Before Norms: Institutions and Civic Culture

Before Norms

Before Norms Institutions

AND

Civic Culture

Robert W Jackman AND

Ross A. Miller

The University of Michigan Press Ann Arbor

Copyright 'Cl by the University of Michigan 2004 All rights reserved Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America @ Printed on acid-free paper 2007

2006

200 5

2004

4

2

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or othenvise, without the written permission of the publisher.

A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Jackman, Robert W. , 1946Refore norms : institutions and civic culture I Robert W. Jackman and Ross A. Miller. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. TSRN 0-472- T T 3 9 6- 8 (cloth : aJk. paper) I. Political culture . 2. Political sociology. 3. Social norms. I. Miller, Ross A., I96 s - II. Title. JA75 ·7·J3 2004 3 06. 2-dc22

for Rachael and Saul RJ for Kris and Mom RM

"An antipathy to labour, or an insensitivity to its advantages, is now, as in the days of Fynes Moryson and Bishop Berkeley, a distinguishing trait in the character of the Irish people. Their extreme poverty is principally a consequence of their extreme sloth." -J. R. McCulloch A Descriptive and Statistical Account of the British Empire, J:;xhibiting Its £xtent, Physical Capabilities, Population, Industry, and Civil and Religious Institutions (I84 7)

"The poor catholics in the south of Ireland spin wool very generally, but ...the professors of that religion are under such discouragements that they cannot engage in any trade which requires both industry and capital. If they succeed and make a fortune what are they to do with it? They can neither buy land, nor take a mortgage, nor even fine down the rent of a lease. Where is there a people in the world to be found industrious under such a circumstance?" -Arthur Young A Tour in Ireland, With General Observations on the Present State of That Kingdom, Made in the Years r776, 1777,

and r77R and Brought Down to the Hnd of 1779 (I78o)

"Had the Treaty of Limerick been faithfully kept; had the Irish Ro­ man Catholics, humbled by defeat, been treated with even-handed justice, as entitled to the protection of the laws equally with their Protestant fellow-subjects, the result of the one hundred and fifty years which have since elapsed might have been widely different. But almost the first act of the Irish legislature was to pass those penal laws, of which an eminent historian has declared, that 'to have exter­ minated the Catholics by the sword, or expelled them like the Moriscoes of Spain, would have been little more repugnant to justice and humanity, but incomparably more politic.' " -Jonathan Pim The Condition and Prospects of Ireland and the Evils Arising from the Present Distribution of Landed Property: With Suggestions for a Remedy (I 84 8)

Contents

x1

List of Tables List of Figures

xm

Preface and A cknowledgments The Issues

ONE.

Part One.

I

Cultural and Social Capital Approaches

The Protestant Ethic Thesis

TWO.

THREE.

33

Civic Virtue in Italy and the United States Civic Virtue, Growth, and Democratization

FOUR.

Part Two.

59 98

The Institutional Alternative

Institutions and Voter Turnout

FIVE. SIX.

xv

I3 7

Institutions and Support for Parties of the Extreme Right (with Karin Volpert) I63

SEVEN.

Culture, Institutions, and Political Behavior

References Index

225

20T

T88

Tables

I . I . Votes and Legislative Seats Received by the Congress Party of India in National Elections since Independence 2. I . High School Enrollments in Baden, 1 8 8 5 - 9 5 , by Type and Religious Affiliation 2 . 2 . Taxable Wealth i n Baden, 1 897, b y Type and Religious Affiliation 3 · T . Principal Component Analyses of Indicators of the Institutiona! Performance of Italian Regional Governments 3 . 2 . T-ratios from Regressions of the Institutional Performance of Italian Regional Governments and Its Components on ( a ) Current Civic Values and Current Economic Development and (b) Early Civic Values and Current Economic Development 3 - 3 - Average Levels of Trust, Helpfulness, and Advantage Regressed on Year, 1 9 74 - 9 4 3 -4 - Correlations among Trust, Helpfulness, and Advantage at the Individual and Aggregate Levels, 1 9 74- 94 3 · 5 · Average Levels of Membership i n Fraternal, Literary, Service, and " All " Groups 3 . 6. Regressions of Rates of Membership in Selected Groups on Survey Year, with and without a Control for Average Level of Education, 1 9 74 - 9 4 3 · 7· Rates of Church Attendance for Select Countries 4 · I . Regressions o f Growth o n Initial GDP, School Enrollment Ratios, Investment, and Need for Achievement Levels, T 9 5 0 4 . 2 . Regressions o f Need for Achievement, 1990, o n Prior Growth and Initial School Enrollment Ratios

24 s6 57 64

67 76 77 8o

81 87 T03 T05

Xll

TABL E S

4 - 3 - Principal Components Analyses o f Four Values Indicators, I99 0 4 + Regressions of Growth on Initial GDP, School Enrollment Ratios, Investment, and Other Sundry Characteristics 4 · 5 · Trust, Civic Virtue, and Growth, 1 9 8 0- 9 2 4 . 6. Product-Moment Correlations among Seven Components of Political Culture, circa 1 9 8 0 4 · 7 · Regressions o f Components of Political Culture, circa I 9 8o, on Basic Economic Conditions 4 . 8 . Estimates o f Muller and Seligson's Basic Model 4 · 9 · Estimates for a Modified Specification Using Muller and Seligson's Data 4 . IO. Regressions of Changes in Democracy, I 990-9 5 , on Cuitural and Economic Characteristics 5 - I . Turnout Rates, Electoral Disproportionality, and Number of Parties for 22 Established Democracies, I 9 so- 2000 ). 2 . Institutions and Voter Turnout, I 9 50- 2ooo 5 - 3 · Basic Information about the Swiss Experience with Referenda, I 8 79- 2ooo 5 + Regressions of Turnout in Swiss Referenda on the Number of Referendum Items in the Election and the Frequency of Elections in the Recent Past, I 8 79 - 2000 5 · 5 · Need for Achievement and Voter Turnout 5 . 6. Culture, Institutions, and Voter Turnout in the I 990S 6. r . Extreme Right Parties Included in the Analysis 6.2. Summary Statistics for A ll Variables 6. 3 . Sources of Support for Parties of the Extreme Right, I 9 70- 2000 6+ Immigration and Support for Parties of the Extreme Right, 1 9 70- 2000

I06 I IO 113 II7 I I9 I22 125 128 I44 I47 I52

I53 I 57 I 6o I76 I78 I8I 183

Figures

I. I. 2. I. 2.2. 3·T. 3 .2. 3 -3-

Indian elections, 1 9 5 2-99 Growth pattern implied by the Weber thesis Growth a s a simple compounding process Membership trends ( T 9 74 - 9 4 ) by type of group The churching of America, 1 776- 1990 Membership i n Little League and United States Youth Soccer, 1 9 3 9-99 3 + Membership in American youth soccer, 1 9 64 - 9 9 4 · I . Democracy 1 9 8os against democracy 1 9 70s

26 43 45 79 84 93 95 123

Preface and Acknowledgments

I

iving conditions for most people in nineteenth-century Ireland were

l""'miserable. Was this the result of a flawed, indolent national character,

or did Irish poverty have other sources ? Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1 9 89, the pace of democratization has been much slower than many had anticipated. Does this slow pace stem from an ingrained au­ thoritarian streak among Russians or from other factors ? Italians are much more likely to vote than Americans. Does this signal a keener appreciation of electoral politics among ordinary citizens in Italy than in the United States ? Does the resurgence of parties of the extreme right in some countries of Western Europe reflect a distinctive set of values in the countries concerned, or does it arise from institutional and other struc­ tural factors ? These are instances of the broader question that motivates our book. On the one hand are those who argue that much political behavior, along with a host of other outcomes, can be traced back to distinctive sets of norms among different publics. Labeled the " value enactment" approach by Portes ( 1 9 7 6 ) , this account attaches great explanatory significance to political or social cultures, or, to use a more current term, social capital. The sets of values associated with different cultures are said to generate distinctive political and social outcomes. Hence the value enactment la­ bel. Further, the values involved are durable, changing slowly, if at all, across generations . The alternative view, which we find much more compelling, is that ordinary citizens everywhere optimize in light of institutional and other constraints that generate varieties of incentive structures. For example, potential voters and candidates for office in a country with a form of proportional representation face a different set of electoral choices than

XVI

PREfAC E A N D A CK N O WL E D G M E N T S

d o citizens i n a single-member district system. Peasants living i n a low­ income country with an authoritarian regime face a different (and much more constricted ) set of alternatives or choices than do the middle-class citizens of an established and prosperous democracy. These differences in available choices imply different sets of incentives that in turn affect pat­ terns of behavior. Further, and in contrast to the value enactment approach, modifica­ tions to institutional and other constraints alter the incentive structure and thereby lead to changed patterns of behavior. Instead of taken as fixed, value configurations become the product of institutional environ­ ments and therefore subject to change. To borrow a central example from recent discussions of social capital, this line of argument implies that levels of trust are created by the institutional environment, not a cause of it. In this account, norms retain a consequential role. At the same time, the institutional approach more readily allows for changed patterns of behavior as current generations are not cast as substantially burdened by the experiences of those who preceded them. The book is organized as follows. In chapter I, we frame the analysis by developing the distinctions that are ever so briefly sketched (and thereby oversimplified) here. In particular, we specify the cultural argument and elaborate the premises on which it rests. Along the way, we discuss the different versions of the value enactment approach that have been offered, ranging from earlier claims about national character to contemporary treatments of social capital. We then elaborate the institutional alternative and specify why it is, in fact, an alternative and preferable approach. The heart of the book has two parts . Part I (chaps. 2 through 4) ad­ dresses in detail the empirical bases for the cultural perspective. Here, we evaluate claims that have been made about the ways in which norms shape a variety of outcomes, including economic growth and democratization. Since so many recent studies take Max Weber's thesis about the Protestant ethic as a starting point, chapter 2 centers directly on that argument. Chapter 3 focuses on contemporary discussions of the political conse­ quences of cultural values or social capital in Italy and the United States, to determine whether southern Italy really is different and whether Ameri­ cans are increasingly prone to going it alone. We broaden the empirical focus across a wider range of cases in chapter 4 to address more general claims about the role of norms in bringing about economic growth and democratization. Throughout part I, we find limited evidence for the cultural account. At some points in the analysis there is little indication of distinctive cultural values that could be driving anything. At other points, the cultural account

Preface and Acknowledgments

xvu

only seems to work if we engage in the most egregious ex post reasoning. Indeed, at several stages in the analysis there are strong suggestions that any systematic patterns in the data that we do observe are more profitably interpreted by means of the alternative institutional framework. In part II ( chaps. 5 and 6), we show that key aspects of mass political behavior are more profitably explained in terms of the incentive patterns generated by different institutional configurations . Our focus on the po­ litical behavior of ordinary citizens (as opposed to political elites) is motivated by two considerations. First, the suggestion that rules affect the behavior of political elites such as legislators is hardly novel. While values and norms were once seen as the key element in determining legislators' behavior (e.g., Matthews 1 9 60; Huitt 1 9 6 1 ) , that day is long gone. Second, arguments about distinctive political cultures associated with the value enactment approach are, at their core, arguments about broad-based constellations of societal values. Hence our focus on the ways in which institutional constraints affect the behavior of ordinary citizens constitutes a stronger evaluation of the argument. Finally, the particular forms of political behavior considered in part II center on rates of electoral participation and patterns of support for parties of the extreme right. These two forms of political behavior have attracted considerable attention for some time. For example, understand­ ing the sources of political participation and patterns of support for extremist political movements were key components of Lipset's ( 1 9 60) classic synthesis of political sociology. More recently, Putnam ( 2ooo, chap. I ) begins his analysis of declining social capital in the United States with a discussion of patterns of electoral participation. And the unex­ pected electoral success of many extreme right parties over the past two decades in wealthy Western European democracies has rekindled debate about the cultural origins of antisystem political movements. We have been working on this project for a little longer than we had originally planned. Along the way, we have accumulated a number of debts. Much earlier versions of some of the material presented here appeared in "Political Institutions and Voter Turnout in the 1 9 8os," Comparative Political Studies 27 ( 1 9 9 5 ) : 4 67-92; " A Renaissance of Political Cul­ ture ? " and "The Poverty of Political Culture," A merican journal of Politi­ cal Science 40 ( 1 9 9 6 ) : 63 2- 5 9 , 697- 7 1 6; " Conditions Favouring Parties of the Extreme Right in Western Europe, " British Journal of Political Science 25 ( 1 9 9 6 ) : 5 0 1 - 2 1 (with Karin Volpert) ; and " Social Capital and Politics," Annual Review of Political Science 1 ( 1 99 8 ) : 4 7- 73 . While we

XVlll

PR E FA C E A N D ACK N O WL E DG M E N T S

have expanded our analyses considerably, w e are grateful t o the editors and referees of these journals for their constructive comments on those earlier reports from our project, and their comments have continued to inform our work. Since Karin Volpert contributed to the earlier analysis of patterns of support for the extreme right in Western Europe, she is listed as a coauthor of chapter 6 here. At various points in the book, we have employed materials from the Internet. While this is an impressive source of information, not all Web addresses last forever. The references that we have made to particular Web addresses on the Internet were all current as of November 2003. Several people played a vital role in ensuring that the transition from manuscript to book went smoothly. James Reische, Jeremy Shine, Charles Myers, Sarah Mann, and Kevin Rennells each contributed to this process, and we thank them for their patience and support. Many others have contributed to this book in a variety of ways, offering feedback and reactions to ideas when they were in more embryonic form, helping us locate data, and drawing our attention to studies of which we would otherwise have been unaware. These include Josephine Andrews, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Ethan Bueno de Mesquita, Alexander Field, Mary Jackman, Arend Lijphart, Bill McCarthy, Jeannette Money, Gabri­ ella Montinola, Stephen Nicholson, Randolph Siverson, James Spriggs, and Walter Stone. Randy Siverson also steered us away from an ungainly title, John Daniels offered crucial help on the figures, and Deborah Patton prepared the index. We were also fortunate to receive two detailed and constructive reviews (William Mishler subsequently identified himself as one of the referees ) . We appreciate the effort that went into these reviews and the fact that they closely complemented each other. The book is immea­ surably improved by these contributions, for which we are grateful.

ONE

The Issues Ever since Max Weber, many social scientists looked at the " right" cul­ tural attitudes and beliefs as necessary conditions ( " prerequisites " ) for economic progress, j ust as earlier theories had emphasized race, climate, or the presence of natural resources. In the 19 s os, newly fashioned cul­ tural theories of development competed strongly with the economic ones (which stressed capital formation ) , with Weber's Protestant Ethic being modernized into David McClelland's "achievement motivation " as a pre­ condition of progress and into Edward C. Banfield's "amoral familism " as an obstacle . According to my way of thinking, the very attitudes alleged to be preconditions of industrialization could be generated on the job and " on the way, " by certain characteristics of the industrialization process. Albert Hirschman ( 1 9 84, 9 9 )

re we prisoners of our distinctive pasts, governed by customs and habits that evolve, if they do so at all, at a glacial pace over several generations ? Such is the broad assertion of those who propose that cul­ tural differences are at the heart of the crucial variations in political behavior that we so often observe when comparing disparate social groups and states. Thus, the claim has recently been revived that there were distinctive traits to popular values in Germany that made Nazism possible, traits not shared, say, with Danes. Most notably, ordinary Ger­ mans had displayed singularly high levels of anti-Semitism for at least the preceding century and a half, which fact served as the foundation of the Nazi state. Given these traits, German behavior during the Nazi period was necessarily different from what Danish behavior could potentially have been, even had both groups faced similar political, social, and eco­ nomic conditions ( Goldhagen 1 9 9 6 ) .

2

BE F O RE N O RM S

Others counter such broad arguments by stressing that people every­ where optimize, given the known alternatives. That is, people process information in a similar manner to get as much as they can of what they want at the least possible cost. Observed differences in political behavior stem from the considerable variance across settings in the conditions under which people optimize. Some have an information advantage over others, and there are major differences in the political, social, and eco­ nomic circumstances within which individuals and groups find them­ selves. Hence, for example, we understand why people might be more sensitive to their short-run than to any possible long-term interests in a Hobbesian world where life is " solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. " By the same token, we expect the same people to maximize their longer­ term interests in a different setting where their property rights are secure, where they can envisage encouraging economic prospects, and where they have a reasonable prospect of longevity. In other words, whether people are future-oriented is fundamentally a function of whether such an outlook makes sense, given their circumstances. These are the two alternatives sketched out by Albert Hirschman, and there is a world of practical difference between them. The first assigns causal priority to cultural values as driving other outcomes, while the second casts values as an outcome of the conditions within which people find themselves. Further, the first argument stresses the durability of cultural differences in values across generations, which implies that at any given time, the die is cast for any particular form of political behav­ ior. In other words, observed differences across cultural groups in politi­ cal and social behavior are predestined by shared collective experiences and group membership, and are therefore fundamentally impervious to change through intervention or changes in incentive structures. Thus, Goldhagen's ordinary Germans of the 1 9 3 0s and 1940s were basically wired to be genocidal by a distinctively virulent blend of anti-Semitism inherited from many previous generations of Germans. ' This has two immediate implications. If the die for particular behav­ ioral forms is indeed cast by waves of preceding generations, then the r. Goldhagen's analysis obviously struck a responsive chord and received an extraordi­ nary amount of press attention. However, the criticisms from specialists in the field have been devastating. Among the major problems identified are his selective use of both primary and secondary sources to fit his argument, his stereotyping of Germans, and his willingness to draw inferences about the allegedly distinctive behavior of Germans without reference to comparative data on the behavior of non-German individuals. On these issues, sec espe­ cially the two essays that comprise Finkelstein and Birns ( 1 9 9 8 ) and Jahoda ( 1 99 8 ) . More probing views than Goldhagen's of the motivation and behavior of those who implemented Nazi policy are offered in Browning ( 2ooo, esp. chaps. 5 and 6) and Rauer (2oo r ) .

The Issues

3

cultural argument is conservative in the sense that it minimizes the possi­ bilities for alternative forms of behavior. Those alternatives are simply precluded on the grounds that they are inconsistent with shared group values. There is an additional ethical implication. If group members are indeed all culturally wired to behave in distinctive ways, then individual group members cannot be held accountable for their own behavior. Thus, in what is admittedly an extreme case, if Goldhagen is correct that the behavior of ordinary Germans was a function of a shared set of anti­ Semitic values inherited through several previous generations, then Na­ zism was inevitable, and it is difficult to pass moral judgment on any particular individual Germans for their behavior during the Nazi period.2 The alternative view-that people optimize, given the alternatives of which they are aware-is subject to neither of these shortcomings. First, behavior is not cast as an irrevocable function of the values of the gener­ ations who have gone before. Instead, by emphasizing the selection of pat­ terns of behavior from a menu of the known alternatives, it is an argument that assigns special weight to incentive structures, that is, to the political, social, and economic conditions within which people find themselves. In this vein, the electoral fortunes of the Nazi Party from I9 2 5 through I9 3 3 would be taken to reflect its success in appealing to the material interests of a decisive number of German voters, given conditions after the First World War, the recency of the party system, and in light of the Great Depression (Brustein I 9 9 6; King et a!. 200 2 ) . Because changes in incentive structures lead to changes in behavior, the optimizing argument is not subject to the conservative implications that encumber the cultural argument. Further, from an ethical point of view, behavior is cast as the outcome of intentional choices. Even if conditions restrict the menu from which choices are se­ lected, they thus remain choices subject to ethical evaluation. Our purpose in this book is to adjudicate between these two general explanations of political behavior, that is, between the political culture approach and what we label the institutional approach. The task is impor­ tant given the marked discrepancies between the empirical and ethical implications of the two approaches . Our analyses include empirical eval­ uations of their relative merits, as they have found their way into contem­ porary political science. We conclude that the institutional account out­ performs the cultural account, and by a large margin. Let us begin at the beginning, however, by detailing the distinctive characteristics of each approach. 2 . For an important discussion of the issues in assigning responsibility in cases like these, see Kelman and Hamilton ( T 9 8 9, esp. chap . 8 ) .

4

BE F O RE N O RM S

The Political Culture Approach

The belief that cultural differences underlie many of the observed varia­ tions across political units has a long pedigree, especially among students of comparative politics. The classic exemplar of the argument in the social sciences remains Max Weber's analysis of linkages between the Protestant ethic and the rise of capitalism in Europe ( [ 1 9 0 5 ] 19 5 S a ) , although as J. R. McCulloch's mid-nineteenth-century remarks about the Irish reproduced in the front of this book remind us, the claim was hardly original with Weber. And one of the benchmark studies of the behavioral revolution in the study of politics is Almond and Verba's ( 1 9 6 3 ) exploration of linkages between civic cultures and democracy across five different societies . While the popularity o f this general perspective h a s waxed and waned over the past three decades (e.g., the essays in Almond and Verba 1 9 80; Barry 1 9 70, esp. chaps. 3, 4), the presumption that cultural differences drive significant elements of political and economic life enjoys wide cur­ rency. Indeed, the perspective has experienced a substantial resurgence in the past decade ( Street 1994 ) . 3 Consider Fukuyama's ( 1 9 9 5 ) analysis o f the role o f trust i n economic performance. Comparing three " high-trust" economies (the United States, Germany, and Japan) with three of their " low-trust" counterparts, Fuku­ yama concludes that while such factors as technology, markets, and human capital contribute to economic growth, the key ingredient in generating growth is social capital in the form of a supporting culture of trust, or, as he terms it, " spontaneous sociability. " This claim is very similar to Harrison's ( 1 9 8 5 , 1 992, 1 9 9 7 ) declaration that political, social, and economic devel­ opment all hinge critically on values involving trust, ethical codes, the exercise of authority, and orientations to work and risk-taking. In a similar manner, Putnam ( 1 99 3 ) compares the performance of regional governments in contemporary Italy to conclude that effective governance hinges critically on durable traditions of civic engagement that go back at least a century, and possibly a millennium. His study parallels Inglehart's ( 1 990, 1 9 9 7 ) analyses of a broader range of societies, which argue that cultural values fundamentally drive economic perfor­ mance and democratic stability. Such claims are of more than academic interest. For example, it is often asserted that democratization will continue to face severe handicaps in southern Europe, much of Latin America, and most strikingly in East 3· It also remains a fundamental theme in cultural anthropology (for a critical survey, see Kuper T 9 99 ) .

The Issues

5

Europe and Russia, given the strong legacy of authoritarianism in the recent past. Attempts to link values to economic performance have simi­ larly clear policy implications, as evidenced by the many discussions about possible links between cultural values and the economic growth rates of the East Asian tigers. Moreover, these claims have already re­ ceived a good deal of attention. The Economist, for example, waxed rhapsodically about Putnam's book: "a great work of social science, worthy to rank alongside de Tocqueville, Pareto, and Weber. " 4 Laitin was only slightly less enthusiastic in his appraisal of the book as a " stunning breakthrough in political culture research" ( 1 9 9 5 , 1 7 1 ) . Origins o f the Argument The intellectual godfather to work on political culture is Weber's (r 1 9 0 5l 1 9 5 8 a ) thesis linking Protestantism with the spirit of capitalism.s Weber, of course, sought to identify the peculiar characteristics of Protestantism that he believed gave rise to a distinctive entrepreneurial spirit conducive to economic growth. This argument is at the heart of contemporary claims about political culture, and we examine it more fully in chapter 2 . Subsequent studies o f political culture frequently offered a unique exegesis of political behavior within a given state, often cast in terms of national character. Perhaps the most systematic of these involved a series of country studies on the organization of civic training put together by Charles Merriam in the 1 9 20s and summarized in The Making of Citi­ zens ([19 3 1 ] 1 9 6 6 ) . However, studies explicitly cast in the national­ character mold became increasingly rare after the mid- 1 9 5 os, a fact Pye ( 1 99 1 a) attributes to the difficulties such studies encountered in meeting the standards proposed by Inkeles and Levinson ( 1 9 54 ) . 6 4 · " Pro Bono Publico, " Economist, February 6 , ' 99 3 , 9 6 . 5 . We a r e not, of course, assigning exclusive paternity to Weber. Indeed, versions of the argument can also be found in such writers as de Tocqueville. Consider the following. [Without] common belief no society can prosper; say, rather, no society can exist; for without ideas held in common there is no common action, and without common action there may still be men, but there is no society. In order that society should exist and, a fortiori, that a society should prosper, it is necessary that the minds of all the citizens should be rallied and held together by certain predominant ideas; and this cannot be the case unless each of them sometimes draws his opinions from the common source and consents to accept certain matters of belief already formed. ( de Tocqueville [ ' 8 3 5 - 40] ' 94 5 , 2: 8 ) Primary paternity remains Weber's, however, since he most fully articulated the argument. 6. According to Pye, "the national-character approach was . . . brought to an almost complete stop in T9 5 4 " because of the lnkeles and Levinson paper, "which was supposed to

6

BE F O RE N O RM S

Against this backdrop, Almond and Verba's classic study ( 1 9 63 ) repre­ sented a major breakthrough because it replaced the idiosyncratic, case­ by-case explanations typical of the national-character studies with an ex­ planation couched in terms of general features of political culture that vary systematically from one setting to another and that foster democratic per­ formance. In this sense, their analysis embodied a return to the concerns that motivated Weber in a format that was also sensitive to the analytic and empirical issues raised by Inkeles and Levinson ( 19 5 4 ) . Almond and Verba paid special attention to the contrasts among participant, subj ect, and parochial cultures, arguing that democratic outcomes are more likely where participatory norms are widespread, and less likely where trust is low and where values assume a predominantly passive, subject form. At about the same time, McClelland ( 1 9 6 1 ) drew explicitly on Weber to suggest that high concentrations of values emphasizing need for achieve­ ment are the engine that drives economic growth. Since need for achieve­ ment is a syndrome that emphasizes entrepreneurial skills, the parallels with Weber are straightforward.7 McClelland further suggested that au­ thoritarian regimes were the likely outcome of cultures that stressed high levels of need for power and low levels of need for affiliation. Banfield made the similar argument that economic and political " backwardness" is a function of high levels of amoral familism according to which the norm is to "maximize the material, short-run advantage of the nuclear family; assume that all others will do likewise" ( 1 9 5 8 , 8 5 ) . Thus defined, amoral familism involves low levels of trust and resembles both Almond and Verba's subj ect culture and McClelland's views on low levels of need for achievement. By the late 1 9 6os, the argument had thoroughly permeated analyses of development. For example, in his influential Political Order in Changing Societies, Huntington wrote: The absence of trust in the culture of the society provides formidable obstacles to the creation of public institutions . Those societies deficient have been written in the spirit of constructive criticism but which called for impossibly high scientific standards. Inkeles never rejected the idea of national character; he only made it impractical to usc it" (Pyc I99 Ia, 4 9 6 ) . 7 · I n a companion paper, l'vlcCielland complained that " national character is not taken very seriously in discussing economic and political development" ( T 9 6 3 ) and proposed need for achievement as a key ingredient of national character. A subsequent book addressed the ways in which levels of achievement motivation might be manipulated in order to enhance economic performance (McClelland and Winter r 9 6 9 ) . McClelland's work inspired a num­ ber of other specific analyses of the impact of achievement norms on economic perfor­ mance; see, for example, Bradburn and Rerlew ( T 9 6 T ) , Cortes ( T 9 6 T ), and Morgan ( r 9 64 ) .

The Issues

7

stable and effective government are also deficient in mutual trust among their citizens, in national and public loyalties, and in organiza­ tion skills and capacity. Their political cultures are often said to be marked by suspicion, jealousy, and latent or actual hostility toward everyone who is not a member of the family, the village, or, perhaps, the tribe. These characteristics are found in many cultures, their most exten­ sive manifestation perhaps being in the Arab world and in Latin Amer­ ica. ( 1 9 6 8 , 2 8 ) m

The theme i s echoed repeatedly i n the more recent analyses. Thus, Harrison acknowledges that resource endowments, policy choices, and sheer luck may be among the operative factors explaining variations in performance across nations and ethic groups: " But it is values and atti­ tudes-culture-that differentiate ethnic groups and are mainly respon­ sible for such phenomena as Latin America's persistent instability and inequity, Taiwan's and Korea's economic 'miracles,' and the achievements of the Japanese-in Japan, in Brazil, and in America " ( 199 2, r ) . Fukuyama arrives at the same conclusion, casting culture as social capital. A society's endowment of social capital is critical to understanding its industrial structure, and hence its position in the global division of labor. . . . [But] social capital has implications that go well beyond the economy. Sociability is also a vital support for self-governing political institutions, and is, in many respects, an end in itself. Social capital, which is practiced as a matter of arational habit and has its origins in " irrational " phenomena like religion and traditional ethics, would ap­ pear to be necessary to permit the proper functioning of rational mod­ ern economic and political institutions-a fact that has interesting im­ plications for the nature of the modernization process as a whole. ( 19 9 5 , 3 2 5 )

Among the more rigorous of the current analyses, Putnam's emphasis on sense of civic community matches Banfield's emphasis on trust and Almond and Verba's case for the importance of a civic political culture. The absence of civic virtue is exemplified in the " amoral familism" that Edward Banfield reported as the dominant ethos in Montegrano . . . . Participation in a civic community is more public-spirited than that, more oriented to shared benefits . Citizens in a civic community, though not selfless saints, regard the public domain as more than a battle­ ground for pursuing personal interest. ( 19 9 3 , 8 8 )

8

BE F O RE N O RM S

In like manner, Inglehart places primary emphasis o n variations over time and space in the configuration of mass value priorities. Data from roughly two dozen nations reveal a consistent cultural­ economic syndrome. The wealthier countries and those with highly developed tertiary sectors are most likely to be long-established democ­ racies, and the publics of these nations tend to show relatively high rates of political discussion, have less Materialist value priorities, and tend to be Protestant in religion . . . . These nations, furthermore, tend to have publics that are characterized by high levels of life satisfaction and interpersonal trust, low levels of support for revolutionary change, high levels of satisfaction with the way democracy is working, and high rates of political discussion. Conversely, the less wealthy, less demo­ cratic, and less Protestant nations tend to be characterized by political cultures that show low levels of trust and satisfaction, high levels of support for revolutionary change, and low rates of political discussion. ( 1 990, 57)

The political culture perspective clearly has a long pedigree. Equally clear is the central role it continues to play in current explanations of political behavior and economic performance. Distinctive Features of the Argument Central to all of these claims is the idea that political cultures stem from particular configurations of attitudes across a broad group of individuals. In other words, cultures reflect relatively coherent clusters of attitudes. On some occasions, the syndrome or modal personality type is taken to reflect the prevalence of entrepreneurial sentiments (e.g., need for achieve­ ment), while at other times it is said to reveal a sense of civic community or civic virtue (as in Banfield, Almond and Verba, Inglehart, and Put­ nam ) . The important point, however, is that the syndrome is coherent. A second point follows immediately. Arguments about political culture are fundamentally concerned with the prevalence of such value clusters within societies. While the cultural pattern reflects the attitudes of individu­ als, it assumes political and social significance to the extent that it is widely endorsed. This means that at their heart, cultural arguments are concerned with aggregate properties of societies. The point was made with great clarity by Inkeles and Levinson, who insisted that a culture be equated with " modal personality structure: that is, it should refer to the mode or modes of the distribution of [individual] personality variants within a given soci-

The Issues

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ety" ( I 9 69, 4 2 5 ) . By Weber's original account, for example, it was the widespread diffusion of entrepreneurial attitudes fostered by Protestant­ ism that gave rise to economic growth. Third, these cultural syndromes are durable. Even if slightly modified by short-term forces, their fundamental effects persist over the long haul. Again, as Inkeles and Levinson observed: Whatever their specific nature, [the components of culture] are rela­ tively enduring personality characteristics, for example, character traits, modes of dealing with impulses and affects, conceptions of the self, and the like. These are not phenotypic, behavior-descriptive terms . Rather, they are higher-level abstractions that refer to stable, general­ ized dispositions or modes of functioning and may take a great variety of concrete behavioral terms . (Inkeles and Levinson r 9 69, 4 2 6; em­ phasis in original)

The durability theme appears repeatedly in studies of national cul­ tures, which cast distinctive values as the product of socialization. For example, Banfield claimed bluntly that " the Montegranesi act like selfish children because they are brought up as selfish children" ( I9 5 8 , I 5 I ) , describing an iterative process repeated across many generations. Simi­ larly, in his wide-ranging essay on Russian political culture, Keenan ( I 9 8 6) asserts that Russian political culture is distinctly centralized, bu­ reaucratic, and authoritarian, and that Russians display low levels of interpersonal trust and prefer to act in a shroud of secrecy. Keenan traces these traditions from sixteenth-century Muscovy directly through the Brezhnev years, and presumably the period since. The claimed continuity is thus extensive, covering as it does fully five hundred years.s Durability is also fundamental to more general cultural accounts. Thus, the " basic message " that Harrison seeks to convey is: Human development is frustrated in most Hispanic-American coun­ tries-and most Third World countries-by a way of seeing the world that impedes the achievement of political pluralism, social equity, and dynamic economic progress. And that way of the world has been driven, without significant deviation, by the momentum of centuries. ( r 9 8 5 , r 6 8 ; emphasis added) 8. An extensive discussion of Keenan's analysis is provided by Crummey et al. ( r 9 8 7 ) . Keenan's basic argument has been echoed repeatedly (e.g., Joyce r 9 84; White r 9 84; Hed­ lund T 9 9 9 ) .

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Putnam ( 1 9 9 3 ) goes even further to trace differences i n performance across Italian regional governments to legacies of civic engagement reach­ ing back a thousand years to the Middle Ages. The point is also under­ scored by Inglehart. The political culture approach is distinctive in arguing that ( r ) people's responses to their situations are shaped by subj ective orientations, which vary cross-culturally and within subcultures; and ( 2 ) these varia­ tions in subj ective orientations reflect differences in one's socialization experience, with early learning conditioning later learning, making the former more difficult to undo. Consequently, action can not be inter­ preted as simply the result of external situations : Enduring differences in cultural learning also play an important part in shaping what people think and do. ( 1990, 19; emphasis in original )

He further adds: " People live in the past much more than they realize. We interpret reality in terms of concepts and world views based on past experi­ ences" ( 4 2 2 ) . Thus described, the distinguishing elements of cultural ac­ counts are their emphases on the durability of norms arising from early socialization and on the limited impact of " external situations . " Indeed, Inglehart ( 1 9 9 7, 1 84 - 8 8 ) subsequently contends that norms and values are sufficiently durable that estimates obtained in 1990 can usefully be used as surrogates for unobtainable estimates for 1 9 20, fully seventy years earlier. While this represents a shorter span than Putnam's millen­ nium, it remains a strong claim about the durability of cultural values. In an interesting twist, Rice and Feldman ( 1 99 7 ) compared the civic values of current residents in eleven West European countries with those of Americans of European descent. Thus, they compared Italians with Italian-Americans, Danes with Danish-Americans, and so on. They re­ ported that, in the aggregate, Americans whose predecessors emigrated from populations that are now highly civic themselves hold civic values, while descendants of emigrants from less civic populations themselves are less civic. They further reported that timing of immigration has no bear­ ing on civic values in the sense that those values do not hinge on whether all, some, or none of the grandparents of European-origin Americans were born in the United States. This suggests one of two things. Perhaps civic values are remarkably long-lived and insensitive to any diverging conditions, having basically been frozen over several generations in both origin and destination countries. Alternatively, such values have evolved in exactly the same manner in both origin and destination settings, so that Danish-Americans continue to resemble Danes, Italian-Americans con­ tinue to resemble Italians, while Americans of Danish descent are quite

The Issues

II

unlike their Italian-origin compatriots. Either way, Rice and Feldman emphasize the durability of these values. Durability was, of course, also central to earlier accounts of political culture. Verba, for example, stressed the role of socialization and direct experience in the formation of political culture but continued: One must look beyond the direct political experiences of the individual. The political memories passed from generation to generation and the way these memories are formed are crucial. One is forced to consider the historical experiences of a nation from the point of view of their impact on political beliefs . ( 1 9 6 5 , 5 5 4 )

Although somewhat more critical of cultural explanations on the grounds that they are inordinately conservative, Moore made the same point. Common observation is enough to show that human beings individu­ ally and collectively do not react to an " obj ective " situation in the same way as one chemical reacts to another when they are put together in a test tube . . . . There is always an intervening variable, a filter, one might say, between people and an " obj ective " situation, made up from all sorts of wants, expectations, and other ideas derived from the past. This intervening variable, which it is convenient to call culture, screens out certain parts of the obj ective situation and emphasizes other parts . There are limits to the amount of variations in perception and human behavior that can come from this source. Still the residue of truth in the cultural explanation is that what looks like an opportunity or a tempta­ tion to one group of people will not necessarily seem so to another group with a different historical experience and living in a different form of society. ( 1 9 66, 4 8 5 )

Note the claim that deep-seated configurations of norms inhibit people from adapting to changes in broader political conditions, labeled " objec­ tive " and " external " situations by Moore and Inglehart, respectively. Cultural factors are thus said to constrain how individuals adapt to changes in incentive structures embodied in political institutions and the like. Consequently, as Inglehart and many others have pointed out, argu­ ments couched in terms of political culture are at variance with social choice arguments, which imply that different individuals will respond to the same change in incentive structures in a similar manner.9 We return to this point later. 9· This is the case even though lnglehart's suggestion that social choice arguments are concerned solely with the optimization of economic utility is wrong.

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Fourth, the significance o f these enduring cultural syndromes stems from the way in which they drive other outcomes. Weber's analysis con­ tinues to attract attention because of the effects on economic growth he attributed to Protestantism, and it is hard to imagine this continuing attention without that imputation. Weber was, of course, quite explicit on the point. His fundamental goal was to undermine any form of eco­ nomic determinism by showing that values are not epiphenomenal, Marx to the contrary ( see on this point, e.g., Zeitlin 1 9 9 0 ) . Banfield ( 1 9 5 8 ) was equally explicit: Why was Montegrano so backward ? Because amoral familism was endemic. Indeed, the emphasis on values as the generating force led Portes ( 1 9 7 6 ) to label the cultural account as the " value enact­ ment" approach to development. The same spirit motivates the current analyses. Thus, both Harrison ( 1 99 2, chap. 1 ) and Fukuyama ( 1 9 9 5 , chap. 5 ) argue at some length that Marx was wrong and Weber was right, precisely on these grounds. Similarly, Putnam weighs in against any " simple economic determin­ ism" ( 1 9 9 3 , 1 5 2 ) , insisting instead that cultural norms as reflected in sense of civic community are responsible for both economic and politi­ cal performance: The predictive power of the civic community is greater than the power of economic development . . . . In other words, economically advanced regions appear to have more successful regional governments merely because they are more civic. ( 9 8-9 9 )

Inglehart also casts the cultural account a s a n alternative t o " economic determinism" ( 1 990, chap. 8) or " institutional determinism, " where the latter term refers to " an extreme claim . . . that institutions alone deter­ mine a society's values" ( 1 9 9 7, 9 9 ) . On the basis of this contrast, he concludes: The available evidence indicates that the values and cultural norms held by given peoples are a major influence on whether or not democratic institutions are viable Culture not only responds to changes in the .

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environment; it also helps shape the social, economic, and political world. ( 1 990, 4 32; emphasis added) The political culture account thus identifies distinctive clusters of atti­ tudes that are widely held across the relevant set of individuals. These durable clusters form subjective orientations to the world that are highly resistant to change and are seen as the fundamental generator of eco-

The Issues

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nomic and political performance. They are, in this sense, more important than objective conditions, and they persist in the face of changes in objec­ tive conditions. Despite the radically different twentieth-century political histories of Italy and the United States, Americans of Italian descent therefore share more political values with contemporary Italians than they do, say, with Americans of Danish lineage (Rice and Feldman 1 9 9 7 ) . We are hardly the first t o observe the conservative implications of this general claim. As Moore ( 1 9 6 6 ) , Partes ( 1 9 76), and many others have pointed out, the argument is one that allows for slow change at most, since it casts subjective orientations as more important than, and substan­ tially independent of, objective conditions. This implies that changes in the latter will have minimal effects on the former. Thus, Banfield's ( 1 9 5 8 ) discussion of amoral familism in Montegrano led him quite naturally to his subsequent well-known declaration that present-orientedness is en­ demic to lower-class culture in the urban United States, that this lower­ class culture is highly resistant to change, and that " so long as the city contains a sizable lower class, nothing basic can be done about its most serious problems" ( 1 974, 2 3 4 ) . Putnam's more recent conclusion that regional differences i n civic­ mindedness across contemporary Italy date back to at least the Middle Ages has the same implications. Poor economic and political perfor­ mance stem from cultural pathologies that, in the critical words of an­ other scholar, are " self-generating in the double sense that socialization perpetuates both the cultural patterns of the group and consequent indi­ vidual psycho-social inadequacies blocking escape from rtheml " (Valen­ tine 1 9 6 8 , 1 4 1 ) . For these reasons, LaPalombara j udged the analysis to have " dismal " implications. Civic traditions not only have remarkable staying power; they are also almost impossi ble to change, even in the long run . . . . This will be small solace to southern Italians, j ust as it will, unfortunately, confirm the stereotype held by so many northern Italians that " Italy, from Rome south, is really part of Africa. " ( 1 9 9 3 , 5 3 0 )

A southern Italian regional president had a similar reaction: "This i s a counsel of despair! You're telling me that nothing I can do will improve our prospects for success. The fate of reform was sealed centuries ago " (quoted in Putnam 1 99 3 , 1 8 3 ) . The conclusion is inescapable. The cultural account thus constitutes a coherent claim that has major implications for the ways in which we envision political life. We turn now to the principal alternative explanation of the same outcomes.

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The I n s titution al Approach

Unlike the cultural perspective, the institutional view specifies that people optimize, choosing from the menu of available alternatives. Observed behavioral variations across groups do not stem from distinctive values or from group-specific ways of processing information but instead reflect the different menus available to different actors and groups. The institu­ tional approach thus assigns special weight to the incentive structures generated by the political, social, and economic conditions within which people find themselves. Let us digress briefly to explain the institutional label, since our usage may not be self-evident.10 Until the 1 9 6os, political science was dominated by an approach that emphasized formal rules and procedures, embodied in constitutions and the like, implicitly assuming that political life could be understood as an almost perfect function of those rules. The " behavioral revolution " that occurred in the 1 9 6os, but that began much earlier with the work of Charles Merriam in particular, can be seen as a reaction to this emphasis on formal rules. Drawing heavily on related social sciences, such as anthropology and social psychology, scholars in the behavioral mode drew our attention to less formal patterns of political behavior, emphasiz­ ing the importance of understanding how citizens actually behave rather than the ways they are supposed to behave, given the rules (Dahl r 9 6 r b ) . We have collectively learned much from the behavioral approach: for example, we have an enhanced sense of the limited levels of political infor­ mation exhibited by citizens across the industrial democracies. As we have already indicated, Almond and Verba's ( r 9 6 3 ) analysis is widely regarded as a benchmark study in this mode. ' ' Over the last twenty years, students of politics have come increasingly to adopt a "new" form of institutionalism. Unlike the older form of analysis that predominated until the 19 s os, this more recent focus ac­ cepts the behavioral premise that we focus on observed patterns of politi­ cal behavior, as opposed to those prescribed by rules. At the same time, the newer form of institutionalism emphasizes the contexts within which these forms of behavior are concerned, contexts defined by institutions and rules. These contexts, in turn, are seen as generating distinctive incen­ tive structures that constrain the choices of political actors and hence ro. Parallel treatments of the issues involved in this and the following paragraph can be found, for example, in Shepsle ( r 9 8 9 ) and Calvert ( r 99 5 ) . r r . Other key behavioral studies include The American Voter ( Campbell e t al. r 9 6o), Political Man (Lipset r 9 6o), and Who Governs? (Dahl r 9 6 r a ) .

The Issues

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affect the forms that their political behavior assumes. In this sense, ob­ served differences in political behavior across groups are seen as a func­ tion in part of variations in the institutional arrangements to which they are exposed. We use the term institutional to refer to this newer form of analysis. While the approach is not exclusively associated with any one study, well­ known papers by Shepsle ( 1 9 79 ) and March and Olsen ( 1 9 84 ) are often taken as general benchmarks.U We drop new from the label on two grounds. First, there is an issue of brevity. Second, there has to be a statute of limitations issue: the approach is surely much less novel now than it was two decades ago ! In broad terms, the institutional approach that we adopt casts behav­ ior as the outcome of ( r ) the activities of optimizing actors ( 2 ) who operate under institutional constraints. We briefly elaborate our usage of these two terms. The Optimizing-Actors Premise The institutional approach hinges on the conventional premise that hu­ man actors seek to optimize their utility. We substitute the term optimize for maximize here solely to underscore the elementary point that, across individuals and groups, there are major differences in terms of the avail­ ability of both information and choices. Some actors have much more information about alternatives and their likely consequences than others, and some have access to a broader menu of choices than others. Decision making is thus surrounded by considerable uncertainty for all actors, although some face much more uncertainty than others. Saying that ac­ tors seek to optimize their utility does not mean that all actors have the same information nor that they are faced with the same set of choices or incentives. Despite the plausibility of this premise, casting political behavior as rational continues to generate considerable resistance among students of r 2 . Dating shifts in disciplinary emphasis is always difficult. For example, while we have dated the behavioral approach to the r 9 6os, this period simply reflects the time at which that emphasis peaked. As we have noted, the behavioral approach to politics can be traced back to Merriam's work of the T 9 20s and T 9 J OS, and key subsequent scholars like Gabriel Almond and Robert Dahl had earlier been students of Merriam. Similarly, the March and Olsen paper b uilt on a considerable body of research that had already been completed, and many of the concerns of the new institutionalism can be traced back to key analyses like Arrow ( r9 5 1 ) and Black ( r 9 5 8 ) that underscored the difficulties of aggregating preferences into a coherent outcome in the absence of an institutional framework.

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political life (e.g., Hindess I 9 8 8 ; Lowi I 9 9 2; Green and Shapiro I 9 94 ) . ' 3 Since at least Lasswell ( I 9 3 0 ) , many have preferred t o see political behav­ ior as motivated by subconscious nonrational drives that entail no design. Indeed, part of the purpose of many cultural accounts of political life is to emphasize supposedly nonrational and subconsciously driven elements of behavior (e.g., Almond I 990; Pye I 9 9 I a ) . The impact on the field of Lasswell's Psychopathology and Politics ( 1 9 3 0) has thus been monumen­ tal, and confusion too often reigns over the meaning of the term rational. Some of this confusion can be traced back to those behavioral studies that examined electoral participation. Classics in this genre like Berelson, Lazarsfeld, and McPhee ( I 9 54 ) and Campbell et a!. ( I 9 6o) concluded that voters (and nonvoters) are fundamentally irrational in the sense that they exhibit very low levels of information about and apparent compre­ hension of politics. This picture of voters seemed to square poorly with notions of how ideal democratic citizens might be supposed to behave. Berelson was especially emphatic on this point, suggesting that demo­ cratic theory was in need of wholesale revision as a result of his empirical results. Obviously, such conclusions hinge on a substantive view of rationality, in the Weberian sense. This view is often claimed to represent a " broader " perspective on rationality, but its empirical referents are seldom defined with great precision. Thus, Smelser and Swedberg claim that substantive rationality "refers to allocation within the guidelines of other principles, such as communal loyalties or sacred values, " and contrast this with utility maximization ( 1 994, 5 ) . The point they overlook is that both communal loyalties and " sacred values " can fruitfully be analyzed in an optimizing framework (e.g., Hechter 1 9 8 7; Bates, de Figueiredo, and Weingast 1 99 8 ; Iannaccone I 99 5; Hardin I 99 5; Stark and Finke 2000 ). They further gloss over the fact that substantive rationality too often implies j udgments about goals deemed desirable by the analyst rather than goals selected by the obj ects of analysis. In the case of voter turnout, substantive rationality specifies goals and characteristics ( including an active, informed citizenry) that the analyst believes potential voters should adopt. In contrast, the institutional approach is predicated on a procedural r 3· Of these, Green and Shapiro ( r 9 9 4 ) is perhaps the most wide-ranging critique. Even so, it is ultimately an unsatisfactory appraisal. Among other things, Green and Shapiro offer no coherent alternative against which to j udge rational choice arguments, and their criteria for theory evaluations arc idiosyncratic. On these issues, sec the commentaries in hicdman ( r 99 5 ), especially the chapters by Dennis Chong, Daniel Diermeier, John Ferejohn and Debra Satz, l\1orris Fiorina, Stanley Kelley, Susanne Lohmann, Norman Schofield, and Kenneth Shepsle, along with the commentary in Mueller ( 2003 , chap. 2 8 ) .

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view o f rationality. Riker succinctly stated the elements o f the rational choice model as follows. Actors are able to order their alternative goals, values, tastes, and strategies. This means that the relation of preference and indiffer­ ence among the alternatives is transitive . . . . 2 . Actors choose from available alternatives so as to maximize their satisfaction. ( 1990, 1 7 2; emphasis added) r.

Observe that this definition does not speak to the content of actors' goals. Instead, all that is specified is that, given a set of goals, actors will behave efficiently to optimize their utility. Obviously, different actors will often have distinctive goals, a fundamental source of political conflict. The basic point, however, is that goals are chosen from the alternatives that various actors (as opposed to the analyst playing God) believe to be available or feasible. Observe further that this definition does not preclude miscalculations on the part of actors. Much of social choice theory addresses the ways in which the aggregation of individual preferences, rationally generated, can lead to collectively irrational outcomes (e.g., Arrow 1 9 5 1 ) . Thus, Downs ( 1 9 5 7, chaps. 8, 9) examined how rational parties attempt to induce irrationality among individual voters by adopting ambiguous policy posi­ tions. Similarly, Andrews ( 2002 ) has shown the ways in which cycling over proposals for constitutional reform prevented legislative majorities in the Russian Duma from adopting a new constitution in the early 1 990s. The emphasis then is on optimizing expected or anticipated satis­ faction. Miscalculations are also to be expected, given uncertainty and imperfect information. Riker pointed out: It is quite possible for people to choose alternative actions that frustrate their primary goals. It is also quite possible that, lacking information about others' choices, people choose actions ( even ones with undesired consequences) that would be different from those they would choose with full information. In short, this definition requires only that, within the limits of available information about circumstances and conse­ quences, actors choose so as to maximize their satisfaction. ( 1 990, 1 73 )

The emphases on uncertainty and incomplete information are charac­ teristics of this framework that have given it a decidedly political bent since at least Downs ( 1 9 5 7) . Given these emphases, the idea of proce­ dural rationality has proven to be an important premise that has led to

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the analysis of such obviously political phenomena a s agenda setting, ambiguity on the part of political leaders, and the importance of office­ seeking considerations. '4 Despite this, the notion of procedural rationality continues to induce opposition. One common complaint is that in an effort to explain every­ thing, rational choice theory becomes circular and nonfalsifiable (e.g., Green and Shapiro 1 994 ) . But there is no single rational choice "theory" that seeks to explain everything. Instead, the distinctive feature of the approach is the premise of optimizing behavior, so that the approach is best seen as a " family of theories or, better, a field of endeavor" ( Ferejohn and Satz 1 9 9 5 , 8 1 ) . Premises, of course, are judged by their success in generating falsifiable explanations. As will become clear as we proceed, the optimizing premise has been most productive in this respect. Another common complaint is that the emphasis on utility optimiza­ tion is inordinately restrictive because it precludes altruism and allows only for selfish behavior (e.g., Mansbridge 1 990; Monroe 1 9 9 6 ) . But as Tsebelis ( 1 990, 2 1 ) and others have pointed out, procedural rationality implies no such stipulations because ( unlike the substantive view of ratio­ nality) it does not address the question of goals. More generally, rational choice arguments are not restricted to utility defined solely as material economic interests, and in fact many non­ market applications carry no such restriction. During the forty years since Downs ( 1 9 5 7 ) was originally published, for example, students of politics have come increasingly to understand politicians to be fundamentally motivated by office-seeking concerns and, to a lesser extent, perhaps, by policy concerns. Even the most venal dictators often appear sensitive to officeholding considerations, although not exclusively so. ' 5 While utility may be defined in evolutionary biology in terms of gene reproduction (e.g., Dawkins 1 9 89 , Cronin 1 99 1 ), in the social sciences it simply refers to the preferences of the individual or set of individuals under discussion. r 4 . Our distinction between substantive and procedural rationality follows Riker ( 1 9 9 0 ) . Others make a slightly different distinction between " procedural " and " instrumen­ tal " rationality (e.g., Zagare 1 990), where the former refers to utility maximization with full information and complete certainty (following people like Simon) and the latter involves procedural rationality in Riker's terms. r 5. Consider the case of the late former president Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (now the Congo ) , who, had he been motivated solely by pecuniary greed, might reasonably have thought it prudent in the early 1990s to cash in and retire to Switzerland, where, free from the distractions of office, he would have been in a position to monitor and manage much more closely his considerable financial assets . Instead, he continued to reside in Kinshasa (punctu­ ated by lengthy trips abroad for health treatment), despite increasing challenges to his author­ ity and escalating threats to his personal security. There was an obvious revealed preference for officeholding here, independent of his other clear preference for personal wealth.

The Issues

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Since there is obviously considerable variance in preferences across indi­ viduals, utility cannot be defined exclusively in simple income terms. Arguments couched in terms of procedural rationality can in fact sub­ sume a variety of goals, ranging from materialistic to idealistic or expres­ sive, and from egoistic to altruistic. '6 Thus, although it is typically taken to exemplify nonmaterial, idealistic values, religious behavior has effectively been analyzed in a rational choice framework (e.g., Stark and Finke 2000). Even martyrdom, apparently the ultimate irrational act for those who conceive of possible rewards as solely temporal, has fruitfully been exam­ ined in these terms (e.g., Iannaccone 1 9 9 s; R. Stark 1 9 9 6, esp. chaps. 8, 9 ) . Focusing o n more routine activities, Aldrich ( 1 9 9 7 ) and Schuessler ( 2ooo) have shown that consumer and voter behavior is often motivated by expres­ sive or symbolic, as opposed to instrumental, concerns. Voting in large electorates, especially, is more fruitfully seen as expressive than instru­ mental, since the odds of casting a decisive vote are exiguous. As Aldrich reminds us, "all votes are always wasted, if casting them is done for the purpose of affecting the outcome " ( 1 9 9 7, 3 7 8 ). Expressive participation is readily integrated into a rational choice framework, where the producers of participation (candidates, marketing experts, and the like) " strategically target the expressive motivation of prospective participants in order to elicit their participation " ( Schuessler woo, 6 3 ) . I n a similar vein, much behavior that might appear altruistic i s entirely consistent with an egoist's version of the Golden Rule: "Do as you would be done by. " Since social and political life obviously consists of more than one-shot encounters, apparent altruism of this form makes sense. Such behavior is predicated on expectations of reciprocity and is a form of insurance that helps govern future encounters by reinforcing reputations and trust (e.g., Wilson 1 9 7 8 , chap. 7; 0 . Stark 1 99 5 ) .I? The common r 6. The point is repeatedly misconstrued. For example, Sears and Funk ( 1 9 9 0 ) argue that self-interest has little impact on public opinion, and that the rational choice approach is therefore limited. Instead, "the general public thinks about most political issues, most of the time, in a disinterested frame of mind" ( r 7 o ) . However, this conclusion is predicated o n a definition of self-interest that includes only short- t o medium-term interests a n d material well-being, and refers only to the individual or that individual's immediate family. Excluded from the definition are long-term interests, nonmaterial well-being, and interests that affect the well-being of the individual's group but not necessarily the particular individual . This is inordinately narrow. r 7 . The label " reciprocal altruism" was proposed by Trivers ( r 9 7 r ) . As Wilson empha­ sizes, such altruism is ultimately self-serving in the sense that altruists expect reciprocation in the future either for themselves or for their closest relatives. Reciprocation among distantly related or unrelated individuals is the key to human society. The perfection of the social contract has broken the ancient vertebrate constraints imposed by rigid kin selection. Through the convention of reciprocation,

20

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complaint that the rationality postulate applies only to the analysis of selfish, economic utility maximization is thus baseless. Others object that common views of procedural rationality are empiri­ cally deficient. Perhaps the best-known argument along these lines comes from Simon (e.g., 1 9 8 5 , 1 9 8 6), with his emphasis on bounded rationality ( see also Jones r 999 ). This proposal would carry more weight if it did not inaccurately attribute to procedural rationality the assumptions of com­ plete information and certainty. But even a cursory reading of Downs and the literature since reveals the centrality of arguments about imperfect information and uncertainty to rational choice models (e.g., Calvert 1 9 8 6) . Given this, " bounded rationality" is logically indistinguishable from procedural rationality, as commonly used. The point was shown very clearly thirty years ago by Riker and Ordeshook ( 1 9 7 3 , 20- 2 3 ) . Satisficing, to use Simon's term, i s thus merely a shorthand label for optimizing under conditions of limited information and uncertainty. ' 8 Finally, i t is often claimed that the idea o f procedural rationality i s culturally confined. Some seem t o believe that because different groups and political cultures emphasize different values, the possibilities for ra­ tional choice are restricted. Instead, different groups are said to process information in different ways, that is, they do not behave equally effi­ ciently. Thus, we are all familiar with stereotypes that claim, for example, that women are more emotional while men are more rational, or that people in some non-Western cultures are more " spiritual" while citizens of advanced industrial societies are more motivated by material concerns. But such claims conflate substantive with procedural rationality, and the latter is moot on the subj ect of values (i.e., goals), as we have already indicated. Other observers imply that the rules of decision making are dominated by unique configurations of enduring values or norms associ­ ated with different cultures. Were this the case, however, we would be combined with a flexible, endlessly productive language and a genius for verbal classification, human beings fashion long-remembered agreements upon which cul­ tures and civilizations can he built. ( 1 9 7 8 , 1 5 6) T 8. A related critique of the procedural position centers on the way decisions are " framed" (Tversky and Kahneman 1974, 1 9 8 6 ) . However, while the ways in which choices arc framed may affect the preference functions of actors, this critique is moot because the procedural position concerns behavior given a set of goals. For example, Downs is best read as an analysis of how citizens' preferences are framed by the behavior of parties and leaders . Aldrich's ( 1 993 ) emphasis on the impact of strategic politicians a l s o hears directly o n questions of framing. I n both instances, the framing i s embedded in a wider theory, unlike that offered by Tversky and Kahneman. There is strong evidence that an optimizing-actor premise outperforms arguments built around either Simon's bounded rationality or Tversky and Kahneman's framing argument (Wittman r 9 9 5 ; Lupia and McCubbins 1 9 9 7 ) .

The Issues

21

reduced t o idiographic descriptions a s opposed t o nomothetic attempts at explanation. In other words, we would be reduced to eschewing general­ izations, much in the mode of early studies of national character. An apparently more subtle claim comes from Eckstein ( 1 9 9 2 ) , who declares that in some cultures (say, among peasants or the poor) there is more concern with minimizing pain than with maximizing pleasure, and that the former is qualitatively distinct from the latter. However, the suggestion that there is a disjuncture between these two activities hinges entirely on the restrictive assumptions that utility is equated solely with " pleasure " and that all individuals perceive that they are confronted with the same choices. This, of course, ignores the essential fact that individu­ als in some circumstances face quite constrained opportunity sets (e.g., Popkin's [ 1 9 79] analysis of the choice options available to peasants ) . ' 9 For those living in a Hobbesian world and confronted with a compressed range of feasible alternatives ranging from horrendous to merely awful, minimizing pain is the same as maximizing utility. Both are surely optimiz­ ing forms of behavior.20 Institutional Constraints and Incentive Structures Actors do not optimize in an institutional vacuum. Instead, as we have already emphasized, choices are always constrained for all participants, although the severity of the constraints varies considerably across actors or groups of actors (Riker 1990, 1 7 2 ) . These constraints stem from insti­ tutional arrangements. Following Knight, we take a social institution most generally to be "a set of rules that structure social interactions in particular ways. " To be counted as an institution, " knowledge of these rules must be shared by the members of the relevant community or society " ( 1 992 , 2- 3 ) . This is T9. Analyses like Popkin ( T 9 7 9 ) , Tong ( T 9 8 8 ), and Lichbach ( T 9 9 5 , T 9 9 6 ) also belie common claims that optimizing accounts cannot be used to address the political behavior of the powerless. For a recent instance of such a claim, see the statement that " epistemological commitments to uncertainty, ambiguity, and messiness invite interpretivists to focus on social movements, political resistance, and modern povver in ways that are irrelevant to rational choice theorists " (Wedeen 2 0 0 2 , 7 2 6 ) . While it is the case that rational choice analyses have demonstrated no interest in messiness, analyses of uncertainty and ambiguity have long been central to the approach. 20. Consider the choices available to a woman confronting an unwanted pregnancy. Or consider a peasant in the Ming period choosing between castration (in the hope of gainful employment as a court eunuch ) and starvation (Tong I 9 8 8 ) . Eckstein's argument implies that rational decision making is impossible under conditions like these: utility cannot be optimized because none of the alternatives allows for the maximization of pleasure. The implication is odd.

22

B E F O RE N O RM S

obviously an inclusive definition that encompasses institutions ranging from those that govern marriage and family relations to those that regu­ late patterns of international trade. Further, it is a definition that em­ braces informal norms, social conventions, and the rules that guide politi­ cal and economic activity. Some of these institutions are embodied in law and thus subject to enforcement by the state; others (e.g., many social conventions, international agreements ) are largely self-administered be­ cause they are not subj ect to monitoring by external agents regarded by the relevant participants as authoritative; still others are a blend of the two (Knight 1 9 9 2 ; Calvert 199 5 ) . 2 1 It is, of course, difficult to sustain a watertight distinction between political and social institutions, since the former are a subset of the latter. With this in mind, we treat as " political " those institutions that contrib­ ute to decision making by regulating the aggregation of political prefer­ ences into coherent (not necessarily desirable ! ) outcomes. Examples of such political institutions abound. Considerable attention has been paid to the electoral laws that translate the preferences of individual voters into the selection of governments (e.g., Rae 1 9 7 1 a; Taagepera and Shu­ gart 1 9 89 ; Lijphart 1994; Cox 1 9 9 7 ) . Similarly, much of the study of legislatures centers on the rules and procedures (voting systems, commit­ tee systems, and the like) that decode legislation from the proclivities of particular legislators (e.g., Shepsle 1 9 79 ; Weingast and Marshall 1 9 8 8 ; Cox 2ooo). Parallel analyses center o n the ways i n which judicial institu­ tions affect public policies (e.g., Epstein and Knight 2ooo; Maltzman, Spriggs, and Wahlbeck 2000 ). In each of these cases, political institutions constrain the aggregation of preferences into outcomes. Different poli­ tical institutions can indeed generate markedly distinctive political out­ comes even in the face of similar distributions of preferences. It could perhaps be countered that any such differences across settings in institutional forms themselves simply reflect cultural variations. The problem then is that institutions are divorced from their political origins. We think institutions are more profitably cast as the result of conflict over the allocation of valued goods. Phrased differently, institutions reflect 2 I . Occasionally, cultures arc cast in terms that resemble this rules-of-the-game ap­ proach to institutions. For example, Greif treats cultures as the beliefs "that capture indi­ viduals' expectations with respect to actions that others will take in various contingencies" ( r 994, 9 r 5 ) . Chwe ( 2 oo r ) similarly analyzes cultures (manifested in rituals and ceremonies) as mechanisms that generate common knowledge that resolves coordination problems. Such usages of the term culture clearly diverge substantially from those common in the discus­ sions of political culture that we summarized earlier in this chapter and are fully consistent vvith a rational choice account.

The Issues

23

" the efforts of some to constrain the actions of others with whom they interact" (Knight 1 9 9 2, 1 9 ) . By this reckoning, institutions do not reveal cultural differences but are instead products of interdependent strategies of groups to achieve distributional gains ( Shepsle 1 9 8 9 ) . Moreover, as Knight points out, " to the extent that such rules can have substantive effects on social outcomes, the substantive content of those rules should reflect the self-interest that motivates these claims and actions " ( 1 9 9 2, 3 8 ) . Institutions thus acquire stability when groups with the resources to alter the rules of the game accept those rules. Clearly, institutional change alters the incentives that constrain politi­ cal actors, and it thereby modifies the behavior of those actors, even allowing for some stickiness that may slow the pace of the modification. We expect institutional change to occur when actors or groups with suf­ ficient power are able to challenge and transform those rules. Whereas the cultural argument essentially takes incentive structures as given, the institutional perspective directs our attention to the strategic choices faced by key political figures (e.g., Shepsle 1 9 89; Knight 1 9 9 2 ; Geddes 1994; Strom, Budge, and Laver 1994 ) and restores political consider­ ations to a central analytic role.22 Given uncertainty and imperfect infor­ mation, of course, institutional change does not guarantee the outcomes desired by those who initiate it ( Shepsle 1 9 89 , 1 3 8 - 4 3 ) . This fact serves as the basis for ongoing attempts to adj ust and reform rules and proce­ dures by those actors with the resources to do so. The basic point re­ mains: whether stable or evolving, institutions condition the distribution of both political and social resources. An Illustration: The Congress Party of India We digress briefly to consider the Congress Party of India. The case is of obvious intrinsic interest, given India's status as the most populous ongo­ ing democracy. Of equal importance, it illustrates with great clarity the issues at the heart of an institutional explanation. Founded in I 8 8 5, the Congress Party was the dominant force in Indian politics at the federal level from independence in 194 7 until 1 9 9 6. Indeed, 22. We prefer the institutional label for this account given the way in which it under­ scores the politics underlying the process. On occasion, others have adopted a different label for basically the same perspective. For example, Mishler and Pollack ( 2003 ) cast the distinc­ tion we have made between cultural and institutional approaches as one between "thick" and "thin" cultural approaches. While their thin culture approach also casts behavior and values as endogenous, in our view the label itself downplays the political manner in which institutions affect the distribution resources across groups.

24

B E F O RE N O RM S

with two exceptions ( 1 9 77-90 and 1 9 89 - 9 1 ) , i t held power continu­ ously from independence until 1 9 9 6. Further, the Indian case is notewor­ thy as the maj or democracy among the developing states. Except for the suspension of constitutional procedures during the Emergency of 1 9 7 5 7 7 , the outcomes o f general elections with full suffrage have been bind­ ing. In what is perhaps the key test, incumbents have actually transferred power to their opponents after electoral losses. Several factors have undoubtedly contributed to the ongoing strength of the Congress Party. These include its organizational age, its close identi­ fication with the struggle for decolonization, and the policy positions it has adopted since independence. Another factor, however, involves elec­ toral laws. National legislative elections in India are governed by a single­ member district (SMD ) , plurality, winner-take-all formula. As is well known, this is a format for translating votes into legislative seats that can manufacture majorities by amplifying the margins of large parties and penalizing minor parties (e.g., Duverger 1 9 6 3 ; Rae 1 9 7 1 a ; Riker 1 9 8 2; Taagepera and Shugart 1 9 89; Lijphart 1994; Cox 1 9 9 7 ) . It is thus an institutional mechanism that one might expect to serve well the interests of the Congress Party, as indeed it has.

TABLE 1 . 1 . Votes and Legislative Seats Received by the Congress Party of India in National Elections since I ndependence Year

Votes

Seats

Seats!Votes

1 952 1 95 7 1962 1 96 7 1 97 1 1 977" 1 980 1 9 84 1 989" 1991 1 996" 1 99 8 " 1 999"

45.0 47.8 44.7 40.8 43.7 34.5 42.7 48.1 39.5 36.4 28.8 25.8 28.3

74.4 75 . 1 73 . 1 54.4 6 7. 9 2 8 .4 66.7 76.6 3 7.4 44.5 25.8 26.0 2 1 .0

1 . 65 1.57 1 . 64 1.33 1 .5 5 .82 1 .5 6 1 .5 9 .95 1 .22 .89 1.01 . 74

Source: Data for the elections from 1 952 through 1 9 9 1 are from Brass 1 9 94 (tables 3 . 1 and 3 . 2 ) . Figures for 1 9 9 6 , 1 9 9 8 , and 1 999 are from the Statistical Reports on these elections issued by the Electoral Commission of India, and available from the Commission at http://www.eci .gov.in. "These five elections led to the formation of non-Congress con­ trolled govemments.

The Issues

25

Until the general election of 1 9 77, India was routinely described as having a virtual one-party or a dominant-party system, the party con­ cerned being the Congress. This perception of invincibility had many sources, not least of which is the fact that with the exception of the 1 9 67 election, when it received 54 percent of the legislative seats, the legislative majority of the Congress Party easily exceeded two-thirds until 1 9 77 (table r . r ) . Yet it is striking that the Congress Party has never received a majority of votes cast. Even in the first five elections listed in table r . r , the Congress Party vote averaged only 44· 4 percent, a plurality, t o be sure, but well short of 50 percent. Yet, as the figures show, the SMD electoral system translated these votes into seats most impressively for the Congress Party in these first five elections to yield an average legislative majority of 69 percent (and a mean seats/votes ratio of r . 5 4 ) . The effectiveness o f the SMD system i n manufacturing decisive legisla­ tive majorities from electoral pluralities is underscored when we examine more systematically all thirteen of the elections listed in table r . r. Specifi­ cally, an analysis of the votes-seats relationship following the procedure discussed by Simon Jackman ( r 9 9 4 ) points to considerable bias. The relation between the Congress Party's votes share and the proportion of seats won in national elections since 1 9 5 2 is graphed in figure r . r . Were seats allocated proportionally to votes, the data would follow the 4 5 degree line that w e have drawn. However, the graph indicates instead that the Congress Party requires only 3 8 percent of the vote to garner a majority of legislative seats. Further, the proportion of seats won steps up dramatically as the votes share increases beyond 3 8 percent. Indeed, were the Congress Party ever actually to receive 50 percent of the votes in a national election, the patterns reflected in table r . r imply that it would receive a magnificent 79 percent of the seats ! 23 The common portrait of 2 3 . The votes-seats relation is estimated as ln(s/[1 - s] ) = In f3 + p ln(u/[1 - u] ) +

E,

(1)

where s i s the proportion o f seats received b y a given party, u i s the proportion o f votes received by that party, and {3, p, and E are parameters to be estimated ( see S . Jackman 1 9 9 4 , equation [4] ) . Note that In f3 measures the b i a s of the system: a zero value for this term implies that 50 percent of the votes generate 50 percent of the seats, while a positive value reflects an advantage to the party whose votes share is analyzed. The least-squares estimates of ( r ) using the Indian data in table I . I are: In f3 = 1 . 3 27 (s.e. = . T 6) ; p = 2.722 (s.e. = . 2 9 ) ; and the R� is . 8 9 (n = T 3 ) . The positive estimate for In f3 reveals a considerahle pro- Congress Party electoral system hi as, while the estimate for p is statistically indistinguishable from 3 , the value implied by the so-called cube law for two­ party contests, according to which "the proportion of seats won by the victorious party varies as the cube of the proportion of votes cast for that party over the country as a whole " (Kendall and Stuart l9 s o, T 8 } ) . As shown by S. Jackman I T 9 9 4 . equations r 51 and r 6] ) , the

26

B E F O RE N O RM S

1 .0

.8 ••

(/)

,

Cii Q) (J) 0

.6

�0..

.4

•

c 0

•

0

a:

•

•

•

.2

0.0 0.0

.4

.2

.6

.8

1 .0

P roportion of Votes Fig. 1 . 1 .

I ndian elections, 1 952-99

India (especially from 1 9 4 7 through 1 9 7 7 ) as having a dominant-party system clearly stems more from the skills of the Congress Party at win­ ning legislative representation than from its vote-getting prowess. Clearly, with a different electoral formula (involving, say, some form of propor­ tional representation), India would never have been described as a one- or dominant-party system. One might surmise that the adoption of the SMD electoral formula after independence and the fact that it has benefited the Congress Party is simple coincidence. After all, this is the same system as that employed in the United Kingdom, and there are other instances of diffusion within empires ( see, especially, Strang 1 9 9 0 ) . Perhaps, then, the adoption in India of the British SMD formula should occasion no surprise, and some have indeed taken it as an instance of cultural diffusion (e.g., Blais and Massicotte 1997). Unfortunately, the evidence belies any such simple pattern o f diffusion. While many institutional arrangements were borrowed from the British, preceding expressions are readily rearranged to estimate ( r) the seats share Congress ob­ tains with 5 0 percent of the vote and (2) the votes share required to generate 5 0 percent of the seats.

The Issues

27

India in fact had considerable experience (dating back to I909 ) with various forms of proportional representation, despite long-standing resis­ tance from the Congress Party. This experience was a response to commu­ nal differences in preindependence (and prepartition) India, a setting in which the Congress Party came increasingly to compete with the Muslim League. Up until independence, the Congress Party argued strongly for a cen­ tralized, unitary state built around majoritarian principles along British lines (e.g., Coupland 1 944 ) . Many officials in Britain, however, thought such an electoral system would be catastrophic for the large Muslim minority. As Weiner notes ( 1 9 89 , 1 8 2 ) , their concern stemmed less from any sense of altruism than from an interest in maximizing Muslim sup­ port for the British Raj . To obviate these concerns, they proposed various forms of proportional representation that included separate communal electorates. British officials were endorsed in this endeavor by Muslim interests, who feared a " Congress Raj " and therefore argued among other things that Muslim representation ought to be " commensurate not merely with their numerical strength, but also with their political impor­

tance and the value of the contribution which they make to the defence of the Empire. " 24 Indeed, by the 1 940s, given communal differences in In­ dia, serious proposals were advanced that India should adopt a highly decentralized constitutional and electoral structure, along the lines of the Swiss model ( Coupland 1944, 3 : 67- 7 2 ) . I t was against this backdrop that the SMD system was formally adopted by " India " through the mechanism of a constituent assembly dominated by the Congress Party. The final adoption of SMD, we under­ score, came after independence and the partition. " In rejecting some form of proportional representation as the electoral process-even though In­ dia already had a multiparty system-the Congress-dominated leader­ ship once again acted to maximize its own political fortunes, as we would expect any rational set of political leaders to do" (Park and Bueno de Mesquita 1 9 79 , 1 3 8 ) .25 One might be forgiven for concluding that a Congress Raj ensued. 24- This is from a statement by a Muslim deputation to Lord Minto in October 1906, quoted by Coupland ( 1 944, 1 : 3 4 ; emphasis added ) . 2 5 . For additional discussions o f these developments, see Coupland ( 1 944 ) , Weiner ( T 9 5 7, esp. chap. T T ), Austin ( T 9 66, esp. chaps. T, 6), Gautam ( T 9 8 T ), Morris-Jones ( T 9 8 8 ) , Weiner ( 1 9 89, esp. chap. 7 ) , and Brass ( 1 994, esp. Part 1 ) . We have, o f course, n o direct evidence that members of the Congress Party were aware of something like the cube law, and Kendall and Stuart's essay was not published until 1 9 5 0 . On the other hand, there is no reason to believe that key actors in the Congress Party were naive on the general point. As Kendall and Stuart observe, a variant of the cube law had been discussed much earlier by

28

B E F O RE N O RM S

The adoption o f the SMD formula after independence and the benefits it has generated for the Congress Party are thus far from a simple coinci­ dence. Instead, they underscore the point that institutions are adapted and modified by actors with the necessary resources in an effort to pre­ serve and advance their interests.26 Such behavior does not guarantee political supremacy in perpetuity, of course, and the Congress Party has not won every election in the period (it lost five of the thirteen listed in table 1 . 1 ) . By the same token, there can be little doubt that the electoral formula in whose adoption the Congress Party was so instrumental has been a key ingredient in the party's preeminence until recently in Indian politics. Finally, the paucity of effective challenges to the Indian electoral for­ mula is readily explained. The Congress Party has lost five general elec­ tions since independence (those in 1 9 77, 1 9 89 , 1 9 9 6, 1 9 9 8 , and 1 9 9 9 ) . On these occasions, the other parties o r coalitions that have formed governments have themselves thereby profited immensely from the for­ mula. Thus, when the Janata Party received an electoral plurality to defeat the Congress Party government in 1 9 77, its 4 1 . 3 percent of the votes yielded 5 4 · 5 percent of the legislative seats for a seats/votes ratio of 1 . 3 2. In the elections of 1 9 9 6, 1 9 9 8 , and 1999, the Bharatiya Janata Party ( BJP) won pluralities of seats . While these were smaller than some of the majorities achieved by the Congress Party in its heyday, the BJP has still received about one-third of the seats in the Lok Sabha. Further, these pluralities have been generated by seats/votes ratios well in excess of 1 .0 ( 1 .4 6 in 1 99 6, 1 . 3 0 in 1 9 9 8 , and 1 .40 i n 1 999 ) . Thus, given its votes share, the SMD system has appreciably amplified the legislative presence of the BJP in recent years. One would hardly expect a party forming a new government to tinker with or dismantle the rules which enabled it to form that government in the first place. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive of an electoral formula that might have generated more seats for the BJP in recent years. Even with a weakened Congress Party, then, the key political actors in India have no incentive to reform the existing SMD electoral system. Edgeworth ( 1 8 9 8 ) . Edgeworth's analysis, i n turn, was addressed and applied i n a Royal Commission on Systems of Election published by the British House of Commons in 1 9 1 0 . 26. The Congress Party has evinced a n ongoing interest in electoral engineering. For example, under Article 3 2 7 of the Constitution, itself drawn hy the Congress Party, Parlia­ ment (by simple majority) is charged with drawing and modifying constituency boundaries. Further, there is evidence to suggest that, absent an active gerrymander after the 1 9 6 2 election, the Congress Party would n o t have achieved its relatively narrow victory (just 5 4 percent of the seats ) in the r 9 67 general election (Bueno de Mesquita r 9 7 8 ) .

The Issues

29

A Brief Com parison of the Cu ltu ral an d I n s titutional Approaches

Our analysis centers on the contrast between a cultural interpretation and one that casts political behavior as optimizing within institutional constraints. We recognize that cultural arguments have occasionally been pitted either against dependency theory (e.g., Portes 1 9 7 6; Harri­ son 1 9 9 2 ) or against some form of historical materialism (e.g., Harrison 1 9 9 2; Street 1 994; and, more intermittently, Inglehart 1 990; Putnam 1 99 3 ) . The most commonly adopted contrast, however, is the one we employ between cultural and rational choice accounts (e.g., Almond 1 990; Pye 1 9 9 1 a ; Green and Shapiro 1994 ) . The comparison is useful on several counts . First, it helps explain the recent revival and current popularity of the cultural account. Many apparently find that argument congenial because, among other things, it contains a large dose of Weberian idealism and so is seen as an affirmation of the importance of " ideas. " The classic ex­ ample of this claim is, of course, the Weberian thesis linking Protestant (especially Calvinist) theology to the capitalist spirit, a thesis we examine more closely in chapter 2. This idealism is also often associated with populist sentiments, so that cultural accounts are additionally said to assist in " bringing the people back in" ( see lnglehart 1997, chap. 6 ) . The presumed congeniality of the cultural account is only enhanced when the ideas with which it is identified include norms of trust, civic-mindedness, and cooperation, all containing a high dose of altruism. When contrasted with a view of rational choice that casts actors as concerned solely with the cold and selfish calculation of a narrowly defined economic interest, the cultural view becomes irresistible. But this is all predicated on an excessively narrow view of rational choice. Despite common beliefs to the contrary, the cultural argument does not have sole claim on the proposition that ideas matter. For ex­ ample, the analysis of policy preferences is central to many rational choice accounts, and these preferences are never treated as uniformly insincere. Similarly, the cultural argument has no monopoly on the analy­ sis of altruistic behavior. Altruism is not incompatible with rationality, as noted earlier, unless analysts inappropriately choose to attribute a utility function to others, one that is arbitrarily restricted to the selfish maximi­ zation of economic utility. When rational behavior is more reasonably cast as optimizing under the conditions we have already examined, it is immediately apparent that neither the evaluation of preferences nor the analysis of altruism is the exclusive prerogative of the cultural account.

30

B E F O RE N O RM S

Second, the contrast between the cultural and optimizing accounts em­ bodies the distinction between behavioral and institutional approaches to political analysis. We have already observed that The Civic Culture (Al­ mond and Verba 1 9 63 ) is generally taken as epitomizing the behavioral mode. More recent studies of political culture track the behavioral ap­ proach rather closely with their presumption that preferences reflexively generate outcomes in an almost context-free manner. As Calvert puts it, to the extent that they address institutional issues at all, " practitioners [in the behavioral model assumed to various extents that institutions are defined by the regular behavior patterns of individuals, and not vice versa . Behav­ ioralism seems to view institutions not as constraints at all, but rather as the aggregated result of individual psychological propensities" ( T 9 9 5 , 2 2 1 ) .The institutional alternative obviously takes a completely different tack. Third, comparing the cultural and institutional accounts is instructive because the former has much more difficulty accounting for change, as we have already emphasized. If political cultures reflect long-standing clusters of norms, then observed change is difficult to explain without invoking a deus ex machina. Thus, analyses of racial politics in the Ameri­ can South cast in terms of enduring Southern values up until the 1 9 60s are less helpful in advancing our understanding of the impact of voting rights legislation in ensuing years (e.g., Davidson and Grofman 1 994 ) . Similarly, since a t least d e Tocqueville, America has been routinely de­ scribed as a nation of joiners. The claim has recently been made, however, that in the past two decades social participation has declined precipi­ tously, the culprit allegedly being mass overexposure to commercial tele­ vision (Putnam 1 9 9 s b, 2ooo) . We think that cultural explanations of changes that occur in the face of allegedly durable values are necessarily contrived. The institutional approach is not similarly limited. Institutional arrange­ ments reflect the outcomes of conflict among key political actors and are thus more directly explained. Because changes in incentive structures lead to changes in behavior, the argument is not subject to the conservative implications that encumber the cultural argument. The change is not al­ ways instantaneous, of course, but it does become amenable to coherent analysis. Our point is simple. The cultural and institutional approaches comprise distinct explanations. Further, the distinctions at stake reflect real issues, not arcane and pedantic fine points. We believe that the institu­ tional account easily outperforms the cultural interpretation. This book is intended to make that case.

PART ONE

C u ltu ral

AND

Social

Capital App roac h es

TWO

The Protestant Ethic Thesis Virtually all the modern world has been read into Calvinism; liberal politics and voluntary association; capitalism and the social discipline upon which it rests; bureaucracy with its systematic procedures and its putatively diligent and devoted officials; and finally all the routine forms of repression, joylessness, and unrelaxed aspiration. By one or another writer, the faith of the brethren, and especially of the Puritan brethren, has been made the source or cause or first embodiment of the most crucial elements of modernity. Michael Walzer ( 1 9 6 5 , 3 00 )

ith their shared emphasis on the key causal role of social and politi­ cal values, analyses couched in terms of political culture have a common origin in Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism ( [ 1 9 0 5 ] 1 9 5 8 a ) . Sometimes, the link to Weber is explicit and direct. Harrison ( 1 9 9 2 ) and Fukuyama ( 1 99 5 , chap. 5 ), for example, spe­ cifically ground their analyses in Weber. On other occasions, the linkage is indirect. Thus, while Putnam ( 1 99 3 ) does not reference Weber, he does draw heavily on Banfield's ( 1 9 5 8 ) analysis of amoral familism in southern Italy. Still other scholars link the argument to Weber directly and indirectly. Accordingly, Granato, lnglehart, and Leblang ( 1 9 9 6 ) emphasize both Weber and the subsequent exegesis associated with McClelland's study of need for achievement ( 1 9 6 1 ) . But Banfield and McClelland themselves drew heavily on Weber, and their arguments are direct extensions of his. Indeed, as Hirschman put it, " in the 1 9 5 0s, . . . Weber's Protestant Ethic [was] modernized into David McClelland's 'achievement motivation' as a precondition of progress and into Edward C. Banfield's 'amoral familism'

33

34

B E F O RE N O RM S

a s an obstacle " ( 1 9 84 , 9 9 ) . The longevity of the Weber thesis i s thus remarkable. While our use of the term Weber thesis is routine, it is important to understand that he did not initiate the idea that confessional differ­ ences are associated with progress. Far from being original, the core of Weber's argument had been common in the Protestant German intellec­ tual circles of which he was a part since the late eighteenth century, with their confessional stereotypes of Protestants as active and productive and of Catholics as passive and unproductive (Munch 199 3 ). By the time of The Protestant Ethic, the linkage between religion and economics was commonplace (Nipperdy 1 99 3 ) . And the argument was hardly confined to Germany. Consider the views of the eminent English Whig historian Thomas Macaulay. The loveliest and most fertile provinces of Europe have, under her [the Church of Rome's] rule, been sunk in poverty, in political servitude, and in intellectual torpor, while Protestant countries, once proverbial for sterility and barbarism, have been turned by skill and industry into gardens, and can boast of a long list of heroes and statesmen, philoso­ phers and poets . ( 1 849, I : 3 0- 3 I )

Nor were these simply national differences . Whoever passes in Germany from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant principality, in Switzerland from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant canton, in Ireland from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant county, finds that he has passed from a lower to a higher grade of civilisation. On the other side of the Atlantic, the same law prevails. The Protestants of the United States have left far behind them the Roman Catholics of Mex­ ico, Peru, and Brazil. The Roman Catholics of Lower Canada remain inert, while the whole continent round them is in a ferment with Protes­ tant activity and enterprise. (Macaulay I 849, I: 3 I )

Similarly, in the United States, John Draper ( I 8 74 ) had already advanced the influential thesis that the Reformation gave rise to modern rational science (and thus to technological advances and economic growth) in the face of strong resistance from Catholic Europe. Acknowledging that the general argument has a long pedigree, our purpose in this chapter is to evaluate Weber's thesis linking Protestantism with capitalism in light of ongoing historical scholarship. Such an evalua-

The Protestant Ethic Thesis

35

tion is crucial given the current revival of cultural explanations of politi­ cal life that stem from Weber's thesis and that thereby view his thesis as a fundamentally accurate account of the phenomenon he sought to explain. The evaluation is also critical because Weber's thesis has thoroughly permeated contemporary social science. The term Protestant work ethic has long since become part of common usage, a label used even for psychological measures whose meaning is thereby taken to be self-evident ( see, e.g., Furnham 1 9 9 0 ) . Some have reported a significant Protestant ethic in such unlikely quarters as contemporary Egyptian Sunni radical­ ism ( Goldberg 1 99 1 ) . Others have suggested that Protestant ideas were decisive in modern state formation ( Gorski 1 99 3 , 1999; Philpott 2000 ) . Still others have declared that patterns of humor (e.g., jokes about the canny Scots) constitute prima facie evidence of an affinity between the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism (Davies 1 9 9 2 ) ! " This chapter begins with two preliminary issues that have often im­ peded discussions of the problem: the ambiguity that surrounds much of Weber's argument and the proclivity of many commentators to accept the argument as an article of faith, regardless of the evidence. We then lay out the key elements of Weber's thesis, a task made necessary by the fact that they are repeatedly misconstrued. In evaluating the argument we address two broad questions. First, and most fundamentally, we examine patterns of economic growth within Europe since the early Middle Ages in order to evaluate whether there was a significant shift in economic growth and activity after the Reformation, consistent with Weber's thesis. Second, we ask if Calvinist teaching was sufficiently distinctive to be linked with particular outcomes that might be linked to the rise of capitalism. We conclude that the historical record reveals no qualitative shift in eco­ nomic activity in post-Reformation Europe. Further, Protestantism gener­ ally ( and Calvinism in particular) did not constitute a distinctive outlook in the manner suggested by Weber. Recent claims that directly or indi­ rectly draw on Weber's thesis are thus predicated on an argument whose empirical foundations are precarious. r. The term routinely appears in press accounts. For example, the highest court of appeal in Italy has ruled that influence peddling is not in itself a crime, although overstating one's power to exert influence remains punishable. According to Franco Ferrarotti, an Italian sociologist, " This is our version of the Protestant ethic. When a favor works success­ fully, it ceases to be a crime and becomes a work of art" (New York Times, April 20, 200 1 ) . And reporting on a study on the link between siestas and productivity, the Economist concluded that, humans being crepuscular, "the Protestant work ethic that drives those now living in colder climes to work throughout the day may actually be counterproductive. At least, that is what you should tell your boss when asking for a couch to be installed in the office" ( " Siesta Time," June 1, 2 0 0 2 , 7 6 ) .

36

B E F O RE N O RM S

Two Pre li m in ary I s s ues

So much has been written about Weber's thesis that another sortie may seem presumptuous. The issue is compounded by two interrelated prob­ lems. First, we must acknowledge that Weber's treatise is often ambigu­ ous. Second, much of the commentary on Weber reveals an unfortunate tendency toward sectarianism. These two points need to be addressed before the thesis itself can be evaluated, and we consider each in turn. Weber's work is, in broad terms, a debate with Marxism generally, and with historical materialism in particular. The Protestant Ethic comprises one important element of that debate ( see, e.g., Braude! 1 9 8 2, 4 0 2; Zeit­ lin T990) that offers a nonmaterialist interpretation of the transition from feudalism to capitalism, a transition central to Marxism. Weber and Marx both accepted the proposition that a discrete transition to capital­ ism did occur, but they differed radically over its timing and origins. In an equally general sense, the contrast in styles between Weberian and Marx­ ist arguments is another ingredient of the debate between them. Where historical materialism is typified by elegance and parsimony, Weber stresses complexity, contingency, and qualification, arguing that Marx­ ism is misleading in part to the extent that it oversimplifies excessively. While this penchant for qualifying details characterizes all of Weber, his " notorious eccentricity on thematic development" (MacKinnon 1 9 8 8 , 1 4 5 ) is nowhere more conspicuous than i n The Protestant Ethic. Even some of Weber's defenders acknowledge the problem. Thus, writing of The Protestant Ethic, Poggi contends: Its central argument is, I believe, clear and forceful. But Weber sur­ rounded it with such a wealth of secondary arguments, qualifications, digression, he developed it with-let us say it outright-such a show of diverse, profound, and sometimes highly esoteric learning, that its essen­ tial components and their relations are not easy to discern. ( 1 9 8 3 , x; emphasis in original)

Leaving to one side the disj uncture between these two sentences, Poggi's concession is surely correct: the text contains many ambiguities. Indeed, a close reading of The Protestant Ethic might convince some that there is no distinctive Weberian thesis. Every key point is provisional, subject to considerable qualification and elaboration. Indeed, it is repeat­ edly suggested that Weber intended no causal argument at all (see, e.g., Kalberg 1994, chap. 2). All of this means that every statement has an escape clause, which naturally leaves much room for textual interpretation

The Protestant Ethic Thesis

37

and may even help account for the volume of the secondary literature. However, as we have already made clear, the Weber thesis is simply the best-known exemplar of a long-standing and fairly clear argument linking religious values to the transition to capitalism. Further, the continuing attention accorded The Protestant Ethic stems from the basic theme that most contemporary social scientists attribute to it, namely, that value sys­ tems are fundamentally consequential. Absent such a theme, the text would certainly not continue to be invoked so often as the rationale for cultural accounts of political and social change, and would instead have long since been forgotten. Second, a palpable sectarianism permeates many discussions of the argument. For example, in an insightful survey, Cohen ( T 9 8 o) showed that, Weber to the contrary, there is much evidence that rational capitalism conceived in Weberian terms developed extensively in pre-Reformation Italy. Cohen's paper was subsequently attacked by Holton for perpetuat­ ing " the myth of Weber's supposedly monocausal 'Protestant ethic' expla­ nation of the development of modern capitalism" ( r 9 8 3 , r 6 6 ) . Holton further claimed that Cohen ignored " an important footnote within the Protestant Ethic, [in which] Weber rebutted the proposition 'that capital­ ism as an economic system is a creation of the Reformation' with the rather cryptic counterproposition that 'certain forms of capitalist business organi­ zation are known to be considerably older than the Reformation"' ( r 9 8 3 , r 6 8 - 69 ) . 2 In other words, Holton's 1 9 8 3 defense o f Weber rests on one of the many qualifying clauses in the original text. Having thus dealt with the heretic, the same Holton was able to conclude j ust two years later (without reference to Cohen 1 9 80 ) that " it remains striking how few of the main planks of [Weber's l substantive historical analyses have stood up well to empirical testing" ( r 9 8 5 , 1 4 1 ) . In another commentary centering on MacKinnon's ( r 9 8 8 ) analysis of Calvinism, Zaret asserted that MacKinnon's " errors" should " be under­ stood in terms of a bad sociology of knowledge implicit in his analysis and not necessarily as a reflection of his evident animus toward Weber" (Zaret 1 9 9 2, 3 69 ; emphasis added) . Thus accused of apostasy, MacKinnon was contrite. On Zaret's charge that some strange animus moves MacKinnon's cri­ tique of Weber's thesis-this is false. Indeed, on other fronts my preoc­ cupation with Weber's grand themes has led to the opposite charge, 2. This qualification appears in the body of the text and is thus not literally a footnote. It is, nonetheless, an aside (see Weber 1 9 5 8a, 9 1 ) .

38

B E F O RE N O RM S

that I am his acolyte. If anything, the second is closer to the truth. ( 1 9 94, 5 9 4 )

I t is difficult t o s e e what analytic insights are advanced by the exchange of such charges and confessions. In the next section we outline the essential points of Weber's thesis. This outline necessarily discounts the many escape clauses and empha­ sizes instead the themes that have engaged and molded subsequent schol­ arship, the themes that underlie the continuing attention to Weber's argu­ ment. Further, we treat his thesis not as an article of faith but as an empirical claim subject to disconfirmation, the validity of which hinges on the available historical evidence. We thus concur with Cohen that " a historical thesis like Weber's needs t o be tested through historical evi­ dence if it is to be tested at all. Otherwise, it is not a scientific hypothesis but a fairy tale about a faraway ancient land that we can never know" ( 1 9 8 3 , 1 8 4- 8 5 ) . 3

The We be r Thesis

Weber's most general purpose was to show that ideas affect history, and this purpose accounts for the ongoing attention to his work. In other writings, of course, he also addressed the impact of material and institu­ tional factors on historical change. Nonetheless, it is his " idealism" that most clearly distinguishes his approach from that of Marx. The Protes­ tant Ethic exemplifies his particular interest in religious beliefs, in this case those associated with Calvin and Calvinism as they unfolded from the mid-sixteenth through the seventeenth centuries. Calvin's reformed Protestantism departed from Luther in many re­ spects, ranging from the meaning of the sacraments to Calvin's endorse­ ment of theocracy. Weber argued ( 1 9 5 8 a, 9 8 ), however, that the most distinctive element of Calvin's theology was the doctrine of predestina­ tion ( see also White 1 9 9 2 ) , according to which salvation cannot come from the worldly efforts of the faithful but only from God, whose j udg­ ment can never be known. The elect are predestined to salvation by God alone; others are condemned to everlasting death. 3· However, we arc less persuaded by Cohen's more recent ( 2002) suggestion that historical evidence restricted to the English Puritans, and more specifically to the diaries of two particular English Puritan merchants, provide sufficient leverage to evaluate the broad historical validity of the Weber thesis.

The Protestant Ethic Thesis

39

For Weber, the key analytical problem posed by the dogma of predesti­ nation centered on reconciling that dogma with personal expectations: How was this doctrine borne in an age to which the after-life was not only more important, but in many ways also more certain, than all the interests of life in this world ? The question, Am I one of the elect ? must sooner or later have arisen for every believer and have forced all other interests into the background. And how can I be sure of this state of grace ? ( I 9 5 8a, I 09-I O )

While Calvin may have been certain of his own salvation, such certainty was much less assured for those who followed. The logical response to predestination would be a fatalistic and hedonis­ tic live-for-the-present perspective, but this hardly serves as a compelling mechanism to link Calvinism to entrepreneurship. Recognizing this, We­ ber distinguished the logical from the psychological consequences of reli­ gious beliefs ( I 9 5 8a, 2 3 2 ) . He then argued that the distinction was evident in the difference between Calvin's dogma, which he saw as persisting well beyond the Westminster Synod of I 64 7, and Calvinism, as reflected in pastoral teachings. While Calvin's dogma (or decretum horribile) consti­ tuted a logical structure, the Calvinism of pastoral teachings was more sensitive to the psychological and spiritual needs of lay Calvinists who would otherwise have been confronted with the crisis of proof of personal salvation defined in the dogma. By differentiating official dogma from pastoral teachings in this way, Weber recognized the contrast between those who produce ideas and those who popularize or consume them ( Oakes 1 99 3 ) . In their pastoral teachings, Weber claimed that Calvinists stressed two related themes. First, an absolute duty to consider oneself chosen was emphasized, and doubts were cast as the work of the devil, " since lack of self-confidence is the result of insufficient faith, hence of imperfect grace " ( 1 9 5 S a, 1 1 1 ) . Second, an intense, sustained, and coherent pattern of worldly activity was stipulated as the optimal path to that self-confidence. [The Calvinist] could not hope to atone for hours of weakness or of thoughtlessness by increased good will at other times, as the Catholic or even the Lutheran could. The God of Calvinism demanded of his believers not single good works, but a life of good works combined into a unified system. There was no place for the very human Catholic cycle of sin, repentance, atonement, release, followed by renewed sin. Nor was there any balance of merit for a life as a whole which could be

40

B E F O RE N O RM S

adjusted by temporal punishments or the Churches' means o f grace. ( 1 9 5 8a, l l 7 )

Weber thus saw a n irrational disjuncture between dogma and pastoral teachings, that is, between Calvin and Calvinism.4 Calvinism served unin­ tentionally to subvert and thereby distinguish itself from Calvin's dogma by sanctifying works as the means of glorifying God. By reducing uncer­ tainty about personal salvation in this manner, Calvinism provided a unique spiritual sanction for labor in this world. Although he recognized that the usefulness of works is gauged "primarily in moral terms," Weber insisted: In practice the most important criterion [for a calling] is found in private profitableness. For if that God, whose hand the Puritan sees in all the occurrences of life, shows one of His elect a chance of profit, He must do it with a purpose. Hence the faithful Christian must follow the call by taking advantage of the opportunity. ( 1 9 5 8 a, 1 62 )

The asceticism and frugality epitomized b y such a value structure were precisely Weber's requisites for successful capitalist entrepreneurs. Indeed, this set of values provided the psychological mechanism that uniquely defined the " spirit" of capitalism. Weber's classic entrepreneur is thus one who "gets nothing out of his wealth for himself, except the irrational sense of having done his job well " ( 19 5 8 a, 71 ) . 5 Thus it was that he proposed a connection between a Protestant ethic inherent to Calvinism and Puritan­ ism (and antithetical to Lutheranism or Catholicism) and the spirit of capitalism. We have to this point outlined the key elements of the Weber thesis as articulated by Weber. Some of these elements may, however, be unfamil­ iar to those who think of the argument as linking Protestantism and economic activity in a different and more general way that does not depend so decisively on adjustments to the doctrine of predestination. Indeed, j ust as Weber saw a crucial distinction between Calvin's theology and the pastoral teachings of Calvinism, we can also distinguish " pasto4· Weber emphasized the irrational nature of this disj uncture, noting that " we can find a parallel today only in the at bottom equ ally superstitious belief of the modern proletariat in what can he accomplished and proved by science " ( I 9 5 8a, 2 3 3 ) . 5 . Observe the parallels between Weber's description o f entrepreneurial values and McClelland's subsequent discussion of need for achievement, defined as "a desire to do well, not so much for the sake of social recognition or prestige, but to attain an inner feeling of personal accomplishment" ( T 9 6 3 , 7 6 ) .

The Protestant Ethic Thesis

4r

ral " versions of Weber's thesis from the original. Moreover, the pastoral transcriptions are largely responsible both for the ongoing vitality of the thesis exemplified, for example, in the studies noted earlier in this chapter as well as in more everyday understandings of the " Protestant work ethic. " 6 One o f the better-known instances o f pastoral Weberianism appears in McClelland's analysis of need for achievement, which associates self­ reliance with Protestantism generally.? For McClelland, Protestantism meant continued self-improvement and more. Specifically, in both its Lutheran and Calvinist forms, it represented a revolt against the institu­ tional church, a revolt in which individuals were encouraged to find divine guidance directly from the Bible without exclusive reliance on the interpretations of learned experts. McClelland further saw the Protestant abolition of the celibate priesthood as a decisive social change. The Protestant pastor could now give concrete examples of child­ rearing practices that might be emulated by his parishioners in a way that was formerly impossible under the celibate priesthood. The social mechanism was provided by which the new religious world-view could specifically affect socialization and thereby the motivation of the new generation. ( 1 9 6 1 , 5 0 )

The modification represented by McClelland's argument is clear. Protes­ tantism remains the decisive stimulus for the emergence of capitalism, but the essential distinction is now between all Protestants and Catholics, not between Calvinists on the one hand and Lutherans and Catholics on the other. An earlier version of pastoral Weberianism is associated with Tawney ( 1 9 26), and the Weber thesis is indeed described on occasion as the Weber-Tawney thesis. However, Tawney's argument is distinctive in yet another way. Specifically, Tawney argued (contrary to Weber) that reli­ gious activity was inherently inimical to economic growth. Tawney's explanation of economic growth after the Reformation thus empha­ sized the erosion of religious authority generally, not the emergence of doctrinal modifications associated with Calvinism or any other particular theology. Like Weber, however, Tawney did regard the challenges to 6. Pastoral Weberianism closely parallels what another recent study has labeled the " Common Interpretation" of Weber's thesis (Dclacroix and Nielsen 2oo r ) , as will become clear later. 7· According to Weiner ( r 9 66, 5 ) , McClelland described Protestantism as the " mental virus" that made modernization possible.

42

B E F O RE N O RM S

established religion associated with the Reformation a s the turning point in the rise of capitalism . � More recently, Schneider ( 1 990) h a s advanced a parallel argument that emphasizes the importance of those religious reforms that reached a cre­ scendo on "the eve of capitalism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centu­ ries " with the Reformation itself ( 1 990, 2 6 ) . In her view, salvationist Christian reformers progressively undermined and demonized European peasant animism. Where animist worldviews emphasized economic and social equality and an ideal of material reciprocity, the Christian reform­ ers stressed brotherly love and a trust in providence placing less weight on personal responsibility in the process. The reformers thus generated a new ethical system within which individuals were free to act more self­ ishly and rationally, as beliefs in earth spirits and ghosts faded. In evaluating Weber's thesis in either its original or pastoral versions, there are two broad questions to consider. First, and most fundamentally, did patterns of economic activity change dramatically after the Reforma­ tion ? This is a broad issue on which hinges the validity of Weber's argu­ ments and all of its variants. Second, and more narrowly, did Protestantism generally (and Calvinism in particular) give rise to a new worldview that attached great weight to achievement norms ? This issue is obviously at the heart of Weber's argument and those variants ( such as McClelland' s ) that assign special significance to Calvinism or Protestantism. We take up these questions in turn.

Was There an Econom i c Bre akth roug h afte r the Reform ation ?

Like Marx, Weber sought to explain a transition from feudalism to capi­ talism. Both agreed that there had been a discrete and identifiable transi­ tion, before which capitalism did not exist and after which it did. While Marx defined the transition in terms of materially based crises, Weber cast it in nonmaterial terms as arising from the Protestant Reformation in Europe in the first half of the sixteenth century. Economic growth was limited or nonexistent before the relatively abrupt and historically identifi­ able transition, a view compatible with popular images of the Middle Ages as stagnant. The transition itself, however, was a decisive moment 8. In a further parallel with Weber, the clements of Tawney's argument had already been anticipated. Andrew White ( 1 8 9 6 ) , the first president of Cornell University, claimed that all dogmatic religions, including Protestantism, were an impediment to scientific prog­ ress, which came only when religious authority generally was weakened.

The Protestant Ethic Thesis

43

..c

�

e

"

-�

"

� ·o;

� � 3

5 �

t � "" C/)

§

u..

2

� Vl

Fig. 3 . 1 .

Membership trends ( 1 974-94) by type of group (education control led)

Since his argument centers on declines in overall patterns of group membership, we should see a similar decline in membership rates over time at the aggregate level. Table 3 . 5 thus displays the average member­ ship by year of survey for fraternal groups, literary groups, service clubs, and membership across all groups. 24 We have selected the first three categories to represent the variation in membership trends at the individ­ ual level depicted in figure 3 . 1 , with fraternal groups having the largest decline, followed by literary and service groups. We also include a mea­ sure of the average number of groups to capture general trends in group membership. Column 2 of table 3 · 5 shows that in 1 9 74 approximately 1 3 . 7 percent of those sampled were members of a fraternal group, and this figure declined by about 6 percentage points to a low of 7·9 percent in 1 9 9 3 , providing preliminary support for Putnam's thesis. However, T 9 74 ap­ pears to have been an unrepresentatively high point from which to start, because membership rates for the next four surveys hovered between 24. Nlembership rates across all groups were constructed by first summing the sixteen group categories. Given the skewed nature of the data, values of 6 or more were recoded to 5, resulting in a more balanced distribution. The average number of group memberships was then calculated for each year by dividing by the number of respondents .

80

B E F O RE N O RM S

1 0 . 7 percent and 9 · 9 percent. Comparing these figures with the average membership rate for the last four GSS surveys ( excluding the 1 9 9 3 low) of 9 · 5 percent, we find only a slight drop (about one-half of a percent) in aggregate membership in fraternal organizations over the twenty years from 1 9 74 to 1 9 9 4 . Participation i n literary organizations shows even less, if any, decline. The membership rate for the first four surveys is about 9 percent, while the corresponding figure for the four most recent surveys is 9 . 8 percent, an increase of about 8 percent. However, excluding the I 99 3 survey with its unusually high estimate of 1 1 .4 percent, we see that about 9 · 3 percent of those surveyed were members of literary groups in recent years, indicat­ ing that any increase in membership in such organizations between 1 9 74 and 1994 was slight. There is also a barely perceptible increase in rates of membership in service organizations, with about 9 . 1 percent of the popu­ lation participating between 1 9 74 and 1 9 7 8 , compared with a 9 · 5 per­ cent rate based on the 1 990, 1 99 1 , and 1994 surveys (again, the figure from the 199 3 survey is disproportionately high ) . With the exception of fraternal groups, then, this analysis identifies no significant decline in the average level of participation over time. The last column of table 3 . 5 presents the membership rates for all groups from 1 9 74 to I 9 9 4 · In 1 9 74 , respondents belonged to an average of 1 ·94 groups, a figure that fell to 1 . 5 9 by 1 9 80, the lowest membership rate for all years . After 1 9 80, .

TABLE 3 . 5 . Average Levels of Membership in F raternal, Literary, Service, and "All" G roups, by Survey Year Type of Group Year 1 9 74 1 975 1977 1978 1980 1 983 1 9 84 1986 1987 1 988 1989 1990 1991 1993 1 9 94

Fraternal .1 3 7 .1 0 7 .1 02 .099 .1 04 .094 .09 1 .09 0 .09 3 .084 .09 1 .09 7 .09 0 .079 .1 00

Literary

Service

.092 .0 8 9 .090 .0 8 8 .084 .1 00 .087 .089 .073 .0 8 5 .096 .089 .092 .1 14 .0 98

.08 9 .08 3 . 1 07 .084 .08 9 .1 03 . 1 04 .113 .09 1

.1 10 .097 .097 .08 9 .124 .100

All Groups 1 .94 1 .77 1 .8 3 1 .73 1 .59 1 .8 6 1 .76 1 .8 7 1 .6 6 1 .75 1 .79 1 .76 1 .69 1 .8 9 1 .8 7

Civic Virtue in Italy and the United States

8r

TABLE 3.6. Regressions of Rates of Membership in Selected G roups on Survey Year, with and without a Control for Average Level of Educati on, 1 974-94 Dependent Variable Fraternal Fraternal Literary Literary Service Service All groups All groups

Year - .003 ( 1 .42 ) - .00 1 ,. ( 3 .9 7) - .002 ( 1 .1 7) .0003 ( 0.9 6 ) .004 ( 1 .55 ) .0008 ( 1 .22 ) - .0 3 1 ( 1 .22 ) - .0001 ( 0.0 1 )

Education .03 ( 1 .04 )

.03 ( 1 .3 5 )

- .05 ( 1 .2 6 )

.42 ( 1 .22 )

Note: n = 1 5 . Coefficients with t-ratios in parentheses. •:· coefficient has a t-ratio > 2.0.

however, group membership averaged 1 . 79 , with the latest two surveys ( 1 99 3 and 1 994) showing that on average Americans belong to 1 . 8 8 groups. While there is certainly variation from year to year in group membership rates, one would be hard-pressed to take these figures to indicate a systematic decline. Perhaps our failure to find a trend in these data reflects the fact that the figures in table 3 . 5 reflect gross rates of group membership, without controls for respondents' education levels. Recall that the estimates in figure 3 . 1 show the effect of Year on individuals ' responses to questions about their group membership, controlling for level of education. Table 3 . 6 displays analogous figures for the aggregate level, obtained by regress­ ing membership rates in different groups discussed earlier on the year of the survey, with a control for education.25 For purposes of comparison, we also report the simple regressions of group membership on Year. The figures in the first row of table 3 . 6 show that membership rates in 2 5. Education is measured here in terms of the mean level of educational attainment for each year. Average levels of educational attainment have of course been increasing, and Education is highly collinear with Year. Given the presence of apparently influential data points in table 3 . 5, we report robust regression estimates.

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B E F O RE N O RM S

fraternal groups have not declined over time, even with education con­ trolled: while the sign of the coefficient for Year is negative ( .003 ), the coefficient itself is not statistically significant ( t-ratio 1 .4 ) . The same pattern holds for literary group membership, for which the coefficient is negatively signed ( .002) but statistically indistinguishable from zero ( t-ratio r . 2 ) . Membership rates in service groups are quite similar. Although there is a slight positive trend over time (the coefficient for Year is .004 ) , indicating a net increase from 1 9 74 to 1994 in service group membership at about an annual rate of ·4 percent, the estimate is not significant (t r . 5 ). Finally, the estimated Year coefficient for overall group membership levels in table 3 . 6 is negative ( .03 ), but statistically indistinct from zero (t T . 2 ), which indicates no significant time trend one way or the other. Even without education levels controlled, there is only one significant coefficient for Year in the estimates in table 3 . 6, and that is for member­ ship in fraternal groups. The remaining three bivariate coefficients, includ­ ing that for overall group membership, fall far short of providing any systematic evidence for the claim of waning participation in groups. Indeed, while it is not apparent in the figures just discussed, there is reason to believe that overall rates of group membership may have actu­ ally increased over the period. Baumgartner and Walker ( T 9 8 8 ) pointed out some time ago that the Standard Question used to assess membership rates has not been modified since it was first introduced in 1 9 7 4· We noted earlier that the question asks respondents about sixteen possible kinds of groups (including a residual " other" category) to which they might belong. Further, the question allows only a single affiliation within each category ( for example, a respondent is allowed to name only one service or sports group to which she belongs ) , even within the residual category. Thus, as Baumgartner and Walker observe, the question is blind to the many new types of groups that have mushroomed since T 9 7 4 , such as civil rights, environmental, and consumer movements. This, coupled with the fact that respondents are restricted to naming no more than a single group membership within a given category, implies that the Stan­ dard Question has, over time, become an increasingly biased measure of group membership, one that understates " the explosive growth of the number of groups within certain types " (Baumgartner and Walker 1 9 8 8 , 9 T 4 ) . Their comparisons of the Standard Question with an alternative that does not suffer these restrictions suggests that the bias is quite sub­ stantial and growing. 26 -

=

-

=

=

-

=

2 6 . These issues arc further discussed in Smith ( I 990) and Baumgartner and Walker ( I990).

Civic Virtue in Italy and the United States

83

Thus, whether or not we adjust for trends in levels of educational attainment, there is simply no consistent support for the claim that group membership rates in the United States, measured by the Standard Ques­ tion, have headed south over the last two decades. The time trends for different types of group membership rates are of mixed sign and fail to meet conventional criteria for statistical significance, and there is simply no trend to report for the measure of overall group membership ( see also Ladd 1 9 9 9 ) . 2? Indeed, if Baumgartner and Walker are correct, group membership may have actually increased over the past three decades .

Are Particular Groups Special? Although we thus find no general trend in group membership rates, perhaps declining participation rates in key activities and organizations herald dwindling social capital. Putnam himself makes j ust such a case with reference to patterns of church membership and to the National Congress of Parents and Teachers (PTA), an organization that he high­ lights. His argument implies that such groups are so central to American life that trends in their membership can be taken as leading indicators of trends in social capital. We address trends in church and PTA member­ ship in turn. Putnam attaches great significance to patterns of religious participa­ tion, devoting an entire chapter to the issue on the grounds that " churches and other religious organizations have a unique importance in American society" ( 20oo, 6 5 ) . The chapter includes two charts (figs. 12 and 1 3 ) covering the years since 1940. Figure 1 2 suggests that church membership has declined by between 5 and 10 percentage points since about 1 9 60 ( depending on whether data from church records or sample surveys are used ), while figure 1 3 indicates that the proportion of adults attending church at least weekly has dropped by perhaps 10 percentage points in the same period. Putnam attributes these shifts primarily to generational suc­ cession: " For the most part younger generations . . . are less involved both in religious and in secular social activities than were their predecessors at the same age " ( 2ooo, 79 ) . 2 7 . While the GSS Standard Question forms the centerpiece o f Putnam' s ( 1 99 5 b ) origi­ nal analysis of declines in group membership, that question is not used to analyze trends in group membership in Bowling Alone. In that more recent study, only one graph employs the Standard Question, and this is simply to show that group membership rises and then declines with increasing age (Putnam 2000, 249, fig. 7 0 ) . At one other point, Putnam concludes on the basis of the GSS and related data that "the net decline in formal organiza­ tional membership is modest at best" ( 2ooo, 5 9 ) . But by way o f summary only four pages later he concludes that "the broad picture is one of declining membership in community organizations" ( 6 3 ) .

84

1 776

1 860 1 850

Fig. 3.2.

B E F O RE N O RM S

1 890 1 870

1916 1 906

1 952 1 926

1 9 80 1 970

1 990

The churching of America, 1 776- 1 990

While Putnam cites a good deal of relevant research, it is striking how little this research informs his analysis. 28 Take trends in church member­ ship. The comprehensive study of religious participation in America since 1 77 6 by Finke and Stark ( 1 9 9 2 ) paints a significantly different picture. Figure 3 . 2 displays the trend in religious adherence rates in the United States since 1 77 6 constructed by Finke and Stark.29 The most impressive feature of this graph is the consistency with which religious participation has increased over the last two centuries. Beginning with a 17 percent adherence rate at the end of the American Revolution, by 1 8 6o it had more than doubled to 3 6 percent. After the Civil War, the adherence rate contin­ ued to grow to its current high of 64 percent in 1 9 70. Finke and Stark ( 1 99 2 ) label this growth in adherence rates the " churching of America. " A full account o f this surge in religious participation would take u s far afield. Briefly, Finke and Stark trace the growth summarized in figure 3 . 2 to the emergence o f an increasingly competitive religious market. In colo28. We are not the first to make this observation. Posner ( 2 00 T , J T T ) is particularly struck by Putnam's failure to engage the issues raised and data reported by Ladd in a variety of reports, culminating in Ladd ( I 9 9 9 ) , while Durlauf ( 2002, 2 6 5 ) characterizes the exten­ sive use of secondary sources as "typically polemical rather than scholarly. " 29. Church adherence rates from I 7 7 6 to I 9 8 o are from Finke and Stark ( I 992, I 6 ) . The T 9 7 0 and r 9 9 0 figures are from Ladd ( T 9 99, 44 ) .

Civic Virtue in Italy and the United States

85

nial America, New England's Congregational churches enjoyed virtual monopoly status and experienced a correspondingly low adherence rate. With the expansion of religious freedom following the American Revolu­ tion, other religions were free to compete for adherents. The result was a substantial decline in Congregationalist membership, and the hitherto " dissident upstarts " -the Baptists and Methodists - " rocketed from 1 2 percent o f all adherents in 1 776 to 4 1 percent in 1 8 5 0 " ( Finke and Iannaccone 1 99 3 , 3 0 ) . As figure 3 . 2 shows, over the same years the overall adherence rate doubled to 34 percent. The religious market has continued to become increasingly competitive in the century and a half since.3° Of course, as Putnam notes, membership may have become increas­ ingly nominal: hence we need also to consider trends in attendance rates. Here again, however, his analysis is idiosyncratic. On the basis of a much more detailed analysis of the available data, Greeley ( 1 9 8 9 ) concludes that, with one partial exception, there has been no systematic change in overall patterns of church attendance since 1940. The exception involved attendance rates among American Catholics, which declined from 1 9 69 to 1 9 7 5 , reflecting disappointment over the papal encyclical letter on birth control of 1 9 6 8 , that is, reflecting a doctrinal issue. Greeley con­ cludes that "with the exception of the dramatic Catholic change between 1 9 6 8 and 1 9 7 5 (an episodic event) , patterns of American church atten­ dance are remarkably stable-straight lines with only one deviation, and that ended by 1 9 7 5 " ( 1 9 89 , s 6) . This lack o f a systematic trend i n overall church participation implies, among other things, that Putnam's claims about basic generational differ­ ences are misplaced. Instead, to the extent that age is a factor, its impact comes through pronounced life-cycle effects on religious involvement, such that religiosity increases with age. Given this life-cycle pattern, mi­ nor temporal fluctuations in participation with shifts in the age structure of the population are to be expected. 3 • Such fluctuations should not, however, be confused with a generational process in which overall pat­ terns of church membership or attendance are in decline. 30. In addition to Finke and Stark ( 1 9 9 2 ) , see Finke and Iannaccone ( 1 993 ) , Iannaccone ( 1 9 9 1 , 199 5 ), Iannaccone, Finke, and Stark ( 1 9 9 7 ) , Stark a n d Finke ( 2000 ), and Warner ( 1 9 9 3 ) for discussion of the ways in which the structure of religious markets affects religious behavior. The general argument about the effects of religious monopolies originates with Adam Smith ( 1 976, hie 5 , chap. I, part 3, art. 3 ) . 3 r . Life-cycle (as opposed to generational ) effects on church attendance arc well docu­ mented. In addition to Greeley ( 1 9 8 9 ) , see Hout and Greeley ( 1 9 8 7 ) , Firebaugh and Harley ( 1 9 9 1 ) , and Stolzenberg, Blair-Loy, and Waite ( 1 9 9 5 ) . Putnam cites these latter studies, but they appear not to inform his analysis.

86

B E F O RE N O RM S

Perhaps recognizing that overall rates o f religious participation have not experienced the dramatic shift he describes, Putnam offers an alternative line of argument about religion and social capital. It is widely acknowl­ edged that there has been a major shift within American Protestantism where the established, mainline denominations have suffered substantial membership declines while the appeal of more evangelical and fundamen­ talist groups has grown dramatically (see, e.g., Greeley 1 9 8 9 ; Finke and Stark 1 9 9 2 ) Y Phrased differently, the former have lost market share to the latter. Putnam believes that this denominational shift itself may have con­ tributed to the erosion of social capital. In both evangelical and mainline congregations, the religiously in­ volved learn transferable civic skills, such as management and public speaking, but mainline Protestants are more likely to transfer them to the wider community . . . . Thus the fact that evangelical Christianity is rising and mainline Christianity is falling means that religion is less effective now as a foundation for civic engagement and " bridging " social capital. ( 20oo, 7 8 )

Observe the shift in emphasis: even i f overall rates o f religious participa­ tion have not declined, social capital is dropping because Americans are increasingly attracted to the wrong kinds of churches . The argument is, at best, ungainly. We believe it more defensible to conclude that religious participation is incidental to social capital. This judgment avoids ad hoc claims like the one j ust discussed and obviates the need to explain away other awkward patterns. Perhaps the best way to see this is to cast the problem in a more comparative framework. Using data from the 1990- 9 3 World Values Surveys, table 3 . 7 displays rates of church attendance for six countries, consisting of the five cases examined in the original Civic Culture study ( Almond and Verba T 9 63 ) along with Sweden. In considering this table, recall further that Almond and Verba rated the United States and the United Kingdom as the most civic of their cases, and Italy and Mexico the least civic. (We also hazard the guess that, had it been one of their cases, they would have rated Sweden as highly civic. ) The first panel o f table 3 . 7 shows that the relationship between age and reported church attendance is not a peculiarly American phenome­ non. In all six countries, attendance increases with age. Of more interest, perhaps, the highest rates of attendance are reported for Mexico, fol­ lowed closely by the United States and Italy, while the lowest rates are 3 2 · Mainline Protestant denominations include Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Lu­ therans, lVlethodists, and Presbyterians.

Civic Virtue in Italy and the United States

87

TABLE 3.7. Rates of Church Attendance (% attending at least once a month) for Select Countries, by Age, from 1 990-93 World Values Survey 1 8- 34

3 5 - 54

55+

49 ( 54 1 ) 44 (813) 14 (465 ) 17 (717) 59 (92 1 ) 9 (352)

60 (639) 48 (713) 25 (48 6 ) 29 (713) 67 (462) 9 (392)

63 ( 627) 65 (492) 31 ( 524 ) 55 ( 671 ) 70 (148) 17 ( 242 )

Men

35 (212)

37 (213)

52 ( 1 33 )

Women

48 (200)

51 ( 2 1 7)

72 ( 1 30)

Men

36 (185)

39 ( 1 27)

52 (93)

Women

56 (215)

67 ( 155)

81 (136)

Country

A: Country Rates b y Age United States Italy United Kingdom West Germany Mexico Sweden

B : Italian Rates b y Region, Age, and Gender Northern Italy

Southern Italy

Note: Cell entries are the percentage of respondents reporting that they attend church as least once a month, and numbers in parentheses identify the numbers of repondents on which the percentages are based.

reported for Sweden and the United Kingdom.33 If, following Putnam ( 2ooo ), we take religious participation to reflect social capital and civic­ mindedness, we arrive at a baffling ranking of cases that is completely at odds with the ranking offered by Almond and Verba ( 1 9 6 3 ) .34 3 3. The low rates of church attendance in these two cases are best explained in terms of the structure of their religious markets. Both the United Kingdom and Sweden have estab­ lished churches, and Swedish Lutheranism in particular enjoys a virtual monopoly status. Among other things, the Lutheran clergy in Sweden are well-paid civil servants who enjoy the right to strike . Such monopoly status depresses participation (on these issues, see Iannaccone, Finke, and Stark 1 9 9 7 ) . 3 4 · We recognize that Almond a n d Verba's surveys were completed more than thirty years earlier than the surveys used in table 3 . 7. This, however, cannot help explain the ranking of cases in table 3 ·7 without auxiliary arguments that would account for ( r ) a hemorrhaging of social capital in the United Kingdom (and presumably Sweden ) and ( 2 ) an apparent concurrent and rapid maturation of social capital in Mexico and Italy. Even if such

88

B E F O RE N O RM S

The second panel o f table 3 . 7 pursues this line of thought a step further. Here, we report church attendance rates in Italy by region, gen­ der, and age, which allows a direct comparison of Making Democracy Work with Bowling Alone. Net of the age and gender differences in this panel, observe that church attendance is higher in southern Italy than in the north. Indeed, it is distinctively high among southern Italian women, especially those fifty-five or older. Thus, if we follow Putnam ( 2ooo ) and employ church attendance as an important measure of social capital, then we are led inexorably to the conclusion that there is more social capital in southern Italy than there is in the north, which of course contradicts the central empirical claim in Putnam ( 1 99 3 ) . 3 5 We are, however, reluctant t o draw such a n inference. Taking participa­ tion in organized religion as a key index of social capital involves a series of assumptions that are altogether heroic and generates indecipherable empirical patterns. We do not think there is more social capital in south­ ern Italy than in the north. We are not persuaded that Sweden suffers a distinctive social capital deficit. The proposition that involvement in mainline religious organizations generates a better form of social capital than does engagement in more fundamentalist denominations strikes us as a stretch. The only defensible conclusion is that rates of religious participation reflect the structures of religious markets and have no bear­ ing on social capital, one way or the other. Along with religious participation, PTA membership is also taken as a leading indicator of social capital. Indeed, Putnam argues that the PTA " has been an especially important form of civic engagement in twentieth­ century America because parental involvement in the educational process represents a particularly productive form of social capital" ( 199 s a, 69 ) . 36 Further, " the explosive growth of the PTA [from 1 9 1 0 to 1 9 60] was one arguments did not elude us, the comparatively high social capital ranking of the United States implied in table 3 · 7 means that Putnam's ( 20oo) concerns with dwindling social capital are misplaced . Aud the proposition that levels of civic virtue in Italy improved in j ust over thirty years is inconsistent with Putnam's ( 1 9 9 3 ) claim that regional differences in civic community have persisted over the very long haul. 3 5. To the best of our knowledge, most southern Italian women attendees are Catholic, and few belong to evangelical Protestant denominations. Thus, in Putnam's terms their high rates of church attendance cannot reflect a suboptimal form of social capital. Further, Putnam seems to regard church attendance among Catholics as desirable from a social capital perspective. For example, he estimates that about a quarter of American Catholics are Hispanic: "Their involvement means that the Catholic Church is once again playing an important role in connecting immigrants to the broader American society " ( 2ooo, 7 6 ) . 3 6. Among other things, w e presume that PTA membership could be seen as a particu­ larly productive form of social capital to the extent that it helps generate human capital, although Putnam does not address this issue.

Civic Virtue in Italy and the United States

89

of the most impressive organizational success stories in American his­ tory " ( 2000, s 6 ) . From I 9 60 to about I 9 80, however, the proportion of parents of school-age children who were PTA members plummeted by about 50 percent, and membership rates have not shifted appreciably since ( 2ooo, 5 7, fig. 9 ) . This much-discussed claim, o f course, takes the decline i n PTA member­ ship as symptomatic of a more general decay in social capital-social net­ works, norms, and trust. Indeed, if it is the case that social trust and civic engagement are strongly correlated, and if PTA membership is a leading indicator of civic engagement, we should find a significant link over time between levels of trust and PTA membership. However, examination of the plot between PTA membership rates and the average levels of trust re­ ported in the GSS ( 1 9 72-9 8 ) suggests no such relationship. And the simple correlation between the two series is only . 1 3 , a figure that is statistically insignificant at any meaningful test level. That fluctuations in PTA member­ ship rates track levels of trust so poorly in the United States suggests that the former is a poor proxy for social capital, more generally conceived. Instead of reflecting shifts in social capital, we think that recent varia­ tions in PTA membership stem fundamentally from changes in the labor force. Consider the following. Between 1 9 59 and 1999 the percentage of women 1 6 and older who were members of the civilian labor force in­ creased steadily from 3 7 to 6o percent, whereas the percentage of male labor force members aged I 6 or more declined slightly, from 84 to about 75 percent. Since the overwhelming majority of PTA members (especially active members) are women, and given that PTA membership is sensitive to women's marital status and labor force participation ( Crawford and Levitt 1 999 ), this means that over the last forty years the supply of potential members of the PTA has declined. Further, women' s labor force participation has been increasing steadily with time ( see, e.g., Costa 2ooo ), so that the correlation between the two over the period is an almost perfect · 9 9 · This obviously means that we cannot statistically distinguish the meaning of " time " from that of women's labor force participation. By the same token, however, it is clear that in this context time itself has no intrinsic meaning but serves simply as a proxy for a variety of possible factors, the most obvious of which is women's labor force participation. Indeed, when we regress PTA membership (in mil­ lions) on the percentage of women in the labor force for the period 19 5 9 through 1 9 9 8 , w e obtain the following estimates:37 3 7 · PTA membership data were provided b y the National PTA headquarters, Chicago; and labor force participation rates for women and men were extracted from the Bureau of

90

PTA R2

=

B E F O RE N O RM S

20. 4 5 - .25 (Women in labor force) ( 1 0. 0 ) . 72, N 4 0.

=

=

These figures are similar to those obtained from regressing PTA member­ ship on time, although women's labor force participation provides a mildly better fit.3 8 One might conclude that because time is statistically indistinguishable from women's labor force participation in these data, it is reasonable to draw inferences about declining social capital in recent decades. But then we have to confront the fact that PTA membership does not map meaning­ fully onto levels of interpersonal trust, which muddies the relevance of PTA membership for social capital. We need also to acknowledge that the decline of PTA membership does not in itself imply a general decline in levels of parental involvement with the education of their children. Indeed, focusing exclusively on National PTA figures may be quite misleading. There is considerable evidence to indicate that the National PTA has become a minority player in this niche, as large numbers of school parent-teacher groups have disaffiliated themselves from the Na­ tional PTA and formed local unaffiliated groups (Ladd 1999, 3 1 - 4 3 ) . In this connection, evidence from the Roper Center shows that parental par­ ticipation in school activities has actually increased significantly in the past two and a half decades. In 1 9 69, only 1 6 percent of those surveyed in a Gallup poll reported that they had attended a school board meeting, while by 199 5 this figure had more than doubled to 39 percent (Ladd 1999, 3 9 ) . Finally, a s already noted, w e need t o remember that while women's labor force participation is a variable with clear substantive meaning, the vari­ able time in the present context has no such intrinsic meaning but serves simply as a proxy for variables like labor force participation. We are therefore inclined to the view that PTA membership has de­ clined as women's labor force participation has increased. No more, no less. The PTA, after all, is an organization with a " traditional constitu­ ency of white middle-class women who do not work outside their homes" ( Crawford and Levitt 1999, 2 8 2 ) . As the supply of such individuals has Labor Statistics Web site (http://www.bls.gov/data) (using Series ID LNS I I 3 0000 2 ) . The slight decrease in male labor force participation reflects the aging of the U.S. population over the period. 3 8. The estimated R' from a regression of PTA membership on time for the same period is .67. The decline over time in PTA membership is not linear but was steepest for the first half of the period, and a quadratic regression of membership rates on women's labor force participation (or time ) describes the data almost perfectly.

Civic Virtue in Italy and the United States

91

contracted, so too has the PTA, while other more locally based groups have flourished.39 Thus, drawing broad alarmist conclusions from the PTA data about dwindling social capital seems entirely gratuitous.

Beyond League Bowling A third problem that plagues Putnam's analysis of group membership is selection bias. Most notably, he places considerable weight on the fact that between 1 9 8 0 and 1 9 9 3 league bowling declined by 40 percent while the total number of bowlers increased by TO percent. He further claims that " the broader social significance" of these trends " lies in the social interaction and even occasionally civic conversations over beer and pizza that solo bowlers forgo " ( 2000, I I 3 ) . 4° Missing from this congenial portrait is any allusion to the drive home after the beer. League bowling may have started to decline around I 9 8o, but that also is the year in which Mothers Against Drunk Driving was founded. Two decades later, the membership of MADD has skyrocketed, so that it is now a large organization with more than 6oo chapters nationwide.4' A key difference between league bowling and MADD, of course, is that the latter repre­ sents a newer type of organized activity. The selectivity here is clear: the alleged social capital implications of membership declines in older organi­ zations are lamented, while the significance of more current membership groups is downplayed or ignored. The former are thus cast as the sole mechanisms that can generate robust and meaningful social networks. Completely brushed to one side is the possibility of a shift over time in the kinds of group ties that might generate social capital ( see, e.g., Wuthnow 1998). Environmental groups are an interesting case in point. While some of these organizations are older, all have experienced rapid rates of growth m recent years. Yet their significance seems to elude Putnam. For 3 9 · Evidence also indicates that the rise in women's labor force participation has more generally resulted in a decline in social capital produced within the home in the form of entertaining friends, neighbors, and relatives ( Costa and Kahn 200 I ) . 4 0 . From Putnam's analysis, it appears that beer and pizza are even more significant for the owners of bowling lanes, since league bowlers consume three times as much of these commodities as do nonlcague bowlers, " and the money in bowling is in the beer and pizza, not the balls and shoes " ( 2000, I I 3 ). On the bright side, there is evidence that the quality of league bowling has increased dramatically in recent years. According to a report on Na­ tional Public Radio, the annual number of perfect ( 3 oo ) games increased from about 900 thirty years ago to over 3 4,000 in I999 (NPR 2000 ) . 4 r . NIADD is listed a s one o f the large U.S. membership associations by Skocpol ( I 999, 72-7 5 ) , where " large " organizations are those with membership lists greater than I percent of the adult population. For more information on the organization itself, see www.madd.org.

92

B E F O RE N O RM S

example, the Sierra Club i s discounted a s a " mailing list" organization with few consequences for social capital because it is "not really an organization in which members meet one another" (Putnam 1 9 9 5 b, 666) .42 But even at the national level, the Sierra Club actively engages members. Thus, its Outing Department offered 3 4 0 trips in 1 9 9 6, in­ cluding eleven days of backpacking in the Arctic National Wildlife Ref­ uge and a seven-day Arizona Trail Family Service trip. Such activities would appear to provide at least as much opportunity for civic engage­ ment among Sierra Club members as do the occasional civic conversa­ tions over beer and pizza that Putnam associates with league bowling. Local chapters of the Sierra Club provide even more opportunities for civic participation. To take j ust one instance, Pettinico lists the following activities organized by the Sierra Club's Los Angeles Chapter in one weekend (May 1 7- 1 9 , 1 9 9 6 ) : " 2 1 day hikes ( including one for singles only ) , two evening hikes, three bicycle trips ( one for singles only), one bird watching walk, four trail repair outings, a nature camera excursion, a wilderness first aid workshop, a nature knowledge workshop, a back­ packing class, a camp fundraiser, two camping trips, and one weekend trip to Catalina Island" ( 1 99 6, 2 7 ) . These are not simply the activities of a mere " mailing list" organization. Equally troubling is Putnam's treatment of rates of youth participa­ tion. He concludes from his analysis of GSS and National Election Study data that "the very decades that have seen a national deterioration in social capital are the same decades during which the numerical domi­ nance of a trusting and civic generation rborn before 1 9 4 01 has been replaced by the dominion of 'post-civic' cohorts " ( r 99 5 b, 677 ) . Putnam ascribes this generational shift in civic virtue to television, noting that the proportion of American homes with television jumped from about r o percent i n 1 9 5 0 t o 90 percent i n 1 9 60. Thus civic participation dropped as the children of the " trusting and civic generation " were replaced by those of a couch-potato "post-civic" generation. Participation in Little League Baseball provides an interesting way to assess any shift from the civic to the post-civic generation, since data are available from 1 9 3 9 to the present.43 Figure 3 · 3 presents a graph of Little League Baseball participants by year. The striking feature of the graph is the consistency with which participation in Little League ( indicated by the 4 2 . According to the Sierra Club's office in San Francisco, membership increased from 1 8 2 in 1 8 9 2 to a high of 629 , 5 3 2 in 1990. By 1 9 9 5 , its membership was 5 8 7,499 . 4 3 . Little League data were provided by the Little League Baseball International Head­ quarters, Williamsport, PA; soccer participation information ( discussed later ) was obtained from the United States Youth Soccer Association, Richardson, TX.

Civic Virtue in Italy and the United States

93

3000

2500 "'

., " �

2000

" 0

E

2

1 500

"'

D � E 0) ::8

r

1 000

/

/

/

/

/ -

__., � I

,.. \ I

I

I

/

(

500 /

0 1939

1 947

1 943

Fig. 3.3. 1 9 39-99

-­

/

I J

Baseball Soccer

1 95 5

1 95 1

1 963

1 959

1 97 1

1 967

1 979

1 975

1 987

1983

1 995

1991

1 999

Membership in Little League and United States Youth Soccer,

dashed line) has increased over the years. Beginning with j ust one league with 4 5 players in 1 9 3 9 , participation grew to about 2 million in 1 9 8 5 , from which i t declined slightly to r . 8 million i n 1 9 8 8 , subsequently in­ creased to 2 . 6 million by 1 9 9 5 , and then tapered off at about 2 . 5 million. This trend is especially noteworthy given the other organizations that have formed and compete for members. Little League Softball was formed in 1 9 74 with 29 ,69 6 members and a s o f 1 9 9 9 had 3 9 0,000. Even more remarkably, U.S . Youth Soccer participation has mushroomed to 2.4 mil­ lion, a twentyfold increase over j ust two decades ( Stengel 1 9 9 6, 3 5 ) , a trend indicated by the solid line in figure 3 - 3 - A striking feature of figure 3 . 3 is that the growth in U.S . Youth Soccer has had very little effect on participation in Little League Baseball. Overall, participation has in­ creased consistently since the League's formation in 1 9 3 9 . One might object that figures like those i n figure 3 . 3 simply reflect demographic shifts. As the age structure of the population becomes youn­ ger, the supply of children available for such organizations as Little League and Youth Soccer increases. However, the age structure of the population is actually becoming older. Indeed, when we regress baseball participation (in tens of thousands) on year, controlling for the number of children enrolled in kindergarten through eighth grade (in thousands) for the period T 9 64 through T 9 9 8 , we obtain the following estimates:

94

B E F O RE N O RM S

Baseball = - 8 575.6 + 4 . 3 7 (Year) + .0034 ( Enrollment) ( 4 . 47 ) (28.6) R2 = . 9 6, N = 3 5 .

Thus, participation i n Little League i s partly a function o f the available supply of children. By far the more important factor, however, is time. Holding constant the number of students enrolled in kindergarten through the eighth grade, participation in Little League Baseball has been increas­ ing by roughly 44 ,000 members per year.44 This constitutes a remarkable pattern of growth. Such an expansion would appear to have immediate implications for social capital. We emphasize that as participation in Little League and Youth Soccer has grown, so too has parental involvement in the form of coaching, refereeing, and related roles. Lemann emphasizes the activities this entails: " As a long-standing coach . . . I can attest that it involves in­ cessant meetings, phone calls, and activities of a kind that create links between people which ramify, in the manner described by Putnam, into other areas" ( 1 99 6, 2 5 ) Data from the American Youth Soccer Organiza­ tion on players ( in tens of thousands), coaches ( in thousands ) , and referees ( in thousands) from 1 9 64 to 1 9 9 9 underscore the magnitude of this phe­ nomenon.4i Figure 3 · 4 shows that, starting in 1 9 64 with j ust 1 3 5 players, I 8 coaches, and 9 referees, the American Youth Soccer Organization has steadily increased its membership, and as of 1 9 9 8 - 99 boasted over 62o,ooo players, 9 5 ,000 coaches, and almost 4 8 ,ooo referees. Thus, not only are the children of the post-civic generation participating at increasing rates, but their parents are joining in as coaches and referees. As this direct participation expands, so too does the number of other family members who attend soccer games, further enhancing civic engagement. We could obviously elaborate this discussion with numerous other examples, but we think the general point is clear. Voluntary organizations have lives of their own. While some may lose ground over time, new organizational forms arise and fill an overlapping or even slightly differ­ ent niche.46 In other words, there are substitution patterns stemming from competition. .

4 4 - The estimates for an identical analysis with U.S . Youth Soccer participation indicate that, controlling for kindergarten through eighth grade enrollment, membership has in­ creased by about 1 0 ) ,000 per year since the league's formation. 4 5. Between 1 9 64 and 1 9 7 8 membership data were collected every five years; after this date, they were gathered on an annual basis. Data provided by the American Youth Soccer Organization, Hawthorne, CA 9 0 2 5 0 . 4 6 . F o r a n accessible listing of patterns of growth a n d decline among major member­ ship groups in the United States, see Skocpol ( 1 999, appendix 2A).

Civic Virtue in Italy and the United States

95

1 20

1 00

80 �

:;; .n E " :;;;:

'

60

'

40

20

I ,' / �v

0 1 9 64

1 97 3

Fig. 3.4.

--

I

/

'

I

./

/

Players (in ! 0000s) Coaches (in 1 000s) Referees (in 1 000s)

1 9 76

1 970

1 9 67

/

/'

'

1 979

1 994

1 98 8

1982 1 985

1 99 1

1 997

Membership in American youth soccer, 1 964-99

In case after case where a group that's been important in the past now finds itself losing ground, or at least struggling to maintain its place, inves­ tigation shows that the main cause is simply strong competition. The PTA has been getting beat by local entrepreneurs who are more concerned with "hometown " than with Chicago headquarters. The old mainline churches are getting beat by all sorts of religious newcomers . And the Elks and Masons are losing out to the Sierra Club. ( Ladd 1999, 5 2 )

O f course, we can always selectively identify particular organizations that are experiencing declines in support. But it is critical not to focus primar­ ily on such cases at the expense of other organizations that do not fit some predetermined trend. The fact that particular organizations may lose membership in a given period does not in itself mean that member­ ship organizations in general are on the wane. And indeed when we do cast the net a little more broadly, it is hard to come by good evidence that Americans are decreasingly a nation of j oiners.

Con clusions

In this chapter we have examined Making Democracy Work and Bowling Alone, two studies designed to contribute to the study of political cultures by addressing the political consequences of civic community. The former

96

B E F O RE N O RM S

claims that the effectiveness of regional governments in Italy hinges on patterns of civic engagement that can be traced back to a quite distant past. The latter focuses on trends in civic engagement over the more recent past (i.e., the last five decades ) to conclude that Americans are becoming increasingly isolated from each other and hence are now less virtuous citizens. While there is a disj uncture between the two studies over the durability of social capital, Putnam insists in both studies that civic virtue impinges directly on political performance. We have shown in this chapter that the evidence for these arguments is weak. In the case of Making Democracy Work ( 1 9 9 3 ) , the statistical results hinge on restrictive and unreasonable assumptions. Indeed, the " tests " are not really tests because the assumptions preclude all but the reported outcomes. When we adopt a more standard approach to the analysis, there is simply no basis for the claim that regional differences in the performance of Italian regional governments stem from long-standing regional differ­ ences in civic virtue. The further claim that regional differences in commu­ nity involvement reach well back to early modern Italian history is simi­ larly belied by the record. Even painting with a broad brush, there is no sustained evidence either that northern Italians have been distinctively virtuous citizens or that they have consistently outpaced the residents of southern Italy in this respect. We have also shown that the evidence offered in Bowling Alone is less complete than it might first appear. The basic issue here is that informa­ tion is marshaled selectively. For example, the claim that levels of interper­ sonal trust have been declining in recent years stems from an analysis of responses to a single survey item. When we broaden the scope to incor­ porate other survey questions addressing trust, convincing support for the reported decline is more difficult to find. Similarly, using the best available data, we find no sustained evidence of a decay in overall levels of group membership. This is also the case when we examine particular forms of participation highlighted by Putnam. Despite his claims to the contrary, religious participation has not been waning in recent years: indeed, church membership has grown remarkably since the time of de Tocqueville. Further, the connection between religious participation and social capital is far from self-evident. To be sure, PTA membership has dropped in recent years as more women have entered the labor force, and league bowling has become less popular than it once was. But such de­ clines have been accompanied by growth in other areas, including envi­ ronmental groups and parent-organized youth groups. Bowling Alone constitutes a striking metaphor, but the underlying empirical claims are wide of the mark.

Civic Virtue in Italy and the United States

97

In view of this, we conclude that the two most visible recent country studies fail to make the case for political culture. Along the way, we have shown that there is little evidence either for enduring regional patterns of civic virtue in Italy or for the proposition that recent years have seen a pronounced erosion of community values in the United States. Italy and the United States are key cases within which to address these issues, of course, and focusing on these settings in more detail has enabled us to address elements of the problem at a more disaggregated level than would otherwise be possible. Nonetheless, these two countries hardly exhaust the possible varieties of political cultures. Accordingly, we turn now in chapter 4 to an evaluation of claims about the impact of culture and values in a broader comparative framework.

FOU R

Civic Virtue, G rowth, and Democratization What, then happened to great civilizations like the Renaissance in Flor­ ence ? The Florentines lost interest in achievement. Their dreams changed. They became more concerned with love and friendship, with art, with power struggles. David C. McClelland ( 1 9 6 1 , 4 3 7 ) Neither rapid economic growth nor effective government can develop, or, if introduced, will be long sustained, without the widespread diffusion in the rank and file of the population of those qualities we have identified as those of the modern man. In the conditions of the contemporary world, the qualities of individual modernity are not a luxury, they are a necessity. They arc not a marginal gain, derived from the process of institutional modernization, but are rather a precondition for the long-term success of those institutions. Alex Inkeles and David Horton Smith ( 1 974, 3 1 5 - I 6)

e turn now to a different setting for further empirical evaluation of the cultural argument. Where chapter 3 addressed patterns within each of two particular national contexts, our attention now shifts to national-level variations across a broader range of countries. Such varia­ tions, of course, were at the heart of earlier studies that sought to explain the impact of cultural values on the economic and political performance of societies as a whole. McClelland ( 1 9 6 1 ) thus concluded that national differences in rates of economic growth are in good part a function of country differences in the diffusion of achievement-oriented values. In a minor variant on the theme, Hagen claimed that the Industrial Revolu-

Civic Virtue, Growth, and Democratization

99

tion occurred first in Britain " because British people were inwardly differ­ ent from those on the Continent" ( 1 9 67, 3 7) . Similarly, Almond and Verba ( 1 9 6 3 ) argued that the prevalence of participatory orientations within societies is a key factor in helping to understand national differ­ ences in democratic performance. Perhaps the best-known current empirical work along these lines would be the studies carried out by Ronald Inglehart and his associates. These have involved the collection of extensive survey data on mass values in several countries, a major undertaking. The surveys themselves initially focused on European societies (the Eurobarometer studies), but in more recent years the net has been cast more widely in the World Values Surveys. It was on the basis of these surveys that Inglehart ( 1 9 8 8 ) announced the " renaissance " of political culture. This research program has advanced a series of claims. For example, Inglehart has argued in a variety of settings that mass values have moved in a postmaterialist direction in the last few decades, a proposition that has generated considerable discussion. More central to our purposes, however, is the broader contention that values directly affect economic and political performance. It is this contention that places the current analyses squarely in the tradition of the earlier studies by McClelland ( 1 9 6 1 ) and Almond and Verba ( 1 9 6 3 ) . This chapter evaluates recent attempts t o link cultural values t o eco­ nomic growth and democratic performance. We show that these efforts are plagued by a variety of problems. Among other things, different analyses employ idiosyncratic measures of culture, those measures can seldom j ustify the interpretation assigned to them, and research designs are plagued by problems of temporal ordering where " explanatory " vari­ ables too often postdate the phenomena they are invoked to explain.

Values an d Econom i c G rowth

Following very much in the footsteps of Weber and McClelland, Ingle­ hart has argued there is considerable evidence from the recent past that values profoundly affect economic growth. Specifically, he concludes that " economic development itself is influenced by cultural variables . . . . The available evidence supports Weber's insight that culture is not just a consequence of economics; it can shape the basic nature of economic and political life " ( 1 990, 6 5 ) . A s substantiating evidence, Inglehart compared the modest correlation

B E F O RE NOKMS

IOO

o f - . 2 2 between the level o f economic development and rates o f eco­ nomic growth with a " far stronger " relationship between his measure of culture (as postmaterialism, r 9 8 o ) and economic growth during the pe­ riod 1 9 6 5 through 1 9 8 4 (r - . 5 4 ) . He further compared an insignifi­ cant partial correlation of - . 1 3 between wealth and growth, with post­ materialism held constant, to a significant partial correlation of - . 5 2 between postmaterialism and growth, with wealth held constant. Ingle­ hart inferred from this that while a country's wealth may affect the rate at which its economy grows, any such effect is indirect, and that wealth affects growth " only insofar as it brings cultural change" ( 1 990, 64 ) . 1 Cultural factors are thus assigned a crucial explanatory role. An odd feature of his analysis is that this reported effect hinges on an association between ( r ) a measure of culture circa 1 9 80 and ( 2 ) a mea­ sure of economic growth that covers the twenty years from 1 9 6 5 to 1 9 84 . This means that fully three-quarters o f the growth reflected i n this mea­ sure occurred before measurement of the cultural values was taken. In other words, the measure Inglehart uses to predict growth largely post­ diets growth, which is empirically awkward. A more prudent evaluation of his argument comes from asking whether the configuration of mass value priorities prevailing in the early 1 9 8os is systematically related to economic growth rates in the following period. To gain a preliminary sense of the evidence, we therefore regress r 9 8o- 2ooo GDP per capita growth rates on the percentage endorsing Materialist values, circa 1 9 80, controlling for the natural logarithm of 1 9 80 real GDP per capita. 2 The estimates we obtain are =

Growth 1 9 8 0-2000 = - 0 . 1 9 + 0.00 ( % Materialist8 0 ) + 0 . 02 (GDP 8 0 ) ( 1 .6) (4.3 ) N = 1 7,

where t-ratios are reported in parentheses. Clearly, these figures offer scant support for Inglehart's conclusion. Employing his basic model, but with a more defensible temporal ordering of the variables, we see that the estimate for proportion Materialist is statistically insignificant by conven­ tional criteria, while the estimate for the level of national wealth is highly significant. Of course, this is hardly a conclusive test, since it reflects the most rudimentary of models. r. A more common interpretation, given endogenous-growth models of economic growth, is that a control for initial wealth is necessary to allow for the effects of conditional convergence on growth (see, e.g., Barro 1 9 9 7 ) . 2 . Data o n the proportion materialist are from lnglehart ( 1 9 9 7 ) , a n d G O P data are from Heston, Summers, and Aten ( 2 0 0 2 ) . We employ a robust regression estimator.

Civic Virtue, Growth, and Democratization

ror

Against this backdrop, the analyses subsequently reported b y Granato, Inglehart, and Leblang ( 1 9 9 6 ) appear to represent a major improvement. Especially notable is their explicit evaluation of the cultural explanation against a maj or rival, as represented by endogenous growth models of scholars like Barro ( 1 99 1 , 1 9 9 7 ) and Levine and Renelt ( 1 99 2 ) . These models regress economic growth rates over a given period on a set of economic, human capital, and other variables measured at the beginning of that period. It is in the context of such models that Granato, Inglehart, and Leblang report a significant, independent effect of culture on growth. Their analy­ ses expand and modify Inglehart ( 1 990) in the following way. Where the earlier discussion of links between culture and economic growth concen­ trated largely on the role of postmaterialist values, Granato, Inglehart, and Leblang focus on the role of both postmaterialist values and achievement orientations. In considering the latter, their analyses can be seen as an attempt to blend Inglehart's ( 1 990) discussion with the issues that moti­ vated McClelland ( r 9 6 r ) . Their empirical estimates lead them to conclude that while postmaterialism has no systematic effect on growth (consistent with the estimates j ust reported), achievement orientations do play a cru­ cial role. Thus, while Granato, Inglehart, and Leblang's empirical focus shifts notably from Tnglehart ( 1 990), they converge on the same basic conclusion: culture matters. Is this a defensible judgment ? Granato, Inglehart, and Leblang's dependent variable covers the years from 1 9 60 through 1 9 89 , following Levine and Renelt ( 1 9 9 2 ) . Their data on initial GDP and on primary and secondary school enrollment ratios are for 1 9 60 ( " the beginning of the time period," as Granato, Inglehart, and Leblang properly emphasize) , while their data on investment rates are averaged over the years from 1 9 60 to 1 9 8 9 . In stark contrast, data for the two measured components of cultural values are drawn from the World Values Survey for r99 0 . That these variables are measured for 1 990 may not be obvious since it is reported only in the notes to Granato, Inglehart, and Leblang's appendix table 1 : hence, the point may escape those readers who make the usually plausible assumption that all the explanatory vari­ ables temporally predate the dependent variable. 3 Thus, a major problem of temporal ordering appears to carry over from Inglehart ( 1 9 9 0 ) . Perhaps labeling Culture, 99 0 as a " s ignificant predictor" of Growth, 9 60_8 9 (as do Granato, Tnglehart, and Leblang) is less problematic than we 3 · A series of World Values Surveys was also carried out between r 9 8 r and r 9 8 3 , but this earlier series did not include 7 of the 2 5 countries analyzed by Granato, lnglehart, and Leblang (see Abramson and lnglehart r99 5 , 9 7 - 9 9 ) . The 7 countries not surveyed in r 9 8 r through T 9 8 3 are Austria, Brazil, China, India, Nigeria, Switzerland, and Turkey.

102

B E F O RE NOKMS

believe. Indeed, were there evidence that the values at hand are largely time-invariant, the use of Culture, 99 0 as an approximate proxy for Cul­ ture, 9 60 might be warranted. However, there is considerable evidence to indicate that these values can vary substantially over time, as a function of both long- and short-term patterns ( see Clarke and Dutt 1 9 9 1 ; Clarke, Dutt, and Kornberg 1 9 9 3 ; Duch and Taylor 1 99 3 ; Abramson and Ingle­ hart 1 99 5 ; Clarke, Dutt, and Rapkin 1 9 9 7 ) . Granato, Inglehart, and Leblang themselves emphasize that " central elements of culture can and do change . " If so, Culture, 99 0 is an inadequate proxy for Culture, 9 60. A trait measured at time, cannot be used to explain an " outcome" measured at time, _ , . Fortunately, there is another way to evaluate Granato, Tnglehart, and Leblang's argument. McClelland ( 1 9 6 1 , 9 0 ) provided data on national levels of need for achievement collected for 19 50. These data are based on codings of themes emphasized in textbooks read by children from second­ through fourth-grade levels and are fully discussed by McClelland ( 1 9 6 1 , chap. 3 ) . The 1 9 5 0 date for these figures is almost ideal for present pur­ poses, as the children exposed to these readers circa 19 50 would be adults and at least potential labor force members by 1 9 60, and they would play an increasingly important role in economic patterns over the ensuing years ( 1 9 60 to 1 9 8 9 ) . McClelland's 1 9 5 0 data are available for 19 of the 2 5 countries examined by Granato, lnglehart, and Leblang.4 Accordingly, table 4 . 1 displays the estimates obtained when economic growth rates ( 1 9 60- 8 9 ) are regressed on GDP per capita and school enrollment ratios ( r 9 6o), domestic investment ( 1 9 60 - 8 9 ) , and McClelland's measure of need for achievement ( 1 9 5 0 ) . The first column shows the OLS estimates, while the second contains the robust estimates . 5 These estimates employ

4· McClelland also reported need for achievement estimates for r 9 2 5 . In fact, he was especially attentive to issues of temporal ordering. Consider the following: The estimates of n Achievement [ r 9 2 5 ] are positively correlated with subsequent economic growth and very significantly so . . . . On the other hand, n Achievement level as estimated from the r 9 5 0 readers is not related to previous economic growth. The difference in the two sets of correlations is particularly important theoretically because it hears on the issue of economic determinism . . . . 1v1arx appears to have been somewhat premature in dismissing psychology as a major determinant in his­ tory. (McClelland r 9 6 r , 9 3 ; emphasis in original ) Even s o , his conclusions a r c difficult t o sustain in light of analyses like Barro ( r 997 ) . Among other things, McClelland relied heavily on zero-order correlations. 5· The robust regression procedures we use are discussed by Berk ( r 990), and the estimators are generated by the Huber ( r 9 8 r ) procedure. The estimated standard errors these robust procedures generate are of course based on asymptotic theory. In view of this, and given the small number of cases in the analyses, our inferences rely less on the standard

Civic Virtue, Growth, and Democratization

103

TAB LE 4. 1 . Regressions o f G rowth on Initial G D P, School Enrollment Ratios, I nvestment, and Need for Achievement Levels, 1 9 50 Economic Growth, 1 960-89

Dependent Variable GDP per capita, 1 960 Primary education, 1 960 Secondary education, 1 9 6 0 Investment, 1 960-89 Need for achievement, 1 950 Constant

R2

(a)

(b)

- .3 5 " ( 3 .1 ) 1 .6 6 ( 1 .6 ) 2.58" ( 3 .5 ) 9.44'" ( 2.7) - .0 6 ( 0.2 ) - . 65 ( 0.5 ) .72

- .38"" (4.6 ) 1 .2 1 ( 1 .6 ) 2.2 9 "" (4.3 ) 1 0.83 ''" (4.2 ) - .05 ( 0.2 ) - .25 ( 0.3 )

n/a

Source: Data arc from Granato, Inglchan, and Lcblang ( 1 996, appen­ dix table 1 ) , Leblang's website (sobek.colorado. edu/-- leblang), and Mc­ Clelland ( 1 9 6 1 , 9 0 ) . Note: Column ( a ) = O L S estimates, colwnn (b) = Robust regression estimates. (Coefficients [t-ratios]; N � 1 9 ) >:·Coefficients have t-ratios > 2.0.

Granato, Inglehart, and Leblang's data, and the regression model matches closely their table T, model 3 , except that the N is T 9 rather than 2 5 . Comparing across columns, i t i s evident that the estimates are quite robust and that the core endogenous growth model performs well, even with the reduced number of cases. Only the coefficient estimates for primary school enrollments are of borderline statistical significance (with t-ratios j ust above I . 5 ), although they remain substantively significant in the sense that completion of primary school is a prerequisite for secon­ dary school enrollment ( Barra 1 99 7, 1 9 - 20 ) . Second, and most impor­ tant, there is no evidence here of a need for achievement effect: the relevant coefficient estimates are incorrectly signed, and the t-ratios hover below o . 5. When achievement motivation is thus analyzed on the basis of a defensible temporal ordering of the measured variables, there is no evidence that it influences economic growth one way or the other. Given this noneffect, how can we account for the connection between growth from 1 9 60 through 1 9 8 9 and values for 1 9 9 0 , as described by errors and are informed primarily instead on comparisons of shifts in the estimated coeffi­ cients across estimating procedures. All calculations were made with the STATA statistical package.

I 04

B E F O RE NOKMS

Granato, Inglehart, and Leblang ? This question i s best addressed i n terms of the alternative perspective we have developed that draws on analyses like Hirschman ( r 9 8 4 ) and Gambetta ( r 99 3 ) and that endogenizes val­ ues. Recall that in Granato, Inglehart, and Leblang's analysis, achieve­ ment motivation is gauged from a question asking respondents to rank " qualities which children can be encouraged to learn at home. " It is said to increase directly with the proportion stressing " thrift, saving money and things, " and " determination, " while it also increases inversely with the proportion emphasizing the traditional social values of " obedience " and " religious faith . " Our hypotheses are straightforward. First, economic growth generates higher levels of achievement motivation, thus defined, because it creates a climate where norms favoring saving and " determination" make sense. In contrast, saving is often suboptimal (and indeed there are fewer incen­ tives for saving) in periods of poor economic performance with their typically higher rates of inflation and unemployment. 6 Second, invest­ ment in human capital generates higher levels of such achievement moti­ vation insofar as it fosters the diffusion of achievement-oriented norms and undermines more " traditional" social values . We anticipate this ef­ fect to be most pronounced with investment in secondary (as opposed to primary) education, which has a clientele closer to adulthood and thus closer to entering the labor force. These two hypotheses are readily evaluated using the data reported by Granato, Inglehart, and Leblang in their appendix table r . Table 4 . 2 displays estimates obtained when achievement motivations from 1 990 are regressed on economic growth rates for r 9 6o through r 9 89, and school enrollment ratios for 1 9 60. The OLS estimates in the first column of the table are consistent with both hypotheses. Economic growth has the most pronounced positive effect and has a t-ratio considerably greater than 2 . 0 . Both of the estimates for school enrollment ratios are positive, but that for primary school enrollment is smaller than its standard error. The t-ratio for the secondary enrollment coefficient is greater than 2 . 0 , and the estimated coefficient itself is four times the size of that for pri­ mary enrollment (these two right-hand variables share a common met­ ric ) . Overall, this simple model fits the data quite well, and the R2 is . 6 r . The second column o f the table displays the robust estimates for the model and shows that the parameter estimates are relatively stable. 6 . Granato, lnglehart, and Leblang recognize the " possibility that economic growth might be conducive to thrift," but assert that the rationale for such an argument is " less obviou s . " The assertion is puzzling.

Civic Virtue, Growth, and Democratization

I05

Before we embrace the proposition that " achievement norms" are the phenomenon generated by the explanatory variables in table 4 . 2, however, one remaining empirical issue warrants clarification. The measure em­ ployed by Granato, Inglehart, and Leblang is generated from aggregate responses to only four of the eleven available items. Specifically, Granato, Inglehart, and Leblang ( I ) sum the percentage of respondents in each coun­ try emphasizing the virtues of " thrift, saving money and things " and " deter­ mination, " ( 2 ) sum the percentage of respondents stressing " obedience " and " religious faith, " and then subtract ( 2 ) from ( I ) . The implicit assump­ tion here, of course, is that these four items constitute a single coherent cluster of attitudes across and within countries, so that a high country score indicates that there are many individuals who attach a high value to thrift and determination and who also place much less weight on obedi­ ence, religious faith, and so forth. How reasonable is this assumption ? The first column of table 4 · 3 displays the loadings from a principal components analysis of the four measures of achievement motivation for the 25 cases examined by Granato, Inglehart, and Leblang. These esti­ mates provide some apparent evidence for a relatively coherent cluster of attitudes, as the first factor has an eigenvalue of 2.4 8 , and no additional factors with eigenvalues greater than 1 . 0 are extracted. The loadings for the first two measures (thrift and determination ) have the same sign (nega­ tive) and are relatively strong ( - . 8 2 and - . 6 I , respectively) . The loadings for the third and fourth measures (religion and obedience) are also in the

TABLE 4.2. Regressions of Need for Achievement, 1 990, on Prior G rowth and Initial School Enrollment Ratios Need for Achievement 1 990 Dependent Variable Economic growth, 1 9 60- 8 9 Primary education, 1 960 Secondary education, 1 9 60 Constant

R'

(a) .22" (4.8 ) .20 ( 0.7) .81" (2.9) - 1 .1 6 '' (4.2 ) .69

(b) . 1 9 '' ( 3 .6 ) .2 1 ( 0.6 ) . 8 8 '' ( 2 .6 ) - 1 .1 4 '' ( 3.4 )

n!a

Source: Data are from Granato, lnglehart and Leblang ( 1996, appendix

table 1 ) and Leblang's Web site (sobek.colorado.edu/ �leblang/). Note: Column (a) = OLS estimates, column ( b ) = Robust regression estimates. (Coefficients [ t-ratios] ; N = 2 5 ) >:· coefficients have t-ratios > 2.0.

ro6

B E F O RE NOKMS

expected direction (positive) and quite high ( . 84 and . 8 5 , i n turn) . More­ over, the substantive interpretation of this factor appears consistent with Granato, Inglehart, and Leblang's argument: a country with a high factor score is one where citizens attach less importance to thrift and determina­ tion and place more weight on religion and obedience. Unfortunately, we find very little evidence of comparable patterns within these same 25 countries. In fact, in only 3 cases (India, Nigeria, and South Africa ) did we find the same pattern. To illustrate, the esti­ mates for Nigeria are shown in the second column and suggest a single­ factor solution. While the loadings are weaker than those found in the aggregate analysis (not surprisingly, given that these involve individual­ level data) , the four items do cluster similarly in the Nigerian and aggre­ gate analyses. For 2 2 of the 2 5 countries, however, there is no such structure across the four items, and in fully r 7 of these 2 5 cases, a two-factor solution is warranted (i.e., there are two components with eigenvalues greater than r .o). The remaining three columns in table 4 · 3 illustrate the diversity of factor solutions. In both France and Mexico, we obtain a two-factor solu­ tion. In the former, thrift and determination cluster into one factor and religion and obedience cluster into another, and the loadings for thrift and determination are of opposite signs! For Mexico, the first factor comprises determination, religion, and obedience (correctly signed), but there is a second that solely consists of thrift. Norway, in contrast, returns a single­ factor solution, but one loading is incorrectly signed (given Granato, Inglehart, and Leblang's argument) , and only one exceeds . 6o. At the individual level, then, these four items fail to cluster into the single coherTABLE 4.3.

Principal Components Analyses of Four Values I ndicators, 1 990

Variable

Aggregate Data

Component Thrift Determination Religion Obedience Eigenvalue

N

Individual Patterns in Selected Countries Nigeria

II

- . 82 - . 61 . 84 . 85 2.48 25

n/a "

France

II - .40 - .70

n/a "·

Mexico II

.16 .09

. 63 . 63

. 66 - . 80

1 .44 1,001

1 .2 6 1,002

. 73 - . 80 .1 6

.07 1 .04

Norway

II .00

.92

II .52

- . 66 .70 . 6S

- .3 5 - .03 - .25

- . 73 .47

1 .3 5 1,531

1 .04

1 .3 3 1,239

Source: Data are from the World Values Survey, 1 9 9 0 (ICPSR study no. 6 1 60 ) . Note: Italicized loadings > . 60 .

n/a "·

.55

�C Only components with eigenvalues > 1.0 displayed. Loadings for France and 11exico from varimax rotation procedure.

Civic Virtue, Growth, and Democratization

I 07

ent dimension anticipated by Granato, Inglehart, and Leblang for almost all of the cases that they consideo Finally, recall that the 4 items examined in table 4 · 3 are a subset of I I items that could have been employed. The principles guiding Granato, Inglehart, and Leblang's selection of this subset are, however, unclear. Why, for example, is " determination and perseverance" included as part of the achievement syndrome when " hard work " and " feeling of responsi­ bility " are not, when Granato, Inglehart, and Leblang themselves empha­ size that " hard work " is " conducive to economic growth " ( 1 9 9 6, 6 1 3 ) ? Although we do not display the estimates here, a component analysis of all I I (aggregated) items across all 25 cases generates three factors. Fur­ ther, the loadings have " hard work" on the second component (along with " imagination" and "tolerance " ) and thus counterintuitively distin­ guish " hard work" from " determination. " The corresponding compo­ nent analyses of all I I items within each of the 2 5 countries generate a miscellany of solutions and are thus substantively uninterpretable. As we have emphasized, the core of the political culture account ad­ dresses the prevalence of value clusters within countries, clusters that assume political and social meaning insofar as they are widely shared across individuals. There is simply no evidence of any such coherent clustering in Granato, Tnglehart, and Leblang' s data to warrant either their narrower claims about achievement motivation or their broader claims about political culture. Given this, Granato, Inglehart, and Leblang's argument that culture drives economic growth is unconvincing, and their empirical analyses are fatally flawed. Specifically, ( I ) the measure of their principal explanatory variable constitutes an ex post " predictor" ; ( 2 ) an ex ante measure of achievement motivation has no systematic effect on subsequent economic growth; ( 3 ) evidence suggests that their measure of culture is more profit­ ably cast as an outcome of economic growth; and ( 4 ) the meaning of that measure of culture is obscure ( Granato, Inglehart, and Leblang to the contrary, it certainly cannot be interpreted as a unidimensional gauge of achievement motivations) . Consider now another attempt t o link culture t o economic growth of­ fered by Swank ( I 99 6 ) . Swank agrees with Inglehart and his collaborators that culture affects growth. However, he proposes that the relevant cul­ tural values involve " communitarian " norms, as opposed to either postma­ terialist or achievement norms. This clearly represents an abrupt shift: 7 . Parallel inconsistencies i n the measurement of cultural values between aggregate and individual levels for a set of Central American countries are reported by Seligson (200 2 ) .

ro8

B E F O RE NOKMS

where achievement norms center on individualistic orientations, com­ munitarian orientations would seem to involve more civic values that incor­ porate norms of altruism, cooperation, and the like. 8 Insofar as these are norms that help individuals avoid collective action problems ( Swank r 9 9 6, 6 7 1 ), they involve the norms of communities rather than of individuals. Swank's analysis departs from those of his predecessors in another way. Where those previous analyses employed survey data from a variety of countries to generate direct national-level scores for different norms, Swank adopts a much less direct approach. Specifically, he proposes that communitarianism has two elements: " corporatism" and " Confucian­ ism . " While opining that culture is "multifaceted," he actually relies on two simple dummy variables to reflect the presence of communitarian values in either a corporatist or a Confucian guise. However, Swank's classification of countries has a decidedly ex post flavor, one that is typical of the tendency toward ex post explanation in the cultural account that we have already noted. Consider his treatment of " Confucianism, " which as it turns out is simply represented by a dummy variable that distinguishes China, Japan, and Korea from the other countries in his analysis. Leave to one side the fact that these three cases are not equally Confucian. It is noteworthy that Confucian values have often been seen as inimical to growth. Weber, of course, went to great lengths to distinguish Puritanism from Confucianism: " Confucian rationalism meant rational adjustment to the world; Puritan rationalism meant rational mastery of the world" ( r 9 5 r , 24 8 ) . Indeed, to provide further substantiation of his argument in The Protestant Ethic, he de­ voted the entire last chapter of The Religion of China to the contrast between the two worldviews . The theme is echoed in more recent treat­ ments. Thus, according to Pye: The Confucian ideal was eminently appropriate for an agrarian society but was detrimental to the development of commerce and industry. Eventually the Confucian tradition of distrust for all that might unsettle the agricultural order worked against the Chinese in their confronta­ tion with the modern industrial and technologically oriented West. ( r 9 9 r b, 3 4 )

A major difficulty with this description i s that i t squares poorly with the strong economic performance of many East Asian economies, the so-called 8. The shift from postmaterialism to communitarianism is perhaps less abrupt, given Tnglehart's claim that postmaterialists display a heightened concern with community.

Civic Virtue, Growth, and Democratization

1 09

tigers, from 1 9 60 to about 1990. There are, of course, different ways of accommodating this new information, One might, for example, conclude that there is no causal link between values and economic growth. Another tack, perhaps more consistent with Festinger ( 1 9 5 7 ) , involves an about­ face on the content of Confucianism to render the latter consistent with the pattern of economic growth already observed. Such is the strategy pro­ posed by pundits like Kahn and implicitly endorsed by Swank: Most readers . . . are familiar with the argument of Max Weber that the Protestant ethic was extremely useful in promoting the rise and spread of modernization. Most readers, however, will be much less familiar with the notion that has gradually emerged in the last two decades that societies based upon the Confucian ethic may in many ways be superior to the West in the pursuit of industrialization, affluence, and moderniza­ tion. (Kahn 1979, 1 2 1; emphasis added)

The " thing" labeled Confucianism is now refurbished as a pro-growth value system, and the East Asian economic "miracle" is thereby ex­ plained. The ex post reasoning here is remarkable.9 What can we learn from Swank's empirical analyses? Table 4 ·4 displays four sets of OLS estimates. The figures in column a contain the estimates for the baseline model of economic growth with which Granato, lnglehart, and Leblang began their analysis. Column b shows the estimates obtained when the two dummy variables for Corporatism and Confucianism pro­ posed by Swank are added to the model; they are similar to those he reports in the third column of his table I, except that they include insignificant parameter estimates for secondary enrollment ratios and investment. Com­ paring the two columns, we see that the coefficients for the two dummy variables are statistically significant and that their addition to the model 9· More recently, and to accommodate the Fast Asian economic crisis of the late T990s, Pye has suggested that the effects of values on economic performance hinge on the circum­ stances of the day. At the same time, he concludes that several of the affected economies have recovered rapidly, a fact that " reflects in part the same cultural factors that contributed to the rapid growth of recent decade s " ( 2ooo, 2 5 5 ) . This conclusion is, of course, at odds with his claim (quoted earlier) of a decade ago (Pye 1 9 9 r b ) , and again the reversal appears to be an ex post adjustment to recent patterns of growth . While there is now less reference to the Asian tigers, the label itself has migrated as Ireland has assumed the mantle of the Celtic tiger (e.g., O 'Hearn T 99 8 ) . Another discussion with much the same tenor centered o n alleged growth-enhancing qualities of Hindu asceticism over forty years ago (sec Singer 1 9 5 6; Goheen et a!. 1 9 5 8 ), a view that stands in stark contrast to Weber's ( 1 9 5 8 b ) own treatment of the topic. That we have heard less of this particular claim more recently doubtless reflects India's weaker economic performance in the ensuing years.

IIO

B E F O RE NOKMS

TABLE 4.4. Regressions of G rowth on Initial G D P, School Enrol l ment Ratios, I nvestment, and Other Sundry C haracteristics Economic Growth, 1 9 60- 8 9 Dependent Variable G D P p e r capita, 1 960 Primary education, 1 9 6 0 Secondary education, 1 9 60 Investment, 1 960- 8 9

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

- . 63 » (4 .4 ) 2.69 ''" (2.2) 3.27" (3.2) 8.69 (1.8)

- .30» (2.7) 3 . 3 0 "' (3.9) .33 (0.4) - 1 .48 (0.4) .69 (1.8) 2 . 9 8 '' (5.7)

-.61» (3.8) 2 .42 (1.8) 3 .40* (3.2) 1 0 . 04 (1.8) - .26 (0.5)

- . 70 ( 0.71 .63

.49 (0.7) .87

-.83 (0.7) . 64

- .2 9 "" (3.3) 1 .64 "' (2.0) .45 (0.7) 2 .46 ( 0.7) .34 (1.1) 2 .40 " ( 5 .4 ) - 1 .3 4 '' (3.5) 1 .5 0 '' (2 . 3 ) .92

"" Corporatism" " Confucianism" " Failed Protestant colonies " Constant

R2

Source: Data are from Granato, lnglehart, and Leblang ( 1 996, appendix table 1), Leblang's website

(sobek.colorado.edu/ � leblang/. Accessed May 2003), and from Swank ( 1 99 6 ) . Note: Coefficients [t-ratios]; N = 25. �·coefficients have t-ratios > 2.0.

improves its fit substantially (the R" increases from .63 to . 8 7 ) . This would appear strongly consistent with Swank' s conclusions. Recall that he claims that both Corporatism and Confucianism have separate, additive effects on growth. As shown in column c of table 4 . 4 , however, w e find n o evidence of a Corporatism effect o n growth when the coefficient for Confucianism is constrained to zero: indeed, the appli­ cable estimate is incorrectly signed and smaller than its standard error. A similar set of estimates is obtained when the set of Confucian economies is excluded from the analysis and the model in column c reestimated (figures not shown ) . Swank's estimates thus appear to be less robust than he believes, and a comparison of columns b and c in table 4·4 reveals that " Confucianism" is the deus ex machina of his analysis . Further perspective on the issue comes from an additional variable. As Swank observes, the 25 economies under consideration encompass some non-Western economies. Among these are several former British colonies, within which there were considerable Protestant missionary efforts dur­ ing the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. ' 0 While some have arro. The literature on these activities is extensive. See, e.g., Ajayi ( r 9 6 5 ) , Du Plessis ( r 9 r r ), Duvall ( r 9 2 8 ) , Messmore ( r 9 0 3 ) , Mitchell ( r 8 9 9 ) , Ross ( r 9 8 6 ) , and Stewart ( r 89 9 ) .

Civic Virtue, Growth, and Democratization

III

gued that missionary activities were on balance growth-enhancing (e.g., Willems 19 5 5 ; Cole I 9 6 I ), these particular efforts were ultimately unsuc­ cessful, as most people in the colonies involved did not convert, thereby rej ecting the entrepreneurial values highlighted by Weber. We would on the average thus expect lower growth rates in these economies. Column d of table 4 · 4 reports the OLS estimates for a model contain­ ing a dummy variable that identifies these " failed Protestant colonies. " Comparing these figures with those in column b shows that " Confucian­ ism" still exerts a marked effect while the coefficient for " failed Protes­ tant colonies" is also correctly signed (negative) with a t-ratio of 3 · 5 · The fit for the model as a whole increases from . 8 7 to . 9 2 , a statistically significant improvement. Following Swank's logic, we might therefore conclude that both factors are important to a complete explanation of economic growth. Caution is in order, however. The three countries identified by Swank ( China, Japan, and South Korea) are indeed often labeled " Confucian, " even though Japan and Korea are not predominantly Confucian (e.g., Pye I 9 8 5 ) . It is also true that the Protestant missions generally failed in the three countries we have identified (India, Nigeria, and South Africa), although Christianity in a more general sense has been successful in South Africa. r r However, these two binary variables are linked in a more funda­ mental manner. The so-called Confucianism dummy actually identifies the three cases with the three highest scores on the dependent variable, namely, economic growth for I 9 6o through I 9 89 . Conversely, the dummy variable we have labeled " failed Protestant colonies" actually designates the three cases with the lowest rates of economic growth. These two " explanatory" variables are thus simply recoded versions of

the dependent variable.

12

Swank's analysis brings new meaning to the problem of selecting on extreme values of the dependent variable. The difficulty with selecting observations for analysis on the basis of such values is well-known (e.g., Geddes 1 99 1 ) . Here, we are asked to go the next step. Identify a subset of such cases and give this subset a name (any name will do) . Create a binary variable that equals one for cases in this subset, and zero otherwise, and r I . The three countries we have identified are unusual in another sense: they are the only three cases for which the components of need for achievement used by Granato, Inglehart, and Leblang cluster together in the manner they anticipated, as we indicated earlier. r 2 . This fact is evident in Granato, lnglehart, and Leblang's figure r ( r 9 9 6, 6 r 2 ) , which plots economic growth against their achievement motivation index. In this figure, China, Japan, and Korea stand out as a distinct cluster in the northeast corner, as do India, Nigeria, and South Africa in the southwest corner.

II2

B E F O RE NOKMS

include i t on the right a s a n explanatory variable. Results are guaranteed, and indeed it is not surprising that " Confucianism" drives Swank's em­ pirical analysis. Whether or not these " Confucian " economies comprise the Elect in a Calvinist sense, then, they certainly are the Select. Our addition of a parameter for " failed Protestant colonies " (for want of a better term ) serves simply to round out Swank's analysis and further improve the fit by taking care of those cases with low scores on the dependent variable. Under no circumstances, of course, do such efforts constitute an explanation: economic growth is not usefully explained by itself. Instead, Swank's analysis simply typifies the ex post tendencies typical of so many cultural explanations of economic development, and it carries them to their inescapable conclusion. Finally, Knack and Keefer ( 1 9 9 7 ) provide perhaps the most sophisti­ cated test of the cultural approach to growth. They evaluate the effect of two measures of social capital-trust and civic association-on the eco­ nomic performance of twenty-nine market economies during the period 1 9 80 through 1 9 9 2, concluding that both factors make sizable indepen­ dent contributions to economic growth and that these effects are rela­ tively robust to outliers and alternative model specifications. Their contribution is noteworthy on two counts . While they employ the World Values Survey (WVS) for their measures of social capital, unlike Granato, lnglehart, and Leblang, Knack and Keefer are keenly aware of the potential endogeneity problems that arise from using the 1 990 WVS surveys to construct variables that " explain " economic growth over the previous decade (Knack and Keefer 1 99 7 , 1 2 5 9 - 60 ) . Where possible, their measures of trust and civic association are based on responses to the 1 9 8 r WVS surveys, and only as a last resort do they employ the 1990 WVS surveys. Second, Knack and Keefer are sensitive to issues of internal valid­ ity. In contrast to previous studies, they explicitly ground their work on the endogenous growth models of Barro ( T 99 T ) and incorporate controls for initial level of wealth, the price level of investment, and primary and secon­ dary schooling ratios into their analyses. The first two columns of table 4· 5 present the estimates we obtain using data provided by Knack to replicate their table I for the effects of trust and civic cooperation, respectively, on economic growth for 1 9 80 through 1 99 2 (Knack and Keefer 1 9 9 7, 1 26 1 ) . The estimates w e obtain are almost identical to those reported in their table I: social capital, in the apparent form of levels of trust and civic association, has a significant positive effect on growth rates even with controls for initial levels of wealth and human capital. While Knack and Keefer's analysis marks a clear improvement over

Civic Virtue, Growth, and Democratization

rr3

previous studies, we do not believe that it appreciably advances the cul­ tural argument, because it, too, is plagued by measurement problems. Although they minimize the ex post problems of Granato, Inglehart, and Leblang's analysis, their use of multiple indicators in the construction of their measure of civic association is problematic. Specifically, it comprises an index formed from responses to these five questions that ask respon­ dents to rank the degree to which a behavior can " always be j ustified" or " never be j ustified" on ten-point scale (Knack and Keefer 1 9 9 7, 1 2 5 6 ) . a ) claiming government benefits which you are not entitled to b ) avoiding a fare o n public transport c ) cheating on taxes if you have the chance TAB LE 4.5.

Trust, Civic Virtue, and G rowth, 1 980-92 (a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

Real GDP p e r capita 1 9 8 0 (OOOs) log GDP per capita 1 9 8 0

- 0 . 3 6 ''" ( 2 .4 )

- 0.27 ( 1 .9)

- 0.32 ''" ( 2. 1 )

- 0 . 3 3 ':· (2.2)

Price level of investment 19 8 0

- 0 .0 4 ''" (3.8) 6 . 1 9 '' (5.3) 2.19 ( 1 .2)

Primary schooling 1 9 60 Secondary schooling 1 9 6 0

- 0.03 ''" (2.5) 5 . 9 '' (4. 5 ) 3 . 4 6 ''"

Secondary schooling 1 9 8 0 0 . 0 8 '' ( 2 .4)

Civic Constant

R2

- 0 .93 (0.7) .63

- 0 . 0 4 ''" ( 3 .4 )

3 . 74 ( 0 .4 ) 7 . 9 1 ''" (3.5) 0.01 ( 0 .4 )

6.57 (0.8) 8 . 24 ''" (3.2)

(f)

- 1 .9 2 ( 1 .6) - 0 . 04 '" (3.2)

- 1 .9 5 ( 1 .6 ) - 0.0 4 ''" (3.5)

13.32 ( 1 .0 ) 8 . 1 7 '" (3.0) 0.00 (0.2)

16.1 1 (1.3) 8 . 14 '" (2.9)

(2.0)

Primary schooling 1 9 8 0

Trust

- 0.0 4 ''" (3.2)

(e )

0.27 ''" (2.5) - 1 0.47" (2.0) .5 4

0.14

(1.1) - 0.95 ( 0. 1 ) .59

- 8.95 (0.8) .60

- 9 .09 (0.8) .57

0.10 (0.9 ) - 1 5 .44 (1.1) .57

Source: Data for columus (a) a n d (b) were generotJSiy provided by Stephen Knack. In columns (c) through ( f ) we u s e t h e Penn World Tables version 5 . 6 (Summers a n d Heston 1 9 9 1 ) a n d the Barro-Lee data s e t as sources for economic and educational data, respectively (these data are available from the National Bureau for Economic Research). Note: The 1980 secondary schooling figure for Switzerland is missing from the Barro-Lee data, and we use an estimated value of .9. Similar estimates to those reported in columns (c) through (f) are obtained when Switzerland is dropped from the analysis. Barro ( 1 997) models substitute a logged version of Real GDP 1 9 8 0 a n d primary a n d secondary schooling 1 9 8 0 for G D P 1 9 8 0 a n d the 1 960 primary a n d secondary school measures used in the Knack and Keefer models. (Coefficients [t-ratios] ; N � 2 9 ) >:·Coefficients have t-ratios > 2.0, calculated using White-corrected standard errors, following Knack and Keefer ( 1 997).

I I4

B E F O RE NOKMS

d ) keeping money that you have found e) failing to report damage you've done accidentally to parked vehicle

It is striking that Knack and Keefer ( r 997, I 2 5 6) used only responses to these five situations, when the WVS question actually includes responses to twenty-four different situations. Why were " claiming government bene­ fits " and " avoiding a fare" included, while " accepting a bribe " and " throw­ ing away litter in a public place " excluded? Nowhere are the criteria for the selection of the five items discussed in the text, and the reader is simply left to assume that the five items employed to construct the civic measure were the only ones available. Setting aside this selectivity question, consider whether the Knack and Keefer measure truly represents a coherent cluster of values. While we find that the five measures cluster at the aggregate level, the measure is much less coherent at the individual level. Individual-level associations are, of course, typically weaker than those observed at the aggregate level. How­ ever, in two countries (Argentina and Brazil) we found that two of the items were negatively related. In each country, respondents who believed it is justified to " claim government benefits which you are not entitled to " tended also to think that one was never j ustified in "keeping money that you have found. " r3 Coupled with issues in the selection of the five items employed, such sign reversals cast serious doubt on the validity of Knack and Keefer's measure of civic cooperation and hence on the meaning of the estimates in the first two columns of table 4 · 5 · In addition to these measurement problems, Knack and Keefer's analy­ sis employs a peculiar specification of the endogenous growth model. Knack and Keefer ( 1 99 7 ) report that they draw directly on Barro ( 1 99 r ) , and indeed they do use some of the same variables, such as initial level of wealth (following Barra's conditional convergence hypothesis) and pri­ mary and secondary schooling (based on the importance of human capi­ tal in fostering economic growth) . However, the estimates in the first two columns of table 4· 5 diverge from Barra's in a key respect. Instead of using a measure of human capital at the beginning of the relevant I J . With a little ingenuity, one can develop explanations for this sign reversal: perhaps confidence in government institutions is so low that people do not feel the same sense of civic responsibility toward the government as they do toward each other. But then one has to account for the fact that the negative relationship between the two items also implies that people who feel that one is never j ustified in claiming government benefits to which they are not entitled arc actually more likely to believe that one is always justified in keeping money that they have found than are those who feel that they are always justified in claiming government benefits ! It is clearly difficult to avoid ad hoc arguments in explaining patterns like these.

Civic Virtue, Growth, and Democratization

II5

period, as does Barro ( 1 99 1 ) , Knack and Keefer elect without explana­ tion to introduce a twenty-year lag. Specifically, they use primary and secondary school enrollment measured in I 9 6o to explain economic growth from 1 9 8 0 to I 9 9 2 . Unfortunately, their conclusions about so­ cial capital and growth hinge entirely on this idiosyncratic and unex­ plained treatment. This is shown in columns c and d of table 4 . 5 , where we substitute I 9 8o measures of human capital for the I 9 6o measures used in the first two columns, Comparing the two sets of models, initial level of wealth and the price level of investment remain negative and statistically signifi­ cant. However, there is an interesting change in the estimates for human capital. While primary school ratios for 1 9 60 are a significant predictor of growth in the models with trust ( column a) and civic ( column b ) , primary school ratios measured in 1 9 8 0 are not (column c o r d ) . The opposite pattern holds when secondary school enrollment ratios 1 9 8 0 are substituted for the 1 9 60 figures. The specification used in columns c and d is not only closer to Barro's model in form, but it also provides esti­ mates that more closely resemble his. Specifically, as noted earlier in connection with table 4 . 1 , we would expect the effects of primary school ratios on economic growth to be indirect (and hence not significant in a single-equation format) because primary schooling is a prerequisite for secondary schooling, which has a significant, positive effect on economic growth (Barro 1997, 1 9 - 2o ) . r4 The most striking difference between the two sets of models across the first four columns of table 4 · 5 involves the coefficients for social capital. The estimated coefficient for trust plummets to .01 (and is much smaller than its standard error), a reduction of about 8 5 percent from its original value of .o8 ( compare columns a and c ) . This is of special note given the primary emphasis Knack and Keefer assign to trust ( 1 9 9 7, 1 2 5 2- 54 ) . While the decline is less precipitous, the coefficient for civic cooperation also drops substantially and is no longer statistically significant when the measures of human capital are for 1 9 8 0 (compare columns b and d of table 4 . 5 ) . Thus, notwithstanding Knack and Keefer's ( 1 9 9 7, 1 2 6 5 - 66 ) claim about the robustness o f their model, their reported estimates for r 4 - Since primary schooling is a prerequisite for secondary schooling, and given that this is a relatively wealthy sample of countries, there is in fact little meaningful variance in primary school enrollment ratios in either 1 9 60 or 1 9 80, while there is much more variance in the secondary enrollment ratios in both periods. In light of this restricted variance for the primary school data, there is little statistical reason to expect a pronounced effect of this variable on growth or any other outcome, and there is every reason to believe that the Knack-Keefer estimate for this coefficient is far from robust.

II6

B E F O RE NOKMS

social capital are driven entirely by their singular decision to employ a twenty-year lag for their measures of human capital. As a final check on the robustness of these figures, the last two columns of the table display the estimates from a model that, following Barra ( 1 99 7 ) , includes the initial level of wealth in logarithmic, rather than raw score, form. With this slight modification, as one would expect, the magni­ tude of the coefficient for the effect of initial wealth on growth increases substantially, although the t-ratios dip a little below 2.0. Coefficients for the other control variables remain quite similar to those reported in col­ umns c and d. Most important, the coefficients for the social capital vari­ ables are reduced even further below the values reported in the two middle columns of the table. This simply reinforces our basic conclusion that social capital is incidental to the explanation of growth, and that Knack and Keefer's suggestion to the contrary stems solely from their unusual and unexplained use of a twenty-year lag for human capital.

V alues an d Democrati c Perform an ce

We turn now to assess recent studies claiming that civic culture enhances democracy. These parallel the analyses of economic growth that we have j ust considered in many respects, except that they consider a broader array of cultural values. Recall from the last section that the analyses of growth centered on postmaterialism, achievement norms, communitari­ anism, and, to a lesser extent, Protestantism. In contrast, Inglehart identi­ fies the following seven indicators of mass political culture as potentially relevant to democratic performance. r . Levels of overall life satis faction 2. Levels of interpersonal trust 3 · Support for revolutionary change 4· Support for the current social order 5. Levels of political discussion 6. Levels of postmaterialist values 7· Proportion of the population Protestant

We have already stressed the consistent claim in cultural accounts that indicators like these form a coherent cluster. Thus, Inglehart describes the first five of these items as constituting "a syndrome of positive attitudes toward the world in which one lives " ( r 990, 4 r ) . Similarly, postmaterial-

Civic Virtue, Growth, and Democratization

I I7

TAB LE 4.6. Product-M oment Correlations among Seven Components of Political C u lture, ci rca 1 980

1. 2. 3. 4.

Satisfaction Trust % Revolutionary <Jio Conservative 5 . % Materialist 6 . % Women discussing 7 . % Protestant

.55 - .57

.36 - .66 .62 .76

2

3

4

5

6

7

22

18 18

18 18 18

21 19

20 18

24 22 18 18 21 20

- .52 .43 - .43 .45

.61

- .40 .41 - . 45 - .24

17

15

17

15 18

- .3 6 .55

- .6 1

.48

- .68

. 76

Source: Data on the first six indicators are from lnglehart ( 1 990, chap. 1 ) ; information on Protestant­ ism is the natural logarithm of the precentage Protestant scores from Taylor and Hudson ( 1 9 72 ) . Note: Entries below t h e main diagonal a r e pairwise correlation coefficients, a n d entries above the main diagonal indicate the number of cases for which those correlations are calculated .

ists are said to place special weight on quality of life issues and on the sense of community, both of which involve the altruism, cooperative spirit, and general civic-mindedness typically associated with civic virtue. Finally, Protestantism is also described as part of this syndrome ( s o ) . ' 5 I s there evidence that these measures of political culture form an underly­ ing coherent cluster of attitudes, as claimed by Inglehart ? Table 4 . 6 dis­ plays the correlations among the seven indicators of political culture. Be­ cause some of these indicators are available for more countries than others, we report pairwise correlation coefficients below the main diagonal and indicate the number of cases over which the correlations are calculated above the main diagonal . 1 6 Given the coding of the variables, the signs of the coefficients are all as expected. Yet the most striking feature of these correlations is their comparatively modest size, given that they are calcu­ lated for national aggregates. Ignoring signs, the 2r correlations in the table range from . 24 to . 7 6, with a mean value of . 5 2. Only 2 (approxi­ mately ro percent) exceed . 70, which translates into an R2 of . 5 0. This means that only in these 2 pairings of indicators is more than half the variance shared. Across the remaining r 9 pairings, the shared variances are r 5. Measures of the first six indicators of political culture are from variou s tables in Inglehart ( r 990, chap . r) and refer to the early r 9 8os. Following Inglehart ( r 990, s r ), figures on political discussion rates arc for women only. Data on the last indicator, percent­ age Protestant circa r 9 6 5 , are from Taylor and Hudson ( r 9 7 2 ) . Given its distribution, the variable u sed in table 4 . 6 is the natural logarithm of the percentage Protestant (plus r ) . r 6. Despite his claim that these variables form a coherent cluster, Ingle hart does not himself report a correlation matrix (or factor analysis) that includes all the variables shown in table 4 . 6 . A factor analysis of these variables seems unwise in view of ( r ) the lack of structure in the correlations in table 4.6 and ( 2 ) the variation across the items in the incidence of missing data that is evident a hove the main diagonal.

II8

B E F O RE NOKMS

considerably smaller. The modest size o f most o f the correlations in table 4 . 6 challenges the assertion that these indicators are all components of a single enduring and distinctive cluster of cultural traits. An alternative way of gauging whether these indicators form a well­ defined configuration is to see if they are generated by the same underlying economic conditions. Civic virtue should be more widespread within the wealthier democracies, all else equal, for the reasons advanced by Inglehart (among other things, national wealth takes time to accumulate and is therefore a long-term condition that changes comparatively slowly) . By the same token, civic virtue should be less sensitive to shorter-term economic conditions (e.g., economic growth in the recent past) or economic condi­ tions that are more prone to temporal fluctuation (e.g., levels of unemploy­ ment ) . Moreover, the claim that the indicators form a coherent cultural cluster necessarily implies that they should each respond in a similar man­ ner to the same economic conditions. Table 4 · 7 reports the estimates from regressions of the indicators of political culture on economic conditions. These estimates involve sepa­ rate regressions of the first six components from table 4 . 6 (all of which entail values measured in r 9 8o or very shortly thereafter), but exclude the measure of Protestantism, which is for circa r 9 6 5 . The six elements are regressed on national wealth, as indexed by the logarithm of real GDP per capita for r 9 8o; economic growth over the previous decade, as mea­ sured by growth in real GDP per capita ( r 9 7o- 8 o ) ; and the level of unemployment for r 9 8 o . Il The cultural argument, of course, implies that the explanatory variables in table 4· 7 should have similar effects on each of the six component indicators. From the first row of the table, we see that national differences in overall levels of life satisfaction are sensitive to the level of economic development and economic growth over the prior decade but do not vary with levels of unemployment. Specifically, levels of satisfaction are higher in wealthier countries and in those countries that experienced lower growth rates over the previous ten years. This pattern is repeated in the estimates for the percentage materialist. 1 8 In contrast, when we turn to levels of interpersonal trust in the second row of the table, only the coefficient for unemployment is statistically significant. Levels of distrust apparently increase with unemployment but are insensitive to either the I J . Data for levels and growth of real GDP are from Summers and Heston ( r 99 r ) ; those for levels o f unemployment arc from OECD ( r 99 r ) . r 8 . The sign reversals here merely reflect the coding o f the dependent variable (percent­ age materialist minus percentage postmaterialist) , so the coefficients in the fifth row show that postmaterialism increases with level of development and decreases with prior growth.

Civic Virtue, Growth, and Democratization

I I9

TABLE 4.7. Regressions of Com ponents of Political Culture, circa 1 980, on Basic Economic Conditions Dependent Variable

Per Capita GDP 1 9 8 0

GDP GrO\vth

1 970- 80

Unemployment

Constant

R2

N

Satisfaction

1 . 1 9 "" (2.6) 0.73 (0 . 1 ) - 3 .93"" (2.0) 10.80 (1.8) - 1 9. 1 6 "" (2.6) 1 1 .94 ( 1 .2)

-2.96"" (2.2 ) -28.91 (1.1 ) 1 0.20 (1.5) 25.53 ( 1 .2 ) 57.9 8 ''" (2.6 ) - 4 1 .4 1 ( 1 .2 )

- .02 (0.5 ) - 2.46'; (2.6) 0.52'; (2.2) - 1 .84'; (2.5 ) 0.29 (0.4) - 1 .88 ( 1.9)

- 2 . 76 (0.6) 56.65 (0.7) 35.94 (1.8) - 7 1 .53 ( 1 . 2) 1 8 1 .3 3 ''" (2.5 ) - 3 0 .42 (0.3 )

.60

20

.37

18

.58

16

.55

16

.64

19

.46

18

Trust

o/o Revolutionary IJ"o Conservative % Materialist % Women discussing

Source: for the dependent variables, see table 1 . GDP data are from Summers and Ileston ( 1 9 9 1 ) and unemployment data are from OECD ( 1 9 9 1 ) . '"Coefficients have 1-ratios > 2 . 0 . (Coefficients [1-ratios] )

level of development or growth in the recent past. A similar pattern is obtained with the percentage of women discussing politics in the bottom row of the table (its coefficient has a t-ratio of 1 .9 ), suggesting that political interest declines with increasing unemployment. Finally, the two items on support for the existing social order behave in a parallel manner (reflecting in part the fact that they are based on different responses to the same question ) . Support for the current order is higher in wealthier coun­ tries and in those with lower unemployment, but it does not vary with recent growth. ' 9 Overall, the patterns apparent i n table 4 · 7 reinforce the inferences drawn from table 4 . 6. The six " components" of political culture do not form a coherent general structure : instead, they are sensitive to different factors. Even the first three components in the table do not cluster to­ gether, despite Inglehart's ( 1 990, 4 4 ) use of these three as a summary measure of political culture. Moreover, the similarities that are evident in table 4 · 7 are not clearly interpretable: why, for example, should life satisfaction and materialism respond differently to economic conditions than do levels of trust and the percentage of women who discuss politics ? Finally, insofar as growth in the recent past and levels of unemployment reflect shorter-term economic patterns, the fact that these two variables r 9 · The same patterns as those reported in table 4 - 7 are obtained if the measure of economic growth is taken to cover an even shorter period ( r 9 7 5 - 8 o ) that focuses on economic performance after the oil shock of 1974-

120

B E F O RE NOKMS

influence some but not all of the components i s incompatible with the interpretation that the latter represent enduring cultural values.20 What then of Inglehart's claim that culture influences the success of democracy? His argument depends on two pieces of evidence. First, he reports a correlation of . 8 5 between life satisfaction and democracy ( 1 990, 4 2 ) . Second, he asserts that the effects of economic development on democracy are mediated by the proportion of the labor force in the tertiary sector and by " civic culture " (as reflected in levels of life satisfac­ tion and interpersonal trust, and support for revolutionary change) . How­ ever, the meaning one attaches to these associations hinges decisively on how one identifies " s uccessful democracies. " The particular measure used by Tnglehart ( 1990) is a count of the years of continuous democracy from 1 9 00 through 1 9 8 6. Unfortunately, the measure and the research design within which it is employed contain several anomalies. First, as one would correctly expect given the title of his book, the countries analyzed by lnglehart consist almost exclusively of the advanced industrial societies (the notable exceptions in his figure r . 5 are Argentina, Hungary, and South Africa llnglehart 1 990, 4 2] ) . Their levels o f democratic performance a s o f the early t o middle 1 9 8os were, as a result, all roughly equivalent ( see Bollen 1 99 3 ) . However, under this procedure, Belgium, which is coded as continuously demo­ cratic since 1 9 00, is measured as being three times more democratic than France, whose democratic history is coded as beginning in r 9 5 �L The j udgment that Belgium really was approximately three times more demo­ cratic than France by 1 9 8 0 is untenable, given any reasonable set of criteria for democratic performance. Second, lnglehart's use of 1 900 as the starting date ignores the fact that the meaning of democracy has evolved considerably over the past century, especially in terms of what Dahl ( 1 9 7 1 ) has labeled inclusiveness. When 20. Clarke and Dutt ( 1 99 1 ) found a similar problem. The resu lts from their pooled cross-sectional time-series analysis of eight countries over the period 1 9 7 6 through 1 9 8 6 indicate "that sharp increases i n unemployment i n the early 1 9 8os make i t appear, based on the four-item measure, that there was a substantial shift toward postmaterialism in several countrie s . " They conclude that the upward trend stemmed more from "the failure to include an unemployment statement in the measure " than from changes in underlying values ( 1 9 9 1 , 9 1 8 ) . In another pooled analysis of some of these items from eight countries, Clarke, Dutt, and Kornberg ( 199 3 ) provide further evidence of the sensitivity of these items to short-run economic and political circumstances including inflation, unemployment, fluc­ tuations in support for political parties, and rally-around-the-flag events. O uch and Taylor ( 1 9 9 3 ) reach the parallel conclusion that apparent shifts in postmaterialism stem dispropor­ tionately from the inclusion of an inflation item in the index (see also Clarke, Dutt, and Rapkin 1 9 9 7 ) . All of these analyses underscore the sensitivity of lnglehart's measures to short-term rather than long-term economic conditions.

Civic Virtue, Growth, and Democratization

121

one recalls the typical restrictions o n suffrage based o n gender, income, and race a century ago, the implications of this evolution become self­ evident: since 1 9 00, none of the countries so coded by Inglehart has been continuously democratic in a contemporary sense. This problem under­ mines all attempts to identify a binary starting date after which a country can be considered democratic and before which it cannot. 2 ' Third, lnglehart's analysis does not help account for levels of demo­ cratic performance because his research design selects cases according to their (high) values on that dependent variable (see Geddes 1 99 1 ) , Varia­ tions in political culture (or any other potential explanatory variable) cannot logically be used to account for fundamentally uniform degrees of political democracy. That Tnglehart's measure includes more variance does not obviate the problem, It simply means that his measure inadver­ tently conflates democracy with at least one other variable-political stability (Bollen and Jackman 1 9 8 9 ) .22 Given these limitations, the associations reported by lnglehart should most plausibly be taken to reflect covariation between certain cultural values and stability, not between culture and democratic performance. They therefore do not address the issues that have motivated scholars, at least since Almond and Verba, concerning the impact of democratic (i.e., civic) values on democratic performance. Further, these associations can­ not logically sustain the causal argument at stake, because that argument implies that the distribution of values identified in surveys administered in the early 1 9 80s gave rise to the stability of constitutional orders over the preceding eighty-five years. Apparently dissatisfied with the potpourri of cultural attributes ad­ dressed by lnglehart, Muller and Seligson ( 1 9 9 4 ) seek t o narrow the field. Specifically, they take issue with Inglehart's argument that civic cultures 2L That the meaning of democracy has evolved considerably over the last century does not mean that the concept is inherently two-dimensional (lnglehart T997, T 6 6 ) . And even if it were, the subsequent use of a single (unidimensional) measure of democratic stability is unwarranted. 2 2 . Duch and Taylor point to a related problem: " Recent survey evidence from the Soviet Union and Eastern and Central Europe suggests the mass public embraces postmateri­ alist values in spite of the serious economic penury they have endured" ( 1 9 9 3 , 7 5 3 ) . lnglchart explains this apparent anomaly b y noting that "the crucial factor i s security during one's formative years, and it is dear that the communist regimes of Eastern Europe provided a relatively secure existence " (lnglehart T 99 2, T 4 , i n D u c h a n d Taylor T 9 9 3 , 7 5 3 ) . I n making this argument lnglehart confounds economic security and economic develop­ ment. The result is an unfalsifiablc argument: " Economic security drives postmatcrialism, but if we see high levels of postmaterialism and low economic development at the same time, then factors other than economic wealth have promoted economic security " (Duch and Taylor T 9 9 3 , 7 5 3 ) .

I22

B E F O RE NOKMS

i n general influence the process o f democratization. They conclude in­ stead that only one cultural element seems to play a causal role in democ­ ratization, namely, the proportion of the population that prefers gradual social reform. Other cultural variables-such as the level of overall life satisfaction, the level of interpersonal trust, the proportion supporting revolutionary change, and the proportion wishing to defend their " pres­ ent society . . . against all subversive forces " -have no such effects, ac­ cording to Muller and Seligson. They further argue that income inequal­ ity is a key explanatory variable, such that the process of democratization is inhibited where income inequality is high, but we focus primarily on their claims about culture. Muller and Seligson's inferences are based on the estimates from a series of regression analyses that regress degree of democracy in the 1 9 8os on degree of democracy for the 1 9 70s, along with a series of cultural and other characteristics for a sample of 2 5 countries. After deleting a series of statistically insignificant variables on the basis of a stepwise regression analysis, they focus on the " trimmed" set of estimates displayed in the first column of table 4 . 8 . However, a n alternative set o f estimates generated b y median regres­ sion shown in the second column of table 4 . 8 indicates a somewhat different pattern. The estimated coefficients on culture and ethnic frac­ tionalization in column b are about a third smaller than the correspondTABLE 4.8. Estimates of M u l ler and Seligson's Basic M odel Democracy 1 9 8 0s Dependent Variable Democracy 1 970s Income share o f top 2 0 % Belief i n gradualism Ethnic fractionalization Constant

R'

(b)

(a)

.29 I 1 .2 ) - 1 .66 '' (2.1) .39 (0.9) - .12 (0.8) 1 1 1 . 80 I 1.9) .64

.32 '' (2.5) - 1 .60 '' (4 . 1 ) .62 '' (2.8) - . 1 6 '' (2.2) 94.34 '' (3. 1 ) .89

Source: Data from Muller and Seligson ( 1 994) and Taylor and Hud­

son ( 1 972, table 4. 1 5 ) . Note: Column ( a ) � O L S estimates, column ( b ) sion estimates. (Coefficients [t-ratios]; N = 2 5 ) >:· coefficients have !-ratios > 2.0.

�

Median regres­

Civic Virtue, Growth, and Democratization 1 00

(f) 0 co OJ

Ar

•

. nt

60

• •

ro

()) 0

Portug •

• •

Hondur •

>. u 0 0 E

•

Spain •

80

123

Panama •

40

• •

20

0 0

20

40

60

80

1 00

Democracy 1 970s Fig, 4, 1 ,

Democracy 1 980s against Democracy 1 9 70s

ing estimates in column a. These shifts in the coefficients with the median regression procedure are of special interest given that this estimator is less sensitive to peculiarities in the distribution of the dependent variable than is OLS.2l Additionally, two of the four coefficients ( including that on culture) are now smaller than their standard errors, while a third is barely larger than its standard error. Only the coefficient on income inequality retains a plausible t-ratio (although that ratio is about half the size of the comparable t-ratios for the first two columns ) . These shifts in the median regression coefficients suggest that the figures in the first column of table 4 . 8 are less robust than they appeared to Muller and Seligson. To probe the sources of the differences across estimators in table 4 . 8 , w e plot measured democracy i n the r 9 8os against measured democracy in the 1 9 70s. The pattern is displayed in figure 4 . 1 and reveals the prob­ lem starkly. Muller and Seligson proceed as if there are 25 cases in the 2 3 . Median regression (also known as least absolute value regression) fits hy minimiz­ ing the sum of absolute (as opposed to squared) residuals. The resulting estimates arc thus less sensitive than OLS to skewed dependent variables, paralleling the differences between medians and means as measures of central tendency (see Berk 1 9 9 0 ) . All calculations were made with the STATA 7.0 statistical package.

1 24

B E F O RE NOKMS

analysis, and indeed they claim that their sample o f countries " contains reasonably large variation on change in democracy that corresponds to the global trend of the 1 9 70s and r 9 8os" ( 1 994, 64 6 ) . However, fully 2 0 of those 2 5 cases are o n o r around the main diagonal. I n other words, any discernible variance in democratization over the period occurs in only 5 of the cases, a small minority of the total. Further, of the 20 cases on the main diagonal, r 5 are bunched together in the extreme northeast corner of the plot. With its five parameters, the model in table 4 . 8 thus comes very close to fitting an individual parameter for each of the 5 cases that exhibit any meaningful variance in change in democratization and is neither an effective nor an elegant summary of general patterns in the data.24 The consequences of the restricted variance in democratization be­ come clear when the basic model in table 4 . 8 is revised to include country dummy variables for the two cases with the most extreme residuals in figure 4 . 1 , namely, Spain and Argentina (these two cases could equiva­ lently be removed from the analysi s ) . 25 Table 4 · 9 displays the results. Even with the OLS figures in column a, the coefficients on income inequal­ ity and belief in gradualism drop substantially. The median regression estimates in column b are even less ambiguous: the coefficient on lagged democracy is effectively T .o, and all of the remaining three substantive coefficients plunge dramatically in magnitude. The coefficient on income inequality drops from - . 9 1 to - . 2 5 ; that for belief in gradualism goes from .4 2 to . 1 4 ; and the estimated coefficient for ethnic fractionalization is reduced from - . 1 7 to - .07. In other words, with just two cases re­ moved, we see that in this data set democracy in the 1 9 8os is basically a perfect function of democracy in the 1 9 70s and nothing else, consistent with the pattern in figure 4· r . Thus, there is simply no basis for the conclusion that the cultural variables examined by Muller and Seligson, including " belief in gradualism," have any discernible effects on rates of democratization. Indeed, in broader terms, any such effects would be difficult to inter24- One way in which Muller and Seligson evaluate the robu stness of their estimates is by examining the residuals (see their fig. 3 ) . However, because their model is overfitted in the manner j ust described, the residuals arc not especially informative. Given the ovcrfitting and the lack of variance in democratization, we would expect the residuals to appear to be relatively well-behaved, and this is indeed the case. The problem we have just described doubtless accounts for the fact that when we attempted to estimate this model with a robust estimator, the model did not achieve convergence. 2 5 . This, of course, is a standard diagnostic procedure, and the t-ratios for these coun­ try dummy variables are equal to the studentized residuals for the same observations (see, e.g., Roll en and Jackman r990, 2 64 ) .

Civic Virtue, Growth, and Democratization

125

pret, since cultural values are supposed to reflect deep-seated social norms that evolve very slowly over time, if they change at alL We would indeed be j ustly skeptical of the validity of any measure of support for gradual reform that was itself subj ect to pronounced temporal fluctua­ tion. Given this, it is difficult to develop a convincing substantive ratio­ nale for the proposition that entrenched cultural norms could in principle explain both democratic collapses and subsequent democratic restora­ tions in the short term (that is, from the 1 9 70s to the 1 9 8 o s ) . For ex­ ample, the coup that preceded the 1 9 8 2 restoration in Argentina that figures so prominently in Muller and Seligson's analysis occurred only six years earlier. It is implausible to argue that there was a massive shift in cultural values involving beliefs about gradualism, a shift logically im­ plied by their argument, that could account for both events. Similar considerations apply to cases like Chile (not included in Muller and Seligson's analysis ) , where the military j unta lasted a little longer ( sixteen years ) . Since beliefs about gradualism are deep-seated, it is especially awkward in this instance to link nonchanges in a potential explanatory variable with changes in a given outcome ( democratization) over a rela­ tively short period. TABLE 4.9. Estimates for a Modified Specification Using Mu ller and Seligson's Data Democracy 1 9 8 0s Dependent Variable Democracy 1 9 70s Income share of top 2 0 % Belief in gradualism Ethnic fractionalization Spain dummy Argentina dummy Constant

R'

(b)

(a)

. 9 5 ''" (4.0) - .25 (0.4) .14 (0.6) - .07 (0.9) 3 5 .4 8 '' (2.9) 3 5 .46 '' (4.3) 7.42 (0.2) .72

. 5 6 '' ( 3 .0 ) - .9 1 ( 1 .6 ) .42 I 1 .7) - . 1 7 '' (2.3) 1 7 . 74 I 1 .4 ) 1 8 .93 ( 1 .8 ) 55 .02 I 1 .5 ) .91

Source: Data from Muller a n d Seligson ( 1 994) and Taylor and

Iludson ( 1 972, table 4. 1 5 ) . Note: Column ( a ) � O L S estimates, column ( b ) sion estimates. (Coefficients [t-ratios] ; N = 2 .5 ) *Coefficients have t-ratios > 2.0.

�

Median regres­

I26

B E F O RE NOKMS

The most recent example of a n attempt to connect values with demo­ cratic performance is reported by Inglehart ( r 9 9 7 ) . This analysis is note­ worthy on at least four counts. First, it includes data through I 9 9 5 . Second, i t draws o n newer survey data from a considerably expanded set of cases covering more than forty countries. Third, Inglehart examines the impact of cultural factors on both democratic stability and changes in democracy. Fourth, in contrast to the variety of cultural factors that we discussed earlier in this section, the newer analysis centers primarily on two cultural syndromes: levels of overall life satisfaction and levels of interpersonal trust. Of these, Inglehart attaches special significance to the former. Satisfaction with one's life as a whole is far more conducive to political legitimacy than is a favorable opinion of the political system itself . . . . Politics is a peripheral aspect of most people's lives; and satisfaction with this specific domain can rise or fall overnight. But if one feels that one's life as a whole has been going well under democratic institutions, it gives rise to a relatively deep, diffuse, and enduring basis of support for those institutions. Such a regime has built up a capital of mass support that can help the regime weather bad times. Precisely because overall life satisfaction is deep rooted and diffuse, it provides a more stable basis of support for a given regime than does political satisfac­ tion. ( r 997, r 7 6- 7 7 )

Not surprisingly, overall life satisfaction features centrally i n the analysis. In particular, Inglehart reports that life satisfaction is associated with democratic stability, from which he infers that higher levels of such satisfac­ tion enhance the long-term viability of democratic institutions. He further reports that satisfaction is negatively associated with short-run transitions toward democracy. This leads him to a second conclusion that authoritar­ ian regimes become vulnerable to replacement with decreasing levels of mass satisfaction, but that the viability of the resulting ( democratic) re­ placement regime hinges on whether levels of satisfaction increase substan­ tially after the transition. The second conclusion is somewhat unwieldy, given the associated claim that levels of satisfaction exhibit considerable temporal stability. Although it is required by his first inference, this associ­ ated contention logically implies that sufficient increases in mass levels of satisfaction after democratic transitions required to enhance the viability of the new regime are unlikely to occur. Let us therefore briefly consider the two maj or claims. First, the suggestion that life satisfaction impinges on the long-term

Civic Virtue, Growth, and Democratization

1 27

viability of democratic regimes echoes Inglehart's ( 1990) earlier linkage of values with democratic stability and suffers from the same problems. The claim most notably invokes a value measured in 1 990 to " explain" the stability of democratic institutions, almost all of which was experienced over the previous seventy years. While Inglehart offers a j ustification of this usage, it is not a compelling one, because it leaps from limited evi­ dence on temporal stability over an approximately twenty-year period to make the much more extensive claim of temporal stability over the seventy-five years from 1 9 2 0 through 1 99 5 .26 The j ustification is also selective: for example, evidence from panel data using similar items sug­ gests considerable response instability over time at the individual level (see, e.g., Clarke and Dutt 1 9 9 1 ) . 27 Just as achievement norms as of 1 990 cannot be invoked t o explain economic growth over the previous three decades, life satisfaction gauged in 19 9 0 cannot plausibly be summoned as an explanation of democratic stability over the preceding seven decades. Observe further that the newer measure is simply an updated version of Inglehart's index of democratic stability that now covers the years from 1 9 2 0 to 1 9 9 5 and is subject to all of the same problems that we have already addressed. For example, there remains no clear rationale for specifying a precise date on which democracy was initiated. Belgium is thus still cast as more than twice as democratic as France, an indefen­ sible j udgment given any standard criteria. Taken in conjunction with the temporal ordering problem, this means that there is no credible evidence to suggest that the long-term viability of democratic institutions hinges in any way on national levels of overall life satisfaction, or on any other cultural value. The second new broad empirical claim is that low levels of satisfaction undermine authoritarian regimes and thereby enhance the prospects for democratic transitions, at least in the short run. The basis for this conclu­ sion is an analysis of changes in democracy from 1 990 to 199 5, as reflected in changes in national ratings of political rights and political liberties 26. In making his case for temporal stability, lnglehart further observes that the over­ time correlations of about ·9 for national levels of trust and satisfaction are similar to the over-time correlation for levels of GNP per capita. He then analogizes that, since levels of wealth arc "a relatively stable attribute of most societies " ( r 997, r 8 6 ), cultural values must be stable as well. But that even he does not take this claim seriously is evident from the fact that he devotes his subsequent chapter to an analysis of cross-country differences in eco­ nomic growth rates. 27. In addition, our table 4 · 7 shows evidence suggesting that levels of satisfaction arc sensitive to short-term patterns of economic growth in the preceding period. Again, this evidence is inconsistent with the argument that levels of satisfaction are stable over the very long haul.

I28

B E F O RE NOKMS

assigned by Freedom House over these two years. Inglehart ( r 997, 203 ) regresses changes in democracy on levels of satisfaction and trust, the proportion of the work force in the service sector, the proportion of the age-eligible population in higher education, and per capita GNP. The esti­ mates obtained are similar to those shown in column a of table 4 . 1 0 and suggest that of all the explanatory variables considered, only levels of satisfaction have a significant, negative effect on changes in democracy. In contrast to Inglehart's estimates involving levels of democratic sta­ bility, the figures in column a of this table are not plagued by problems of temporal ordering. Even so, they are incomplete on two counts. First, the dependent variable involves change scores that are subject to floor and ceiling effects. For example, the T9 9 0 Freedom House ratings for most West European democracies were at or close to the maximum ( demo­ cratic) value, so that they could not even in principle increase over the next five years. It is customary when analyzing such change scores to include a control for the first value in the regression analysis ( see, e.g., Jackman r9 8 o ) , which in this case is the r990 democracy rating from Freedom House. This control enables us to gauge how much democratizaTABLE 4. 1 0. Regressions of Changes in Democracy, 1 990-95, on C ultural and Economic Characteristics Changes in Democracy, 1 9 9 0 - 9 5 Dependent Variable

(a)

Democracy 1 9 9 0 Satisfaction 1 990 Trust 1 9 9 0

o/o i n Service Sector % i n Higher Education GNP per capita 1 990 (OOOs )

- .0 8 '' ( 2.2 ) - .02 (0.4) - .08 (0.8) .06 ( 1 .5 ) .02 (0.4)

(h) - 1 .07" (8.4) - .0 1 (0.4) - .03 ( 1 .0 ) .12 ( 1 .7) .06 (1.9) . 1 4 '' (2.6)

Log per capita GNP, 1 9 9 0 Constant

R2

8 . 5 8 *' (2.1) .40

Source: Data are from Inglehart ( 1 997, appendix 3 ) .

5 . 5 7 '' (2. 1 ) . 74

(c)

(d)

- 1 .08* (8.7) - . 006 (0.2) - . 03 (0.9) .06 ( 1 .2 ) .02 (1.1)

- 1 .03 '' (12.1)

1 . 72 * (4.9) -4.90 ( 1 .5 ) .82

1.91" (5.5) -4.65 ( 1 . 7) .80

Note: O L S estimates; t-ratios calculated using heteroskedasticity-consistent standard errors. (Coeffi­ cients [t-ratios]; N = 42) "'Coefficients have !-ratios > 2.0.

Civic Virtue, Growth, and Democratization

1 29

tion took place, given the initial democracy level of each country, Such a control is especially important when the change score is calculated from variables like the Freedom House ratings that have upper and lower limits . We therefore control for initial level of democracy in column b of table 4 . r o . Comparing columns a and b, we see that this control results in a precipitous drop in the coefficient estimate for levels of satisfaction (from - .o 8 to o r ) , accompanied by a substantial increase in the coefficient estimate for per capita GNP. These shifts are accompanied by an equally dramatic increase in goodness of fit (the R2 shifts from .40 to . 74 ) . Diagnostic checks on the estimates i n this column reveal that the linear term for per capita GNP conceals a nonlinear relationship. Such a pattern has been well-documented in cross-country studies of democracy, which suggest that economic development has a declining marginal effect on democratic performance ( see, e.g., Jackman 1 9 7 3 ; Bollen and Jackman I 9 8 s ; Burkhart and Lewis-Beck 1 9 9 4 ) . Accordingly, we transform per capita GNP, and the modified estimates are shown in column c of table 4 . r o . These revised figures reveal an even more pronounced GNP effect, and there is a further appreciable improvement in the fit of the model (the R2 increases from ·74 to . 8 2 ) . Finally, there is no evidence of the culture effect on change in democracy proposed by Inglehart. Neither of the esti­ mates for the two cultural variables in column c approaches statistical significance, and neither the fit of the model nor the estimate for initial level of democracy or for per capita GNP is affected appreciably by the inclusion of the other independent variables (compare columns c and d ) . Given the foregoing, w e believe there is n o systematic evidence that links cultural values either to the longer-term viability of democratic institutions or even to shorter-term transitions to democracy. The evi­ dence on economic development is interesting, however, indicating as it does that the often-noted connection between national wealth and demo­ cratic performance has implications for shorter-term patterns of democra­ tization in more recent years . Specifically, the estimates in table 4 . 1 0 show that national wealth increases the prospects for democratization, even within the last fifteen years. -

.

Con clusions

In this chapter we have evaluated recent cross-country studies contending that values affect economic growth and democratic performance. We conclude that none of these analyses makes an effective case for a cultural

I30

B E F O RE NOKMS

interpretation. Instead, the claims o f each o f the studies are driven by one or more enigmatic empirical decisions without which the argument does not work. These decisions, in turn, are idiosyncratic to the study being considered. First, while all the studies suggest that " culture " makes a difference, what they actually count as culture is another matter. In the case of economic growth, Inglehart ( r 990) initially attached great significance to materialist values. The subsequent analysis by Granato, Inglehart, and Leblang ( 1 9 9 6 ) , however, shifts attention to achievement orientations, but in so doing asserts an ongoing consistency with Inglehart's original study. For Swank ( r 9 9 6 ) , culture is embodied in communitarianism, which, with its emphasis on group values, would seem to represent quite a break with Inglehart's initial materialism, which has a more individualis­ tic focus. Knack and Keefer ( 1 9 9 7 ) place most weight on levels of trust, with a subsidiary emphasis on civic-mindedness. The studies of democrati­ zation are similarly variegated. Inglehart originally invoked a number of values ( including satisfaction, support for the current order, and material­ ism), arguing that they are all part of a coherent underlying worldview. Muller and Seligson ( r 994 ), however, shift attention to support for grad­ ual change as the key cultural value enhancing democracy. Most recently, Tnglehart ( 1 9 9 7 ) has changed tack yet again, assigning most weight to levels of satisfaction and (to a lesser extent) trust. While each of these studies thus claims to establish the importance of culture, the operational procedures they actually employ reveal that each of them means something different by the term. Our appraisal has shown that the results obtained are a function of these operational idiosyncra­ sies . We have further shown that the different approaches employed are far from interchangeable manifestations of a coherent underlying set of cultural norms. Second, following the anthropological analyses of culture from the r9 50s and r 9 6os on which they draw, the analyses we have examined betray a fundamental tendency toward ex post explanation.28 Thus, like many other commentators, Swank invokes Confucianism as responsible for the growth of certain East Asian economies, an assertion that makes sense only in the light of the growth already observed in those economies. Given their earlier growth rates, such a claim for the countries involved would have seemed preposterous in, say, 1 9 50 or 1 9 60, even though their cultures then were presumably no less " Confucian" than they are now. 2 8 . For discussions of the ways this problem is manifested in the older anthropological studies, see among others, Spiro ( T 9 87, esp. chaps. T, 2 ) , Brown ( T 9 9 T ) , a n d Billig ( r 994 ) .

Civic Virtue, Growth, and Democratization

13 r

And if Confucianism was responsible for growth in the 1 9 70s and r 9 8 os, what leverage does it provide on the Asian economic crisis of the late 1990s? A similar ex post flavor permeates the work by Inglehart and his associates and (to a lesser extent) by Knack and Keefer, which employs cultural values measured at the end of a given period to explain growth or democratization in the preceding decades . It is difficult to take such conclusions seriously. Finally, the studies we have examined are plagued by the presence of influential cases, that is, by the presence of a small minority of countries that are driving the reported results. As a result, the inferences drawn do not reflect general patterns in the data. The problem is conspicuous, for example, in the Muller and Seligson study, in which only a small minority of the countries examined actually experienced democratization in the period. As we have shown, the claimed cultural effect in this study dis­ appears with j ust two cases removed. The problem is equally glaring in Swank's analysis, in which the measure of Confucianism is simply a recoded version of the dependent variable that singles out the three cases with the highest rate of economic growth in the period. Economic growth is thus inadvertently invoked to explain itself. These problems taken as a whole generate a set of noncumulative results and thereby signify an empirical research program grounded on a set of ad hoc assumptions. This may seem a strong judgment, but one comes away from studies like these with the distinct impression that proponents of the cultural approach are willing to do whatever it takes to spawn the desired results. If each spawning requires a different stimulus, that fact, to the extent that it is recognized at all, seems implicitly to be regarded as intrinsic to the research endeavor. Perhaps this analytic strat­ egy is to be expected, since the theoretical foundations on which the cultural perspective rests are as tenuous as the empirical foundations we have evaluated. We have suggested that a more plausible approach to the kinds of values we have discussed is to treat them as endogenous, that is, to cast values as a response to the conditions within which people find themselves and the constraints and opportunities that thereby confront them. We provided some evidence along these lines earlier in this chapter by showing that achievement norms, measured in 1 990, are plausibly viewed as a function of economic growth in the preceding decades along with levels of human capital (see table 4 . 2 and the surrounding discussion) . Yet this evidence is weak and incomplete, given our reservations about the particular measure of achievement norms on which it is based ( see table 4 . 3 ) . We can pursue the question a little further. Recall that in his analysis of

I32

B E F O RE NOKMS

democratization, Inglehart ( r 9 9 7 ) places considerable emphasis o n levels of overall life satisfaction (or sense of well-being ) . Indeed, he takes satis­ faction as the principal measure of political legitimacy, one that signifies diffuse levels of support for the existing order. If this is the case, the endogenous-values perspective would lead us to cast levels of satisfaction as a positive function of democratic and economic performance. Since this variable is measured for 1 990, it can usefully be employed to illus­ trate the endogenous-values position. Accordingly, we regress national levels of life satisfaction on national levels of democratic performance for r9 90 and per capita GNP for r 990. This yields the following estimates: Satisfaction 1 990 = 8 . 00 + 3 . 6 5 (Democracy 1 990) + 0.78 ( GNP 1 990) (2 . 3 ) (4.7) ( 1 .2 ) R 2 = . 7 1 , N = 42,

where t-ratios are reported in parentheses .29 These figures are strongly consistent with an endogenous-values argu­ ment. They show that levels of overall satisfaction (or subjective sense of well-being) increase monotonically both with degree of democracy and with national wealth. Observe that the R2 is . 7 1 , which means that the fit of the model is good. These figures therefore provide a reasonable basis for inferring that levels of self-reported well-being are a function of demo­ cratic and economic performance. We recognize that the estimates are generated from a fairly simple and highly aggregated model, and we can imagine different ways of elaborating that model. On the other hand, the figures do have the singular virtue of reflecting data where the explana­ tory variables do not postdate the outcome under discussion. A recent analysis using disaggregated data reinforces this conclusion. Mishler and Rose (200 1 ) analyze levels of political trust reported in sample surveys from ten postcommunist states in eastern and central Europe and from the former Soviet Union. Their research design is well-suited to the question: the postcommunist states all obviously experienced fundamental institutional discontinuities in the recent past, discontinuities that enable Mishler and Rose to distinguish the endogenous-values perspective from the cultural alternative. They find little evidence that trust in political institutions stems from long-standing cultural patterns. Instead, trust is " substantially endogenous, " resulting largely from the political and eco29. These are OLS estimates using data from lnglehart ( I 997, app. 3 ), the data we also employed in table 4 . I o .

Civic Virtue, Growth, and Democratization

13 3

nomic performance of institutions and governments , The policy implica­ tions are straightforward. Trust can be built more surely and swiftly than the decades or genera­ tions suggested by cultural theorists. Trust can be nurtured by improv­ ing the conduct and performance of political institutions. Governments can generate public trust the old-fashioned way: They can earn it by responding promptly and effectively to public priorities, rooting out corrupt practices and protecting new freedoms. ( 5 6)

Given the analyses of this chapter, we conclude that further attempts to refine and test the case that cultural variations generate the kinds of economic and political outcomes addressed here are likely to be unpro­ ductive. Cultural values are more profitably seen as a function of the political and economic circumstances that different people face. In this reckoning, mass political behavior is generated less by different cultures and much more by different institutional environments. That is the issue to which we turn in part 2.

PART TWO

THE

I n stitutional Alternative

F I VE

Institutions and Voter Turnout

O olitical participation manifests itself in many ways. Voting, signing I petitions, working in political campaigns, and attending political rallies are some of the more widely discussed forms ( see, e.g., Verba, Nie, and Kim 1 9 7 8 ; Dalton 200 2 ) . Even so, voting occupies a special place in the analysis of political participation, and for good reason. As Putnam reminds us, " voting is by a substantial margin the most common form of political activity, and it embodies the most fundamental democratic principle of equality" ( 2000, 3 5 ) . Further, rates of voter turnout are often taken as a leading indicator of broader patterns of participation. Thus, as we ob­ served in chapter 3, Putnam begins his analysis of civic disengagement in the United States with a discussion of how, " like the canary in the mine pit, " rates of electoral abstention signal " deeper trouble within the broader body politic " ( 2000, 3 5 ) . Against this backdrop, rates of electoral participation vary dramati­ cally across the established democracies. As shown in table 5 . I , the aver­ age turnout in national elections from 19 50 through 2000 was 9 3 percent in Italy, 6 5 percent in France, and less than 50 percent in the United States and Switzerland. What drives these differences across countries ? Our argument starts from the premise that political institutions as embodied in electoral laws play a powerful role in shaping the distribution of incen­ tives for people to participate in the political system. They do so in two complementary ways . First, institutions directly affect the incentives of individual citizens contemplating whether to vote. The presence of a compulsory voting law, for example, typically enhances voter turnout (even when the penalties for noncompliance are minor) by its direct 137

I38

B E F O RE NOKMS

marginal impact o n the incentive structures of citizens who would other­ wise be nonvoters. Second, at times the effect of institutions on turnout is indirect, in the sense that they alter the incentives of parties and candi­ dates to mobilize voters, which in turn influences turnout. Thus, in single­ member district systems, some legislative districts may be considered so safe for incumbents that nonincumbent parties and candidates move re­ sources (e.g., time and money) away from those districts to others where they believe their resources have more potential to affect the outcome by mobilizing voters. Here, the institutional impact is indirect: electoral laws induce lower levels of mobilization effort in the first set of districts, which in turn inhibits voter turnout. Perhaps the earliest systematic institutional account of electoral partici­ pation was offered by Gosnell ( r9 30 ), whose impressive analysis of Euro­ pean political systems showed that levels of political participation varied consistently with variations in type of electoral system. Following this line of thought, Powell ( r 9 8 6a) and Jackman ( r 9 8 7 ) concluded that variations in turnout rates across the industrial democracies in the r 9 6os and r 9 70s are largely a function of institutional arrangements embodied in electoral laws, including the number of political parties, the presence of compulsory voting laws, and the degree of electoral disproportionality. Among stu­ dents of American politics, much attention has centered on the impact on turnout of legal factors such as residency requirements and registration procedures ( see, e.g., Wolfinger and Rosenstone r 9 8o; Squire, Wolfinger, and Glass r 9 8 7; Nagler r 99 r ; Teixeira r 99 2; Highton and Wolfinger 1 99 8 ) , both of which have powerful implications for how institutions affect political participation. The principal alternative against which we evaluate this institutional view is the cultural approach that stresses linkages between enduring values and participation. Indeed, these linkages have long been central to key analyses of mass political behavior. Almond and Verba ( 1 9 63 ) repre­ sents the classic statement of the relationship between culture and politi­ cal participation, while Inglehart ( 1 9 9 7 ) and Putnam ( 1 99 3 , 2000 ) exem­ plify the most recent variants. In participatory cultures, according to this view, citizens are more politically satisfied with their institutions (what­ ever the particular form that those institutions take) and are therefore more politically efficacious. Cultures that foster such values thereby en­ hance participation in general and voter turnout in particular. In contrast, political cultures in which more passive values are the norm inhibit par­ ticipation, which is why turnout rates are often taken as symptomatic of broader patterns of political and social engagement.

Institutions and Voter Turnout

I39

We proceed as follows. First, we examine the connections between institutional factors and voter turnout rates in 22 democracies with popu­ lations greater than one million from I 9 5 0 to 2000. Second, we consider whether cultural factors add to our understanding of the mechanisms that generate electoral participation.

I n s titutions an d Voter Turn out,

1 950-2000

We begin by extending our earlier analyses of the impact of institutional factors on turnout to cover the period I 9 50 through 2000. The original analysis centered on a cross-section of democracies from 1 9 70 through I 9 8o and included a replication for the preceding decade (Jackman I 9 8 7 ) . We subsequently elaborated the analysis i n three ways (Jackman and Miller I 9 9 5 ). First, we expanded the temporal coverage to include the I 9 8os, retaining the focus on cross-sectional decade-by-decade averages. Second, we expanded the geographical coverage to include three countries that had experienced democratic restorations in the I 9 70s ( Greece, Portu­ gal, and Spain ) . Third, we recast the analysis into a pooled time-series cross-sectional framework, thereby avoiding any issues in the original approach associated with averaging by decade. We expand these analyses further in this part of the chapter. Most notably, we focus on a substantially longer period, covering the fifty years from I9 50 through 2000. Our analyses center on five institutional fac­ tors: nationally competitive elections, electoral proportionality, number of parties, unicameralism, and compulsory voting laws.

Nationally Competitive Elections. Voter turnout should reflect the structure of political competition. Powell ( 1 9 8 6a) and Jackman ( 1 9 8 7) addressed this question by evaluating the extent to which electoral dis­ tricts are nationally competitive. ' We take the level of competition pri­ marily as a reflection of the laws governing the translation of votes into seats. Broadly speaking, one can distinguish between systems of propor­ tional representation (PR) and single-member plurality ( SMP ) . A key feature of PR systems is that electoral districts are constructed so that each district elects more than one representative. Citizens often cast their r. Powell also examined the closeness of elections, to check whether close elections give citizens more reason to vote and give parties more reason to mobilize voters. However, he found no evidence to support this expectation.

I40

B E F O RE NOKMS

votes for parties rather than for individuals, and the number o f votes a party receives determines (according to the particular formula employed) the number of seats in the legislature the party acquires to represent voters at the national level.2 In SMP, on the other hand, each district elects a single representative, and individuals typically cast their votes for specific candidates. These differences in electoral laws have important consequences for the behavior of voters. According to Cox: PR facilitates the emergence of multiple parties and gives those that enter incentives to disperse across the ideological spectrum, while SMP tends to limit the number of viable parties in any given district at two and gives them incentives to converge on the median voter. . . ; hence, one expects ideologically more focused parties under PR. This greater ideological focus may in turn foster stronger links with social groups. ( r 999, 3 9 9 )

Under PR, voters are therefore more likely t o be able t o identify strongly with a political positions outlined by a particular party and/or to be strongly opposed to a platform subscribed to by a party, and both of these increase the incentives for individuals to vote. In contrast, SMP systems encourage parties to shift their platforms to the political center, thereby minimizing the likelihood that a citizen can vote for a political party that closely resembles his or her positions on the issues (or vote against one that clearly opposes those positions), thus decreasing the incentives to vote. Differences in electoral systems at the district level also have important consequences for the electoral behavior of political parties. According to Powell: Where the chief executive is chosen by simple maj ority or plurality vote, all regions should be equally important ( e.g., France ) . In countries where the chief executive is chosen by the legislature, as in the various parliamentary systems, the question becomes the nature of the constitu­ encies electing the legislators. With proportional representation from the nation as a whole or from large districts, parties have an incentive to mobilize everywhere. With single-member districts, some areas may be written off as hopeless . ( r 9 8 6a, 2 r ) 2 . For a good discussion o f the different electoral formulas employed to translate votes into legislative seats, see Lijphart ( I 994, chap. 2 ) .

Institutions and Voter Turnout

14 1

This is consistent with Gosnell's much earlier ( 1 9 3 0) argument that PR provides incentives for parties and candidates to mobilize voters in all districts, which increases turnout. 3 While it is unlikely that any one vote will be decisive in shaping the overall outcome of an election,4 some electoral systems raise the potential decisiveness of the marginal vote. The degree of proportionality in the translation of votes into seats in the lower legislative house is central in this respect. Most electoral systems produce a degree of disproportionality in favor of the largest parties, but some systems generate a good deal more than others (Rae 1 9 7 1 a ) . s Highly disproportional systems require minor parties to accumulate many more votes to achieve a given degree of legislative representation, thereby di­ minishing the benefits of voting for the supporters of those parties. The greater the disproportionality, then, the more likely are the votes of minor party supporters to be wasted. Note that this calculus extends to the behavior of political parties (active and latent) as well. Most notably, one would expect the campaign appeals and mobilizing activities of minor parties to reflect their chances of achieving a measure of legislative repre­ sentation. Disproportionality in the translation of votes into legislative seats should therefore lower turnout.

Electoral Proportionality.

Number of Parties. Institutional arrangements that allow elections a more decisive role in government formation should increase voter turnout. The principal factor here is the number of political parties. As Downs ( 1 9 5 7, 1 5 5 ) argued, voters in multiparty systems that produce coalitions face a fundamental problem: they do not directly select the government that will govern them. Instead, they vote for parties that then select a government in the legislature, so that " ambiguity and compromise are introduced on a secondary level whenever coalitions are formed. " Elec­ tions accordingly play a less decisive role in government formation within multiparty systems. This also implies a paradox for multiparty systems. 3 · C o x ( 1 999, 399) suggests that " close districts under SMP . . . should have higher turnout levels than typical districts under PR . . . which in turn should have higher turnout levels than in safe districts under SMP. "' This argument is appealing on theoretical grounds. However, Powell's ( r 9 8 6a) empirical results indicate that, when considered cross-nationally, the closeness of elections has no bearing on turnout. In contrast, as noted earlier, Powell ( r 9 8 6a) does find a significant effect of nationally competitive districts on turnout. 4· See Aldrich ( 1 9 9 3 , 1 9 9 7 ) for interesting discussions of the implications of this point. 5. On this issue, recall our discussion in chapter r of the biases favoring the largest party in India.

14 2

B E F O RE NOKMS

When we contrast PR and SMP, " the type of political system which seems to offer the voter a more definite choice among policies in fact offers him a less definite one. This system may even make it impossible for him to choose a government at all. Instead, it may force him to shift this responsi­ bility onto a legislature over which he has very little control between elections " (Downs I 9 5 7, I 5 6) . Where elections are less decisive in the process of government formation, citizens have fewer incentives to vote. Multipartyism should therefore depress turnout.

Unicameralism. Beyond the issue of the decisiveness of elections in gov­ ernment formation is the question of the decisiveness of the governments that ensue.6 Jackman ( r 9 8 7) suggested that the degree to which the first legislative body is constrained or checked by other institutions is the relevant quantity. That is, unicameralism is crucial to producing decisive governments. Where there is no second house (as in New Zealand or Sweden ), governments based on the first house do not have to compete and compromise with another legislative chamber. In contrast, where there is strong bicameralism (as in Germany and Switzerland), legislation can only be produced by compromise between members of the two houses. This means that elections for the lower house play a less decisive role in the production of legislation where bicameralism is strong. Uni­ cameralism should therefore foster turnout. The preceding four factors are somewhat interrelated, for the reasons advanced by Duverger ( r 9 6 3 ) , Rae ( r 9 7 r a ) , and Lijphart ( I 994 ) , among others. However, these interrelations are not overwhelming, and most democracies include mixtures of these four features (Lijphart 1999 ), which means that their separate effects on voter turnout can fruitfully be ex­ plored. On a more substantive level, these correlations serve as a reminder of the trade-offs between proportional representation and plurality sys­ tems, trade-offs involving the representativeness of election outcomes and the effectiveness of governments. These trade-offs make it difficult to make a strong case for one system over the other. We are suggesting that the two forms of electoral systems also have trade-offs for voter turnout: some features typically associated with PR enhance turnout (nationally competi­ tive elections and electoral proportionality), as does at least one feature of SMP systems (the smaller number of parties) . 6 . We are hardly the first t o address the role o f electoral decisiveness. Most attention, however, has centered on the role of decisiveness in the process of government formation rather than on the decisiveness of the governments that ensue (e.g., Dahl 1 9 66; Rae 1 9 7 r b ; Strom 1 9 9 0 ) . And electoral decisiveness is seldom seen as part of the institutionally induced incentive structure that shapes the volume of electoral participation.

Institutions and Voter Turnout

I43

Compulsory Voting Laws. Some democracies (Australia, Belgium, Italy, and, since the constitution of I 9 7 5 , Greece ) have laws that mandate voting, as did the Netherlands until I 9 70. One expects that the presence of such laws should increase turnout ( Gosnell I 9 3 0, I 84 - 8 5 ; Tingsten 1 9 3 7, chap. 4; Jackman 1 9 8 7 ) . However, while the presence of manda­ tory voting laws does provide a disincentive for nonvoting that should increase turnout, the penalties for disobedience are neither uniform nor always severe, and there is thus no reason to expect universal compliance with these laws. During the period 19 50 through 2000, for example, the average turnout in Australia was 84 percent. While this is a high figure, it also indicates that a substantial number of Australian citizens did not vote, and to our knowledge none of them was prosecuted for this trans­ gression. In Italy, " the only penalty incurred by an offender is to have his name posted outside the town hall in his commune of residence, and to have his 'certificate of good conduct,' now fallen largely into disuse, stamped 'Did not vote' for five years" (Seton-Watson I 9 8 3 , I I I ) . Analysis Our empirical evaluation centers on voter turnout in the established democ­ racies with populations of more than one million that are identified in table 5 . I . As in our earlier analyses, 2 of these 22 democracies have atypical patterns of voter turnout: Switzerland and the United States. We directly address the idiosyncratic features of Swiss and American politics later.

Measures The dependent variable is voter turnout, 19 50- 2000, expressed as a per­ centage of the eligible population for each election. Observe that the eli­ gible population is not restricted to those registered to vote, but includes all of those population members of voting age. 7 Note further that the turnout figures refer to elections for the first (or lower) legislative house. We adopt a minor modification over our earlier procedure: where we originally used average turnout in presidential elections from France and the United States, here (as noted previously) we employ turnout in lower house elec­ tions for all of the countries included in the sample to maximize consis­ tency across units of analysis. Thus, the cases we analyze include non­ presidential-election-year elections. Any distortions produced by the U.S. 7 . This procedure follows the treatments by Powell and Jackman. Others have em­ ployed the size of the registered electorate as the denominator (e.g., Blais 20oo, chap . r ), but discrepancies between the size of the electorate and that of the age-eligible population are themselves a function of legal and institutional arrangements.

I 44

B E F O RE NOKMS

TAB LE 5. 1 . Turnout Rates, Electoral Disproportionality, and Number of Parties for 22 Established Democracies, 1 9 50-2000 Country Australia Austria Belgium Canada Denmark Finland France Germany Greece Ireland Israel Italy Japan Netherlands New Zealand Norway Portugal Spain Sweden Switzerland United Kingdom United States

Turnout ( # elections )"

Electoral Dis proportionality

Number of Parties

84(20) 85(15) 87( 1 6 1 67( 1 6 1 84(20) 78 ( 1 4 ) 65 ( 1 1 1 81(13) 85(10) 75 ( 1 5 ) 8 1 ( 14 ) 93(12) 70( 1 8 ) 84(14) 84(17) 80(12) 8 1 ( 101 76 ( 8 ) 83(16) 47( 1 3 1 75 ( 1 4 1 48(26)

9.0 2.5 3.1 1 1 .6 1 .7 3.0 10.6 2.5 8.3 3.5 1.8 3.7 6.2 1 .4 1 1 .2 4.2 4.6 7.9 1 .9 2.5 11.1 5.0

2.5 2.6 5.7 2.4 4.6 5.1 3.8 3.1 2.2 2.8 4.9

4 .4 3.0 4.7 2.0 3.5 2.9 2.7 3 .4 5.3 2.1 1.9