were enacted. The slogan is vague about what counts as culture.
- Standing
- Compare cultural hegemony and the Overton window.
- Subject
- Sociology & Culture
- Essay
- How societies hold together, sort people, and change