Cultural conflict in American politics: Religious traditionalism, postmaterialism, and US political behavior

Recent trends indicate that American politics is becoming more ''cultural'' or ''value-based.'' However, the leading account of cultural conflict in advanced industrial democracies-Ronald Inglehart's theory of Postmaterialism-has received relatively little attention from students of American politics. The present paper argues that cultural orientations have come to exert a substantial influence on American political life; however the cultural divisions relevant for contemporary American politics are those between religious traditionalists and those rejecting traditional religiosity rather than divisions between Postmaterialists and Materialists. Using the 1980 through 1992 National Election Studies, we test the relative influence of our measure of religious traditionalism and Inglehart's value typology on the political orientations of the American populace. The analysis shows that cultural orientations significantly influence American political behavior. However, the impact of these divisions is almost always more substantial when cultural orientations are defined by religious traditionalism than when they are defined by material-postmaterial value priorities.