okay this week we're going to talk about Texas political culture I'm going to break up the comments that I have um over two different recordings so that you will not have to sit at the computer for about an hour um but hopefully you've had a chance to look at the um reading questions that I posted about political culture and here is the link that you will need to use um if you want to log on to the online Texas textbook that talks about Texas political culture but there's sever things that we're going to want to talk about what are some of the defining characteristics of political culture what are the major geographic regions and so what I want to do for each lecture is talk about the objectives so for each lecture I'll have these objectives on one slide and again you can print these off under the uh tab uh right before right above this lecture where I put these in a PDF for you so we're going to understand what we mean by Texas political culture we the defining characteristics when we think of political culture what we're really talking about is this idea of a shared set of values and beliefs about how government should function and it really provides the intellectual the intellectual background for politics so if we think about what are the defining characteristics of the United States in terms of political culture we think of key Concepts like Liberty equality and democracy so it doesn't matter where you live in the United States these are un Universal qualities or characteristics of what is American political culture but we also have some subcultures in the state of Texas and we're going to specifically focus on the traditionalistic and individualistic culture uh in Texas and that will become more um apparent as we move forward um we also want to understand how some additional factors influence Texas political culture the geography the economy particularly the oil and gas industry uh what kind of uh demography do we have in the state of Texas who are the different peoples that populate the state of Texas and then a little bit about what it means to be an urbanized State and whether or not Texas is indeed urbanized so let's just focus a little bit on political culture and what is what is political culture and again to Define it it's a shared set of values and beliefs about how government should function and I've written it out there for you um uh for to have it imparts some sort of way that we can talk in uh using a common vocabulary to discuss and perhaps justify what our preferences are when it comes to who gets what when and how this idea of who gets what when and how is a very popular um definition of politics that's used in the United States so it's important to remember that political culture is more than just a psychological concept than a formal set of beliefs it's it's may or may not be be universally accepted some citizens may not even be conscious of it um but in fact if you think about what most Americans see as the role of government we believe in Liberty equality and democracy other other countries might have a set of or an important element of national identity that's more based upon some sort of common ancestry we don't have that in the United States because we're a multicultural State okay so if we think about what is Texas political culture and how is it distinct from the larger us political culture um we can talk a little bit about how people came to the state of Texas and so we'll do that eventually so again us political culture is really defined by the values that are of Liberty equality and democracy but if we think about how does the State of Texas deal or what are some of the things that make up political culture in the state of Texas we have to think about the history of Texas particularly the idea that it was a frontier State at various times in its history it came under control of six different countries it's had an experience as an independent republic so it has its own set of Founders and its own myths that are separate than that of the United States a political scientist named Daniel elazar discussed political culture and how some subcultural subcultures developed and specifically he looked at how states were found founded and how he derived then three types of political cultures one is what is called a moralistic culture a second one is called a traditional um I'm sorry an individualistic political culture and then the third is something called a traditionalistic political cultures so if we look at these three different categories of political culture um the argument is and I have a map for you the argument is that these cultures are largely the product of settlement patterns that is different immigrant groups came to this country for a particular reason and they brought their own cultural identities from probably Europe for example and then they settled in different parts of what would become the colonies and then the United States and they developed distinct subcultures so if we look at this moral political culture up here on the upper left um this is the belief that government should be active in promoting the public good and that citizens should participate in politics and Civic activities so it it implies what we would think of as a very organic concept of society in which the government seeks to promote the common good and individuals are morally bound to participate in politics and this culture is rooted in New England so you can see up here in these New England states where the Puritans and other religious groups sought to create what was called a good Society quote unquote and then as people started to migrate Westward we can see that the northern part of the United States has this dominant culture of moral political culture in many of these states in the red where Civic mindedness and civic responsibility has a large role to play in that culture the green is where it's mixed with some others probably in these states more this individual political culture so in the individual istic political culture the idea here is that government should limit its roles to establishing order in society so that citizens can pursue their own economic interests and we see this more in what are called the Mid-Atlantic states of the 13 colonies and then as it's moved Westward into the states of Ohio Indiana and Illinois and then it starts to mix with the moral political culture that we find up here in the Upper Midwest and the upper North West so origin takes rote in the Mid-Atlantic states where most of the settlers started to look for material wealth through trade and really wanted the government not to interfere with trade in order to make their way in the new world so there were pretty much this idea of individual liberty individual capitalism and where the government just needs to provide a good base of Law and Order so that these individuals can pursue their own individual economic interests okay and then we have what is called the traditional political culture in what were the Southern original 13 colonies and this is a belief that government should be dominated by a political Elite that is a small group of people who dominate the political process and guided by tradition and it's concerned with preserving the existing social order and benefiting the established Elite and we can see this during what is called the annabellum period in American history which is the period before the Civil War and it's a culture that developed in the South and was modeled more on the feudal system of Europe and and is really indicative of what we saw in the plantation economy of the South before the Civil War and so you can see that this started uh to move Westward as people move toward the frontier and here's the state of Texas that has a mix of this traditional but also very much some of this individual political culture so that's why Texas is categorized as a traditionalistic individualistic state it wants taxes low much like the individual political culture in order to Foster um Commerce they want to have low levels of Social Services again to maintain a small government role um Elites such as Business Leaders in the state of Texas have a major voice in how the state is run and so Commerce um very much in more of the traditional political culture dominates the state of Texas um but Texas is changing in terms of its political culture mainly due to these changes in the demography or the people that populate the state among other things the population is growing and becoming much more diverse as of 2008 Texas had about 24 million people including a large percentage of anglos or whites at 47% African-Americans at little over 11% and a Hispanic population of almost 37% and more and more people are moving into Texas from outside the state and many of these individuals that used to live up in the Upper Midwest what we call here in Indiana Illinois Ohio the Rust Belt are moving south to Texas and in Florida particular to either retire but also to take advantage of low taxes there is no state income tax here in the state of Texas or Florida so it attracts a lot of businesses so that the employees don't have to pay a state income tax okay so it's with all these changes de in terms of demography and the economy it's becoming increasingly difficult to kind of categorize Texas political culture into one of these three groups so while we tend to think of Texas as a traditional individualistic political culture it is starting to change in terms of some of its influence however there is a domination of the state by Elites and there is this constant push for limited government and there are several ways that we can see this one one enduring characteristic of Texas political culture is this idea of Texas as a one- party State okay for over 100 years after the Texas became a uh state in the Union the Democratic party dominated Texas and the Democratic party dominated the south in particular after the Civil War however Texas went through a period of partisan realignment and so by the 1990s you started to see competition between the two major parties that are Democrats and Republic Republicans however since 2002 the Republicans so anytime you see GOP this stands for the grand old party and that is the acronym or the initials for the Republican Party since 2002 the GOP has controlled all major State offices and the legislature in the state of Texas so while it used to be a onep party State dominated by the Democratic party since 2000 and a little bit before then actually the Republicans have dominated and so even though both part are competitive and you'll see both parties represented on the ballot you can see in the last presidential election where the red is uh Republican counties in the state all these little blocks are counties you can see that the state of Texas went for John McCain the Republican even though Barack Obama won the election the blue is where you see more support obviously for Barack Obama and this is called The Valley in the state of Texas so you have a large um Hispanic population and then these major metropolitan areas which are um more influenced by liberals and Democrats in the state of Texas okay so that's one enduring characteristic of the State of Texas political culture another enduring quality is what is called provincialism and this is the idea of the the the the hope for or the uh actual idea that there's a narrow view of the world and so it's narrow Limited self-interested Texas is a big state so many people have never been outside the state of Texas but this also keeps it very isolated in many people in the state this provincialism has resulted in an intolerance of diversity and it's also meant that there hasn't been a lot of expenditures on social services and education so this has led to um the idea that in the face of Economic Development and the growing of influence of women and minorities this is probably going to change over time so the competitive two-party system is changing this idea of provincialism as is the growing number of minorities in the state of Texas and the increasing role of women in the state and then a third characteristic is the business dominance that I mentioned before co-america bank is a very large Bank in the state of Texas and of course this is the governor of the state of Texas Rick Perry so this third pattern reflects Texas's political culture in terms of that the longterm the long time dominance of business in the state of Texas we don't have very many labor unions except in the oil refinery areas and so business insures its continued standing in Texas politics through its efforts in terms of campaign contributions lobbyists as well as the low taxes so as a result consumer and environmental concerns have not been historically influential although that is changing along with the green movement and the environmental movement across the United States okay so let's just talk a few minutes about the land of the State of Texas because the sheer size of the state has largely informed the relationship between the people of Texas and the land and it's a geographically diverse state so we can see here there's several major areas in here we have the Gulf Coastal Plains where San Houston State University is down here in the city of Houston we have the Interior Lowlands up in this this region what's called North Central Texas where the Dallas Fort Worth area is we have the Great Plains up in the What's called the Panhandle and then Central Texas and then we have what is called the Basin and the range Province and of course this is pretty mountainous Davis Mountains Big Bend um and this all area around here obviously borders the country of Mexico and this is um the Gulf of Mexico okay so it's the second largest state um in the the union after Alaska it goes from 800 Mi north to south and 773 Mi east to west you could literally drive all day and still be in the state of Texas okay um the gulf the Gulf Coastal Plains again this is the area that is the center of the Texas Timber industry so Timber and Forest are a huge uh asset for the State of Texas this is called the Piney Woods over here uh as we get close to Louisiana this is also where the oil fields were located it's also uh uh some of this area is also nice for livestock and farming so it's suitable for growing cotton fruit and winter vegetables that's my phone ringing I'm in the office um I'm going to let that just go to voicemail uh as we move forward the Interior Lowlands here this is where there's uh lots of highly populated uh major metropolitan areas uh there's also so this is where a lot of the industries in terms of insurance and other businesses are located in the Dallas Fort Worth area there's also cattle ranching up in the rolling plains as well as Agriculture and the Great Plains this is northwest and central Texas this is dominated by agriculture although there's lots of irrigation issues in this particular region ranching is also a big um industry in this particular region and there's also oil um underneath the ground in this area and then you have the sparsely populated mountainous areas that I mentioned before when it comes to the economy we can see that there's a series of dramatic changes since the early 19th century and so we've had these different waves of transformation and then the first wave we really have this cotton and cattle industry in the state of Texas that is pretty much um the um stereotypical idea when we think of Texas we think of cotton and cattle so let me say a few things about about cotton it was started to be cultivated in the 1820s by 1880 Texas LED all states in the production of cotton in most years so it was one of the largest producers and they had high production was fueled by the introduction of barbed wire which allowed Farmers to protect their crops from grazing and of course the railroads that brought Texas cotton to the National Market okay it's obviously a very labor intensive crop that needs to be cultivated so this led to a lot of what is called tenant farming and a cropping particularly after the end of the Civil War um where individuals were basically cropping and and serving as tenants in large agricultural plantations um the system obviously um uh didn't lend itself well to economic wealth for many of these Farmers because most of them were tenants and so this led to a lot of political discontent in the rural areas giving rise to what is called the grain or the populace movement and so what you had is a large percentage of Texans in these rurals rural areas who were socially and economically dependent upon these larger uh tenants in order to be able to make a living so people were uh sharecropping that is um cultivating and uh U taking care of land that they didn't own themselves so they became very much in debt to the owners of the land who reaped the economic benefits even though they didn't work the land themselves so this led to some political discourse in the the state of Texas about what to do in terms of providing political um representation to many of these tenant croppers and this is what the Grange and the populist movement did all right the other big um economic um uh element in the state of Texas of course is cattle ranching and it dates back to the 17th century and it parallels the industry of cotton um ranching became massive in scale when the railroads opened up new markets okay so um once the railroad came in then we were able to ship a lot of cattle to market after the Civil War the cattle industry obviously took off and throughout this 20th century the industry has gone through periods of boom and then bust like the cotton industry cattle remains very important however it has become increasingly dominated by what is called large Agro business Texas generally leads the nation in the number number and the value of cattle um however neither cotton nor ranching drives Texas economy today as it did in the past and that is because um we've moved to a new area obviously the other idea when you think of Texas you think of oil so today only about 2% of the population actually lives on farms in the state of Texas so one of the driving forces in the Texas economy continues to be today is oil and the first significant Texas oil Discovery was in 19 was in 1894 and so by 1898 there was a oil refinery in the state but the discovery of spindl toop in 1901 really catapulted the state into the era of gas and oil and so oil fever spread throughout Texas over the next decade and so by the 1930s the whole Texas economy was really powered by petrolum and this transformed the state in a variety of ways you had cheap oil and gas so you had all kinds of ways of transporting um by the 1930s it becomes a major contributor to the economy and allowed America to move away from coal to oil and it also sped up the development of the national highway system so people could literally start to have a more rapid movement of both people and goods and the industry sparked the industrialization of the whole Gul coast region and this is where the oil industry has continued to flourish um the oil and gas affected the state's economic uh life and so you had an increasing number of people uh brought into the state and this of course led to um uh the development of the state but it also created a lot of problems for social welfare there wasn't enough schools or housing for individuals um and so we while you have a lot of good things come with the oil industry um the state had to accommodate this growth in one way or the other and so beginning in 1905 the state started to tax oil production creating a whole new Revenue stream that allowed the state of Texas to provide for many of these social services that we have today by 19 by I'm Sorry by 2008 the production of gas contributed $2.9 billion to the state budget so the oil and gas industry is a very important component of Texas economy and it's also important to the public universities in the state of Texas when oil was discovered on University land in 1923 the oil and gas industry uh began to pay for a lot of the education at state universities all right but there's more than just oil um and again this is some of the things I just talked about we have some traditional residence patterns were displaced so that led to some uh growth as well as some discomfort as we moved toward trying to place these individuals into housing um we have something called the Texas Railroad Commission that brought stability to the markets and was able to uh provide again jobs to uh incoming uh population and the pipelines have served many companies and we've also had a a regulation of oil production in order to make sure pricing has maintained at a smooth level the last part of the economy that I want to talk about is the emergence of a high-tech industry particularly Dell computers in the 1990s move moved into Austin Texas this is a picture of the skyline in Austin because the oil business collapsed in the 1980s um uh prices started to fall other elements of the economy started to suffer real estate broke down in terms of uh overpricing of uh homes for example so they went through a recessionary period um much like the whole world went through the last couple of years and in doing so they started to try to diversify the economy uh after many banks failed and so by the 1990s we start to have a growth in the high-tech manufacturing sector um Texas went from Seventh Nationwide and employment and Manufacturing to Second by 2008 133% of the total State gross domestic product or 168 billion came from manufacturing and high-tech Industries and one of the additional things that has helped the economy in Texas is NAFTA the North America Free Trade Agreement which was signed in 1992 creating a free trade zone between Canada the United States and Mexico and so it there was some great fear that American jobs would actually uh go into Mexico but in fact the Texas uh state of Texas increased exports to both Canada and Mexico by 10 billion over the first 5 years so it has had both a negative and positive impact on the state of Texas um again the positive of course is these exports that increased but there was also a loss of some jobs okay about 27,000 workers were adversely affected by the agreement losing their jobs because of comp competition from some of low wage businesses in Mexico or some plants relocated to Mexico okay but we did see 24 out of 32 Industries saw exports to Mexico gain in terms of double digits all right that's a lot of information so we'll take a break um the next recording you'll have to click on to will be more about the people of the state of Texas