Hate Crime Policy Differentiation and Correlation to Political Culture
Many political scientists and researchers to a number of policy arenas in the United States ranging from corporal punishment to the quality of urban life have applied Daniel Elazar's concept of political cultures. For a vast majority of these policy programs, a considerable correlation has been found to exist between the region examined and its approach to a specific policy. Elazar focused on three primary political cultures: the Moralist political culture (MPC), the Individual political culture (IPC), and the Traditional political culture (TPC). These cultures have served as a basis for explaining the difference that exist in the political, social, and personal facets of each respective region. These ideas have been consistent throughout the course of this nation's history, existing even in present times. I have chosen to focus on a policy program that has demanded a great deal of attention in more recent times, namely in the past few years: hate crime policy. With m!ore widespread media coverage, hate crimes have become more prevalent and more publicized than ever before. The Benjamin Smith shootings and the murder of Matthew Shepard are only two examples of recent crimes, which have been considered hate crimes t
As part of our preparation for the new century, it is time for us to mount and all-out assault on hate crimes, to punish them swiftly and severely, and to do more to prevent them from happening in the first place. A Comparative Look at State Hate Crime PolicyWe have examined the federal initiatives regarding hate crimes, but more importantly, how have individual states followed suit? Are there differences between states and if so, do those differences correlate to Daniel Elazar's concept of political cultures? As Elazar wrote, there are three distinct political cultures present in the United States: the Moralist Political Culture, the Individualist Political Culture, and the Traditionalist Political Culture. New ideas have a major obstacle because the TPC is a culture opposed to change. According to Elazar, the MPC favors a strong bureaucracy and is concerned with the issues that will especially affect the people. The TPC, contrarily, is established on a foundation devoted to maintaining the statu!s quo. On the other hand we have the TPC which views bureaucracy negatively and rarely focuses on issues. Nebraska (TPC), South Carolina (TPC), and the District of Columbia have been the most recent states to add hate crime provisions (12 and 13). The MPC is a liberal area with the people's interests at heart. This lead me to believe that even today, the TPC would be least likely to readily accept change, namely hate crime policy. "Shaped by local conditions and broad system effects, the correlates of criminalization resemble those in many other diffusion contexts. As previously mentioned, the first hate crime statute was enacted by California in 1978, so naturally hate crime policies are a product of the previous two decades. Lauch Faircloth (R-NC) and Edward Kennedy (D-MA), and Reps. From this, I hypothesized that MPC regions of the United States would be most responsible for initiating anti-hate crime legislation and action and would, in general, be more likely to have hate crime policies than the IPC and TPC regions.
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