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Aaron Wildavsky well understood that federalism is about freedom and diversity - not hierarchy and decentralization. His was an intensely normative concern with the promise of federalism and its abandonment in the United States. Over time, he became increasingly focused on political culture, federalism, and the Western domains of social life as fields of cultural competition. Although his interest in federalism was overshadowed by his work on political culture, it remained a visible theme in his writing. Federalism and Political Culture is a collection of Wildavsky's essays on federalism over the latter part of his career. It is the second in a series, of his posthumous collected writings. Federalism is not a conventional collection on comparative federal systems, but deals with what federalism means, how it should work, and how it has been abused by those in power who protested their commitment to federal principles and practices but acted otherwise. Wildavsky's analyses concentrate mainly on American federalism after the Great Society of the 1960s which brought major changes to the American federal system. The essays trace the progress of his thought as he first argues that true federalism is noncentralization, then to federalism as competition, and then combines both in reasserting that real federalism is possible only in a confederation.

AbstractWe provide the first account of the culture wars in the political psychology and public opinion literature based on a theory of culture. Using innovative measures of grid‐group cultural theory (CT), we identify the cultures associated with ideological and partisan identifications in annual U.S. national surveys from 2011 to 2022, a unique data set of 24,870 respondents. As hypothesized, we find that the culture wars occur not just between ideologues and partisans but among them as they draw support from distinct, relatively stable yet shifting cultural coalitions. Egalitarian and, less often, fatalistic liberals and Democrats battle against individualistic and, less often, hierarchical, conservatives and Republicans. As hypothesized, fatalists are the least reliable coalition partners, and, as expected, they gravitate Republican and conservative in 2017, after Trump's election. However, fatalists who are strong partisan identifiers never defect. Moreover, our hypothesis that fatalist attraction to Trump would drive defections in their political identification is largely invalidated. Instead, fatalists mostly flee Trump in our aggregate analysis as well as in subanalyses of strong and weak ideological and partisan identifiers. In 2016 and 2018–2022, it appears that independent fatalists cause fatalists to gravitate liberal and Democrat. Unexpectedly, hierarchists also go liberal and Democrat in 2022, in apparent reaction to Trump's multifront attacks on the 2020 election that he lost. We identify the basis for cultural coalitions that can end particular culture wars, including the most significant one now occurring between egalitarians and individualists, and conclude with suggestions for further research.

AbstractHow do cultural biases, trust in government, and perceptions of risk and protective actions influence compliance with regulation of COVID-19? Analyzing Chinese (n = 646) and American public opinion samples (n = 1,325) from spring 2020, we use Grid–Group Cultural Theory and the Protective Action Decision Model to specify, respectively, cultural influences on public risk perceptions and decision-making regarding protective actions. We find that cultural biases mostly affect protective actions indirectly through public perceptions. Regardless of country, hierarchical cultural biases increase protective behaviors via positive perceptions of protective actions. However, other indirect effects of cultural bias via public perceptions vary across both protective actions and countries. Moreover, trust in government only mediates the effect of cultural bias in China and risk perception only mediates the effect of cultural bias in the United States. Our findings suggest that regulators in both countries should craft regulations that are congenial to culturally diverse populations.