These world views find expression in all sorts of popular cultural media. These global visions of life, embodied in various cultural representations, communicate the ranking systems, virtue concepts and standards of achievement that distinguish one particularistic cultural community from another. Cultural representations of this sort make up the greatest part of the cultural resources available in a liberal democracy. However, such cultural representations are not necessarily supportive of the values proper to citizenship and therefore do not necessarily serve the ends of civic education. We call this sort of culture civic culture .
Civic culture provides the resources for civic education.
Civic education reproduces and strengthens civic culture. When civic culture and civic education function effectively, large numbers of people who have the formal status of citizens in a liberal democracy actually develop the attitudes, dispositions and values proper to citizenship. Liberal democracies can exist only if these numbers are sufficient to meet whatever political challenges that arise. Of course, the generation and reproduction of civic identities and values are supported by secondary cultural, social and economic forces that operate independently of the dominant form of civic culture operative in any particular liberal democracy. In America, for example, a market economy of small producers, geographical mobility, an individualistic form of Protestant Christianity all contributed different degrees of support to the creation and maintenance of civic attitudes during the nineteenth century.