1. Political Culture is a distinctive and recognizable pattern of reasoning regarding how political and economic affairs of a particular community or country should be carried out. Shared political culture of the United States of America is based on the set of core norms, beliefs and values majority of Americans adhere to. These shared values of the American political culture are founded on the Enlightenment philosophy by which Founding Fathers of the US were intensely influenced by. Contemporary American political culture reflects an accumulation of all those values and their adjustment throughout the US history. The core values which characterize and shape whole political culture of the US are the following: liberty, democracy, individualism, equality, rule of law, civic duty.
Although pluralism is ascribed to the US society, it is expected that all groups who inhabit the country adopt the aforementioned values and beliefs of the American political culture. Yet, minor racial and ethnic groups maintain their own values and traditions.
2. According to the US shared political culture, individualism is an inherent component and complement to the values of equality and liberty, where importance and dignity of a person are fairly recognized notwithstanding his or her ethnical, national, religious or any other background. Nevertheless, it is obvious that perception of his milieu by a particular individual is directly affected by this man’s personal culture. So is his decision-making in an open, fair and democratic society, where decisions and actions are voluntary and are conducted not by compulsion but by consent.
Hence, judging on our culture, traditions, values and beliefs we come up with the decisions and world outlook, derived from the psychological peculiarities and idiosyncrasies of our character and culture. Since in the American political culture all people are treated equally and each voice counts, people with different backgrounds bring cultural difference and make their own contribution to the development of contemporary American society by making decisions based on their own psychology of perception. Psychology of perception, in its turn, is directly shaped by the individual adherence and penchant for manifold cultural varieties of today’s world.
3. The Constitution of the United States of America defines both the powers and responsibilities of the federal government and general provisions regarding state governments. The federal government’s powers are granted and limited by the US Constitution.
Each state, in its turn, has its own constitution which contains specific regulations for local governments within a particular state, which usually include counties, cities, towns, school districts and special-purpose districts. State governments are proclaimed to be sovereign and do not report in any way to the federal government. However, federal laws and the US Constitution supersede state laws and constitutions in areas where disagreements exist.
Local governments operate in accordance with their state’s constitutions. Similar to the idea that state government policies should not conflict with federal law, local governments are influenced by the legal environment created by the states’ constitution and laws. Thus, it can be said that state and local governments operate in comparative independence from the …