Modernization and Rural Political Culture (Case Study: Mako Villagers)

The present study examines the relationship between modernization and political culture among the villagers of Mako. This study is directed to test the theories of the first and second waves of political development. The theoretical framework of the research is based on the theories of Daniel Lerner and Karl Deutsch and uses Gabriel Almond's classification to measure the variable of political culture. The type of research is quantitative and it uses the survey technique to collect data. The data was extracted from 381 cases through a questionnaire. The findings show that there is a relationship between political culture and religiosity, the use of new communication media, and the education of villagers; In this way, the low and high level of religiosity among the villagers will lead to, respectively, the participatory and parochial political culture. Also, the higher the level of education and the use of new communication media among the villagers, the more the tendency towards the participatory type of political culture. In this way, the present research shows that merely being a villager does not mean having a traditional political culture such as a parochial and subjective one, and macro-narratives and essentialist classical theories of political development should be avoided about villagers.