This is a comparative study of certain basic characteristics of political culture in the cities of Curitiba and Porto Alegre, analizing their diversity and convergence as local complementary forms of the constitution of citizenship. These differences are related to their socio-historical context during the processes of democratization of the public sphere. This work argues against the usual deterministic bias and over-generalization procedures of conventional empirical studies of political culture oriented by modernization theories. The present study argues for an approach that portrays and interprets the pluralistic constitution of political culture expressed through the exercise of citizenship during the processes of democratization.
modernization; democratization; political culture and subcultures; citizenship; socio-historical contexts; pluralism