This project is an attempt to define both culture and political culture, and thus enable Italian subcultures to be identified. The paper discusses the "meaning" of political subcultures regarding the levels and styles of political participation in Italy_ It does so primarily from a sociohistorical perspective. It also offers a critique of the methods of analysis commonly used in Political Science. The aim of the first part is to offer a reliable theoretical background concerning the operationalization of the concept Culture. In the second part of this paper, I describe and analyze the influences of state formation on Italian political culture and subcultures. The third part of the paper is a quantitative analysis of the regional Italian subcultures. The statistical procedure is interesting and confirms the conclusions drawn from the socio-historical analysis. It shows that socio-historical forces do have tenacious influences on the levels and styles of political participation in Italy. / Master of Arts