Burnt into the Brain: Towards a Redefinition of Political Culture

The current US administration has made the promotion of ‘political and economic freedom’ overseas a cornerstone of its foreign policy doctrine. The underlying notion that human beings all over the world can be chiefly motivated by a desire for personal liberty seems a noble but hardly realistic ideal. Such motivation is fostered by processes of social modernization and individualization. These changes are linked not only to structural transformations and the spread of new values and ideas, but also to the gradual rewiring of the brains of individuals involved in them. New findings in neuroscience point to clear parallels between changes in social and personality structures (individualization, self-discipline, sense of agency, time orientation, trust, and the like), and modified patterns of brain wiring in individuals. The cultural changes sometimes seen as a precondition for democratization and democratic consolidation are therefore likely to be slow and to escape deliberate political orchestration. Moreover, diffuse processes of brain rewiring conducive to democratic political development, which can be seen as creating favourable neurocultural preconditions for democracy, may be hampered by the rapid spread of the market economy over new regions and areas of life in both developing and Western countries. These processes can be studied by the new sub-field of political science called neuropolitics, to be consolidated over the next few years.