Semour Lipset, in the book American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged
Sword, analyzes the following research questions: to what extant is America
exceptional in comparison with other developed nations, and why is the country
so different politically, socially, and economically (Lipset, 1996)? These research
questions are not original but are at the center of an academic discussion that
has taken place for approximately two centuries. Notable scholars such as
Alexis De Tocqueville, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Louis Hartz have written
extensively on the subject. Despite the vast distances in time that separate
these writers, all of them agree that America is known for its more liberal political
culture and economic system in comparison with other countries in the developed
world. They also agree that Americans are more adverse to radical political
ideologies, more religiously pious, and more individualistic than their
European counterparts. Furthermore, like these authors, Lipset sees American
Exceptionalism as a “double-edged sword.” While America’s liberal political
culture was conducive towards relatively early democratization in comparison with
Europe, the country also currently suffers from higher crime rates and a weaker
welfare state. Lipset’s main conclusions are not particularly unique, but his
methodology, which involves using statistics from the World Values Survey from
the years 1980 and 1990, provides more empirical grounding for the conclusions
that were made by comparative scholars in the past. More importantly, Lipset
goes beyond a general comparison of the United States and Europe by including
chapters on Canada and Japan as well as including several sections that discuss
the reasons why America’s minority communities—African Americans, Jews, and liberal
intellectuals—are outliers within the culture. While these side topics are not
the main focus of the book, they add considerable depth to a very old
discussion.
As stated above, most of the answers
to Lipset’s research questions are not original. Like past scholars, he views
American exceptionalism as the product of its unique foundations (Lipset,
31-76). Unlike European countries or Japan, America has no history of feudalism
nor was a social revolution required to overthrow the privileges of an old
regime. The United States never had an aristocratic class of landowners that
dominated the countryside nor did they have an established church hierarchy.
Some of the earliest migrants were Protestants of the Puritan variety. They
brought with them what Max Weber calls the “Protestant ethic” of hard work,
republican ideals, and personal devotion to God through a personal
interpretation of the Bible. The Congregationalist nature of America’s
protestant communities also meant that churches had the tendency to splinter.
Without an aristocracy or a church hierarchy, the country was born as a
democracy, and conflict was not required to establish a liberal polity. Without
a need for a social revolution, America never developed a radical leftist
movement such as Marxism nor a counter revolutionary tradition in line with
thinkers such as Edmund Burke. In the early years of American history, the
values of equality of opportunity and liberalism became entrenched in American
society, which counter-intuitively led to a lack of tolerance for ideas outside
the liberal mainstream of American political life. This is why far-left
academics have been marginalized politically. Furthermore, social classes never
became ingrained within the American psyche, so Americans are more optimistic
about social mobility than other states in the developed world. However,
Americans are also more pessimistic about the government and less communitarian
than their European and Japanese counterparts. This is why Americans are more
likely to favor investments in education over the creation of a robust welfare
state. Lipset’s economic data shows that European governments spend
considerably more on unemployment insurance, medical care, housing, and social
security while America spends far more on education. The World Values Survey
data also shows that Americans are more individualistic and value liberty over
equality of result.
While Lipset’s main arguments fall
in line with the main ideas of De Tocqueville and Hartz, there are various
points at which Lipset does add more nuance to the debate over American
exceptionalism. Lipset partially disagrees with De Tocqueville’s assertion that
America’s geographical landscape heavily shaped American political culture (De
Tocqueville, 30). Other countries in the New World had different colonial
experiences and migration patterns than America, so their political values
evolved in a very different direction. Lipset shows how this was the case by
comparing America with Canada (Lipset, 77-109). Unlike the Thirteen Colonies,
Canada was founded as the French colony of Quebec, so the Catholic Church, with
its hierarchical structure and communitarian values, established a foothold in
this part of North America. While the English would eventually take control of
the colony after the French and Indian War in 1763, the Catholic Church
maintained its influence. Furthermore, England’s Protestant colonies objected
to Catholic Canada becoming a Crown Colony. When the American Revolution began,
many of the Tory loyalists to the British monarchy fled north to Canada, and
numerous Congregational Protestant sects in Canada fled south to New England.
The type of Protestants that tended to settle in Canada were of the Anglican
variety, which emphasized hierarchy and communitarian values in line with the
ideals of Catholicism. Today, Canada’s
political culture shares a lot more in common with Europe than the United
States. The country has a much stronger welfare state than America and
communitarian values such as equality of result are more important.
Lipset also addresses other critical
questions that are neglected by the classic writers on this topic. For example,
why is it that several of America’s minority communities have a different
political culture than the majority? Through a historical analysis and a
comparison of World Values Survey data, Lipset shows that African Americans and
Jews are outliers. They are more likely to share the communitarian values found
in Europe than the average American, although each group has a very different
historical experience that led to this outcome. The attitudes of African
Americans were shaped by the institutions of slavery and later Jim Crow in the
South (Lipset, 113-150). Unlike the political culture found among whites in New
England, the systems of slavery and Jim Crow were hierarchical and oppressive. Consequently,
blacks are far more likely to identify themselves with their racial group and
are less individualistic. Furthermore, the black community had to struggle to
obtain their Civil Rights, so they were more likely to adopt the values of
equality of result. With that said, the majority of African Americans do share most
of the same liberal political values as whites according to survey data although
whites are still far more likely to hold those values by a large margin. Consequently,
African Americans are more likely to support redistributive economic policies
and affirmative action.
While Jews share similar political
values with African Americans, their historical experiences are very different
(Lipset, 151-75). Most of America’s Jews were voluntary migrants that came to
the United States from Central and Eastern Europe. During the Middle Ages, Jews
were forced to live in urban ghettos, so they gravitated towards professions
such as commerce and banking. This placed the Jewish community in an optimal position
to thrive economically when the Western world began to industrialize in the
late eighteenth and nineteenth century. Jews that have migrated to the United
States over the last two and a half centuries have fit in very well in a
capitalist economy and a pluralistic political culture that has tolerated their
presence. Jews have done remarkably well politically, economically, and socially
to the point where they have surpassed every other ethnic and religious groups
in America by a very large margin in nearly every socioeconomic indicator.
However, like African Americans, the community has also experienced a long
history of discrimination, and they are more sensitive to the needs of minority
communities than the average American. It is why Jews, like African Americans,
are more likely to vote for the Democratic Party and support policies that
favor the redistribution of wealth to the poor. Lipset’s analysis of these
minority communities shows that there are exceptions to the rule within
America’s political culture. The origins of different immigrant groups is an
important explanatory variable in terms of explaining the current state of
political culture in the United States.
However, there are several concerns
with Lipset’s work that need to be addressed. While making a causal connection
between long term historical trends and present cultural values makes intuitive
sense, it neglects the fact that political cultures also change overtime in
response to political, economic, and social crises. Not every piece of data from the past or present
fits the narrative constructed by Lipset. While it may be true that the United
States significantly outspent Europe on education in the 1990’s, many countries
have caught up since then and even surpassed America since Lipset completed his
book two decades ago.[1]
For example, Germany reformed its entire educational system in response to
disappointing PISA exam scores in the early 2000’s. We cannot explain this
shift in attitudes towards education in Germany based on a distant feudal past
but as changes to a political culture in a globalized world. By overemphasizing
the historical differences between different political cultures based on their
origins, it denies their capacity to evolve with the times and learn from the
past. With that said, Lipset provides a good overview of the different
perspectives on American exceptionalism while adding more nuance and empirical
evidence to the debate.
Work Cited
De Tocqueville, Alexis. 1966. Democracy in America, translated by J.P. Mayer. Harper & Row
Publishers: New York.
Hartz, Louis. 1955. The
Liberal Tradition in America. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers: New
York.
Lipset, Seymour. 1996. American
Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword. W.W. Norton: New York.
“Public Spending on Education,” https://data.oecd.org/eduresource/public-spending-on-education.htm,
2017.
[1]
“Public Spending on Education,” https://data.oecd.org/eduresource/public-spending-on-education.htm,
2017.
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