This article considers the necessity to study the background of a research program on compared politics, focused on the concept of political culture, in order to understand the production of an annual series of reports on democratic political culture in most Latin American countries, including Colombia. The text metaphorically proposes the iceberg image, in order to recognize that current visible part of this research program accumulates a research tradition of over half a century, with a theoretical, methodological and empirical meaningfulness. It tries to recognize the theoretical body that supports it, as well as identifying the general lines of its present itinerary, maintaining an intra-paradigmatic critic logic. That is, without questioning the epistemological assumptions that support this program, adducing the inefficiency of assessments that start off from esoteric criteria to the community in which said logic is based. Finally, some critical elements are implemented.