Political Culture in Multi-Ethnic Societies Emphasis on Comparing the Kurds in Iran and Iraq

During the past century, there has been a growing demand for democracy among the public of many countries. But mass demand does not automatically bring a transition to democratic rule; in addition such transition presents democracy's advocates with difficult challenges. Iran is one of the countries in which demand for democracy has been growing and is now widespread. Nevertheless, despite great efforts made by many members of the public, Iran has not made a successful transition to democracy.This paper examines political culture of ethnic groups of Kurds (in Iran and Iraq) and Fars (Iran) and also impact of ethnic factor on the typology of their political culture. We will examine such political culture in the framework of the global measures of political culture as developed by Inglehart and Welzel (2005, 2009). Analyzing a survey of the adult population of the Kurd and Fars ethnic groups, we find relatively similar strong emphasis on emancipative value between Iranian groups of Kurds and Fars, and also strong and meaningful deference between the Iranian and the Iraqi Kurds. We did not find significant relationships between ethnicity and democratic political culture or emancipative value.