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This survey data from a rapidly growing rural community reports on the attitudes and expectations residents have toward government. These residents, influenced by their "politics of escapism" from urban living, are oriented to relationships with a few friends and neighbors and a sense of community cooperation. Rather than being primarily interested in better public services, these residents possess a larger view of the values of a rural life style and a willingness to accept less service as its cost.

The survey was conducted on May 1-7, 2020 on a national sample of 1545 selected people from 148 rural and urban localities in all counties of Romania. He measured the attitude towards the politics of some states, towards socialism and capitalism, confidence in political leaders, in the projects of political parties, in certain issues of public interest, voting intentions.

This book gives a comprehensive account of the evolution and content of local administration in Nigeria from the colonial period to 1987

Book reviewed in this article:Peter S. Wenz, Environmental Ethics Today

This paper compares the political values and viewpoints of Americans with those of citizens of 19 other wealthy democracies. Drawing on the long history of scholarship and debate about "American Exceptionalism," we ask whether Americans' positions on issues of governance, taxation, equality, religion, and morality are significantly different from those of people in comparable countries in Europe and elsewhere. Using data from the International Social Survey Program's Role of Government survey, the World Values Survey, and other sources, we show that, on almost all of these questions, Americans' views are on average substantially to the right of those of people in our comparison countries: Americans are less supportive of redistribution and government intervention in the economy, are more likely to blame poverty on the failings of the poor, and are by far more religious. These findings confirm that Americans are on the whole more right-leaning than Europeans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, and the Japanese.

Values are considered abstract, culturally objectified ideas about phenomena. Such ideas have a lasting significance for the satisfaction of the needs of political subjects. Values can be called the "ideas of needs." Political values are of a dual nature, which is both the source of an inner conflict and is also overcome on the basis of a system of political values. The political value system is always the value system of a particular class, of a specific stratum as an organized social force. Thus political values are ideas expressing the attitude of large social groups as wholes toward the needs of other large social groups and of society as a whole, in respect to the awareness of their own needs. A basic task of Marxist political axiology is the examination of the characteristics governing the emergence of a political value system in order to find a concrete solution to a problem that each social group must cope with—that of correlating its own needs with the needs of the entire society.

Present-day confrontation of social systems and civilizations implies a confrontation between various systems of values. As creations of given social forces, each type of civilization embodies the values of the respective social forces. We distinguish between the sociological-politological and the axiological approach to values. To some degree the former disregards the intrinsic substance of value. The axiological approach is based on historical experience, on the social situation, on the interests and ideology determining the way in which a social group, a human community, a society ascertains values, nonvalues and antivalues. In Marxist philosophy, there is a correspondence between these two approaches. We define political values as political relationships, institutions, organiza tions, views and ideas resulting from the transforming, creative sociopolitical practice of the social forces that meet the requirements of social progress and of the development of human personality on a social scale. We reject the postulation of an abstract hierarchy of values or exclusivism of values, but nevertheless emphasize the special role of political values. Without denying the intrinsic character of political values—a characteristic procedure of several spiritualistic axiological constructions-we acknowledge their mediating role in the creation-and, respectively, assimilation-of these values. The man of today experiences the values centered on political values. For all the differences between civilizations and their values, the common fundamental interests of mankind—the necessity of setting up a new economic and political order, of creating a new climate of peace and cooperation among states and peoples—require the assertion and promotion of common, general, and acknowledged poltical values.

Political socialization refers to the learning process by which the political norms and behaviors acceptable to an ongoing political system are transmitted from generation to generation. The goal of political socialization is so to train or develop individuals that they become well-functioning mem bers of political society. Such learning begins very early in the person's life and need not be acquired solely through deliberate indoctrination. In fact, most of this norm-internalization goes on casually and imperceptibly—most of the time with out our ever being aware that it is going on. It proceeds so smoothly precisely because we are unaware of it. We take the norms for granted, and it does not occur to us to question them. The stability of a political system depends in no small measure on the political socialization of its members. A well- functioning citizen is one who accepts (internalizes) society's political norms and who will then transmit them to future gen erations. Without a body politic so in harmony with the on going political values, a political system would have trouble functioning smoothly and perpetuating itself safely. And sur vival, after all, is a prime goal of the political organism just as it is of the individual organism.—Ed.

This essay was motivated by the gap between proclaimed democratic principles and the perceptions of politics which are exhibited by the citizens in transitional countries - more specifically in the Republic of Macedonia. It is based on research data collected in the past few decades, which illustrate that, in their political actions, the citizens are highly motivated by personal benefits and profits, rather than by their internalized values and ideologies. Non-democratic, authoritarian values prevail, while politics is perceived as a value itself, in the most materialistic meaning of the word. It creates a suitable milieu for growth of corruption, nepotism and clientelism. The authors conclude that such a circulus vitsiosus is a corner stone of the Macedonian political regime, and an enormous obstacle for the advancement of the participative, democratic political culture in reality, in spite of its formal acceptance. (author's abstract)

Pol'al soc'ization (PS) (gradual learning to carry on willingly & transmit to future generations because pol'al norms are internalized).