SUBCULTURES: FROM SOCIAL TO POLITICAL

The understanding of political structure and political institutions is not enough for grasping the political process. The latter can be understood by the study of political culture as well as political structure. But political culture of a nation is not homogenous. It has different manifestations, some threatening the existing order, while others are simply different from it. These manifestations can be summarized by the controversial term “political subculture”. The purpose of the current paper is to trace the use of the term subculture in social science and its shift in political research by implementation of a comparative approach. The reviewed works indicate a strong relation between the terminology used in the social science and the usage of the term subculture in political studies. Although there are differences between the social and political as concern the prevailing usage of the term, in certain aspects the designations are completely identical in their use.