Some of my first Danish friends could never quite understand US politics because we do not have a parliamentary system. Why the President did not resign, why the government had not fallen, they would ask. Technically they knew the answers to these questions but they did not feel these answers.
In the US some common defaults are that voting is democracy (although we also have many volunteer associations, a point to which I shall return below), that there are exactly two sides to every question, that representation is enough, and that the system of representation now in force is the only one imaginable.
In countries like Spain the force of civic organizations is not nearly as strong as it has traditionally been in the US, and this gives citizenship a different feel, another gestalt.
A phrase one often hears in Brazil is that “they” do not “give”, and a traditional and not unfounded assumption in Mexico is that government is something in which one does not (really) participate.
One feels a different person living in a country (or region, or neighborhood) where the army (or police) does not occupy the streets and where it does.
Many people do not remember a US President before Reagan, and many do not even remember Reagan; what does that feel like? What is it like to come from a country where a particular party or figure (e.g. Perón) has had a strong and complex emotional and ideological hold for a long time?
What other questions like these are there, and how many political scientists done work on them? I am talking about ideology and hegemony and I suppose psychology and I suppose Jauss, but my questions are not yet well formed.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
If political scientists actually worked on interesting questions like these, I would maybe be one, but they do not seem to.
For me growing up in Louisiana it felt very oppressive and isolating that the Republican party had such a hold, but that wasn’t my party/ideology. I felt like I was the only one who thought the way I did, and it make political participation seem utterly impossible – and useless even if it were possible.
Obviously this is partly a function of my social connections (or lack thereof, really) – if I had had connections to the local Democratic party, for example, I may not have felt this way as much.
And there are even radical leftists in Louisiana. I met one when I was in Alexandria doing my research. I wouldn’t have known it, but, they DO exist. So I think that social connections, which you have and which you don’t, are really key to “what it feels like” just as much as the… ideology you’re swimming in.
Loose thoughts on this–
1. It seems like this is veering into “national political character” territory*.
2. Culture influences politics and political styles and vice versa.
Are you familiar with Geert Hofstede and his dimensions of national culture?
xttp://www.geerthofstede.nl/culture/dimensions-of-national-cultures.aspx
*And my maybe political psychology? I wouldn’t know.
@human – yes. I’m trying in part to figure out what it feels like to expect structures even more authoritarian than I do.
Also, what does it take to truly believe, at an emotional level, that the Democrats are the best we can do? I can see that argument rationally, but not feel it viscerally; yet there are people who do.
@redactora – I’m not sure about national, but yes political psychology. Have not read Hofstede and should; will follow your link right now.
Hmm, well, it has to do with power, and whether you feel powerful or powerless or what. If you think, as many Americans seem to, that voting is the only way to bring about political change, you’re likely to take whatever you can get, even if it’s only marginally less shitty than the alternative.
And I think that leads us to another thing you can add to your list, which is that Americans think politics is about rhetoric or arguments about “issues” rather than about who has power and who does not. Some of them get quite offended if you start talking to them about power!
Very true, that, Americans actually getting offended if you raise the question on power.
Someone tells me that not to limit organizing to work through traditional parties and voting is to disrespect the victims of dictatorial regimes where there is no voting. I don’t see why – and tend to think that idea itself is indicative of a tendency to have to think vertically. Do not know, though.
That’s really weird. It doesn’t make any sense to me. American say weird things that don’t make sense about politics and power a lot, too 🙂
Yes, this is why I am interested in the general topic. How and why does nonsense feel like sense, how can one discern across systems.