Jackman, Robert and Ross Miller. "A Renaissance of Political Culture?". American Journal of Political Science, Vol.40, No.3 (1996): 632-659.

Jackman, Robert and Ross Miller. "A Renaissance of Political Culture?". American Journal of Political Science, Vol.40, No.3 (1996): 632-659.

• "We find little evidence to indicate a systematic relationship between political culture and political and economic performance" (632).
• There is a long history of economics and political scientists thinking that cultural attitudes play a large role in determining the political and economic success of an area, beginning with Max Weber's conception  of the Protestant work ethic and reiterated in the works of Karl Marx. Later scholars toned down the racism, although the conception of culture as a factor for societal success remained (632-634).
• "Such arguments are of more than academic interest. For example, it is often asserted that democratization will continue to face severe handicaps in the southern European cone, much of Latin America, and most strikingly in East Europe and Russia, given the strong legacy of authoritarianism in the recent past" (633).
• The implications of a cultural theory of political and economic performance are immense, as it means that change must be slow and gradual at best, to nonexistent at worst. Moreover, the solution is the destruction of native cultural behaviors, and presumably their replacement with more productive practices (636).
• For cultural factors to have an effect on the politics or economic performance of a country, it needs to be demonstrated that those cultural traits are coherent, prevalent in the general population, durable through-out historical change, and significant drivers of political or economic conditions (635).
• The authors write partially in reaction to Dr. Robert Putnam's work on measuring political and economic performance in newly created Italian regions in the 1970s. This is then compared to the political culture of each region, as determined by Dr. Putnam using historical sources (636-640).
• The authors do lots of fancy math things that basically show that although some data exists to suggest that earlier political developments -- which may or may not reflect 'culture' -- do have some effect on contemporary political and economic performance, but there is no evidence to firmly support the cultural explanation (641-644).
• The authors also look at the research of Dr. Ronald Inglehart on the effects of political culture -- including Protestantism -- on economic performance in advanced industrialized democracies. None of his measured factors have significant correlations with political or economic outcomes (645-646, 648).
• Dr. Inglehart's data is unreliable and full of weird anomalies and inconsistent definitions (648-651). His research does not provide any evidence of enduring and distinctive cultural traits, and that most of his evidence can be explained by variations in short-term economic growth (652).
• Thus far, there has been no research presented which demonstrates that a durable and defined set of cultural practices have any systematic effect on political and economic outcomes. More than simply casting doubt, the authors failed to find any evidence to suggest that culture plays a causal relations in political or economical performance, specifically destroying claims that culture stimulates democracy or more robust economic growth (653-654). 
• The authors instead propose that political and economic outcomes, as well as political behaviors are largely driven by institutions and changes in the way that individuals interact within institutions, changing behaviors as new opportunities and risk present themselves (655).