What is Political Socialization?

When it comes to defining something like political socialization, complex explanations can be more effective than just a few words. Technically referred to as a culturalization of a political process, it is something that is really broadly defined. It has to do with how a civilian population interprets political symbols, initiatives, and ideas. This kind of idea can be very useful to historians, anthropologists, and anyone else with a defined interest in a particular human community.

In political socialization, political ideas get circulated in a general community. In this process, the formal elements of a political process are combined with social processes normal for adult individuals. The result is a collective interpretation of politicians, parties and political ideals.

At its core, political socialization is just a kind of group thinking. For a literary view of this process, albeit a negative one, read George Orwell’s book “1984,” where elements of a political socialization process are parodied as an intense example of the power of a successful socialization of politics. The book shows how this process can be effectively used to monitor a population, to enforce laws, and to promote specific kinds of behavior.

An example of this kind of idea in American culture is the idea of political correctness. Here, the mass media plays a crucial role, which is common in the socialization of politics. A common standard defines how people use and interpret language related to a person’s race, creed, or sexual orientation.

Political socialization can play a positive or negative role in a society depending on various factors, as well as one's point of view. From an objective standpoint, you could say that this idea plays a positive role when human rights are promoted, and a negative role when human rights and civil liberties are confined by the collective process. Public opinion, a product of political socialization, can be a kind of litmus test for a society, when outsiders want to understand the prevailing sentiment that has a profound impact on the way members of a society live their lives. A look at this process can also be useful when historians want to unravel the reasons for historic events, laws in a particular society, or group behaviors among a specific national or regional population.