Part One of this book set out four reasons why culture and values matter for public policy. This second part moves the focus more to the political sphere. As any policy maker knows, the political context is an essential part of determining how policy is made and delivered. Politics sets the environment within which policy makers operate, determining what is possible and what is deemed important. As will be clear from the following two chapters, culture and values have a direct impact on politics. Therefore, they drive policy outcomes via the political sphere as well as directly.

The two following chapters focus on two aspects of the political system. Chapter 6 looks at voters and voting behaviour, and the way culture and values contribute to explaining them. Chapter 7 is focused on how political systems deliver accountability, and how that is affected by culture and values. The discussion in this part concentrates on democratic political systems. How voters behave is clearly rather less important in countries where there are no elections or they are manipulated in such a way that what voters actually think and do is irrelevant to the outcome. Political accountability does, of course, exist in non-democratic systems. However, the mechanisms through which it works are different, and would need separate treatment outside the scope of this book.