Measuring and Mapping Cultures (International Studies in Sociology and Social Anthropology)

Measuring and Mapping Cultures: 25 Years of Comparative Value Surveys

International Studies in Sociology and Social Anthropology Editors

Tukumbi Lumumba-Kasongo Rubin Patterson Masamichi Sasaki

VOLUME 104

Measuring and Mapping Cultures: 25 Years of Comparative Value Surveys Edited by

Yilmaz Esmer and Thorleif Pettersson

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2007

Originally published as Volume 5 no. 2–3 (2006) of Brill’s journal ‘Comparative Sociology’ Coverphoto © World Values Survey (http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org) This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. International Colloquium on Gregory of Nyssa (10th : 2004 : Olomouc, Czech Republic) Gregory of Nyssa : Contra Eunomium II : an English version with supporting studies : proceedings of the 10th International Colloquium on Gregory of Nyssa (Olomouc, September 15–18, 2004) / edited by Lenka Karfíková . . . [et al.] with the assistance of Vít Hu“ek and Ladislav Chvátal. p. cm. — (Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, ISSN 0920-623X ; v. 82) English, French, and German. Contra Eunomium II translated from the Greek by Stuart George Hall. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN-13: 978-90-04-15518-3 ISBN-10: 90-04-15518-X (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Gregory, of Nyssa, Saint, ca. 335-ca. 394—Congresses. 2. Eunomius, Bp. of Cyzicus, ca. 335-ca. 394— Congresses. 3. Eunomianism—Congresses. 4. Church history—Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600—Congresses. I. Karfíková, Lenka. II. Hall, Stuart George. III. Gregory, of Nyssa, Saint, ca. 335-ca. 394. Contra Eunomium.

ISSN 0074-8684 ISBN-10: 90 04 15820 0 ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15820 7 © Copyright 2007 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

Contents Introduction ...................................................................................... Esmer, Yilmaz; Pettersson, Thorleif

1

Mapping Global Values .................................................................. Inglehart, Ronald

11

A Theory of Cultural Value Orientations: Explication and Applications .................................................................................. Schwartz, Shalom H. Globalization, “McDonaldization” and Values: Quo Vadis? ...... Esmer, Yilmaz

33

79

Individualization in Europe and America: Connecting Religious and Moral Values ...................................................... Nevitte, Neil; Cochrane, Christopher

99

Religion in Contemporary Society: Eroded by Human Well-being, Supported by Cultural Diversity ............................ Pettersson, Thorleif

127

Democratization in the Human Development Perspective .......... Welzel, Christian

155

Index ................................................................................................

187

This volume, commemorating the 25th anniversary of values surveys, is dedicated to Dan Brändström, Director of the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation, an enthusiastic believer in values research and a staunch supporter of the academic study of values. The World Values Survey project is deeply indebted to Dan for his relentless efforts to make available comparative survey data on values to the wider social science community and policy makers around the globe.

Dan Brändström

Introduction Yilmaz Esmer and Thorleif Pettersson The study of human values has a long and distinguished tradition. The importance of the citizens’ mindset for various spheres of social life has been recognized by thinkers going all the way to Ancient Greece. Indeed, Plato is well known for establishing a one-to-one correspondence between the types of constitutions and the orientations of the individuals’ minds. According to him, states were shaped by the character of their citizens. Aristotle, on the other hand, likened the rulers of a society to flute players. It was the people who actually made the flute. Thus, at the end of the day, the determining factor – the independent variable, if you willwas the character, the nature, the mindset of the citizenry. From Ibn-i Khaldun, to Montesquieu, Tocqueville and Weber, to name but a few, many great classical thinkers emphasized the importance of cultural values, if we are to use the contemporary terminology, for understanding and explaining social structure, institutions, and change. Despite this highly eminent tradition of over two millennia, the empirical study of the collective mindset is an extremely recent phenomenon. In fact, large scale comparative values studies involving a variety of cultures have a history of few decades only. Almond and Verba’s The Civic Culture and Alex Inkeles’ Becoming Modern are roughly half a century old and both included only a handful of societies. The Eurobarometer, a remarkable project indeed, was envisaged and implemented by the Commission of the European Communities in the early 1970s. Although currently replicated in different parts of the globe such as Latin America, Africa and East Asia, at the time of its inception it was very much a “European project.” Nevertheless, we owe a great debt to the Eurobarometer both for taking the bold step in the right direction and for the invaluable European time series data it has made available to all those interested. However, we believe it would not be inaccurate or unfair to say that 1981 is the actual year of birth of the empirical study of cultural values

2 • Yilmaz Esmer and Thorleif Pettersson

on a global scale. European and World Values surveys were born in that year thanks to the laudable efforts of such visionaries as JacquesRene Rabier, Ruud de Moor, Jan Kerkhofs and, shortly thereafter, Ronald Inglehart. Today, as we celebrate the 25th anniversary of values surveys, we gratefully acknowledge our indebtedness to them and to their collaborators. The number of countries included in the first values survey was modest by today’s standards and the project comprised mainly nations of the industrialized West. Even then, however, such diverse societies as the United States, Mexico, South Africa, Japan, S. Korea, Argentina, Australia, in addition to Western Europe, were surveyed. Today, looking back 25 years, one realizes that data collected in this first round is a treasure beyond description for those interested in cultural change and in the mapping of cultural values. One only wishes, egotistically, that more societies could have been part of that first round. Fortunately, it took less than a decade for this wish to come true. The second round of Values Surveys carried out around 1990 comprised no less than 43 societies from every corner of the globe and all major cultural traditions. In the following rounds, the total number of countries that participated in one or more of the surveys exceeded 80. At the time of this writing, World Values Survey researchers, who now form a truly global network of social scientists, are busy in all continents collecting data for the fifth round of World Values Surveys. Consequently, the academic community as well as policy makers will shortly have access to data on a very broad range of values at five points in time covering a time span of one quarter of a century, We, as the editors of this special issue of Comparative Sociology, believe this is indeed cause for celebration. A much welcome development in the field has been the coming into existence of a number of additional international surveys. The International Social Survey Program which started in the 1980s now covers a wide range of countries. The European Social Survey is the most recent project (it was first fielded in 2002) and covers around 25 European countries. It has a well-deserved reputation for its uncompromisingly rigorous methodological standards. Both the ISSP and the ESS contain core questionnaires which are repeated in every round and, in addition, rotating modules on important topics. Then, as already mentioned, there are regional or continental barometers which can be regarded as the offsprings of the Eurobarometer. In addition to the general ones, there are a number of international survey programs on more specific topics such as religion or electoral behavior. Nevertheless, the World Values Survey continues to be the largest and most comprehensive survey project with the widest geographical coverage.

Introduction • 3

The core assumption of values studies is that culture matters. Since values, which are the basic orientations or principles that guide attitudes and behavior, are central to any culture, it follows that values matter as well. Values are intrinsically interesting and have been shown to be closely related to formal structures. Just to give one example, values pertaining to tolerance, individual freedom and interpersonal trust are all highly correlated with the existence or non-existence of democratic institutions. But values are also very useful for the mapping of cultures. Cultural classifications and cultural maps of the world depend on values and are either drawn by using data from values surveys (e.g. Inglehart) or – if they are a priori theoretical constructs – (e.g. Schwartz) need data from these surveys to be validated. Either way, it is necessary to delineate basic value dimensions. Two of the best known and most frequently cited schemes for classifying and mapping basic value dimensions in the literature belong to Ronald Inglehart and Shalom Schwartz. Both authors have contributed articles to this volume summarizing and updating their respective theories. In his contribution to this issue, Ronald Inglehart expounds on his two-dimensional map of global values based on data collected from World/European Values Surveys since 1981. Inglehart and his collaborators (see, for example, Inglehart and Baker, 2000; Inglehart and Welzel, 2005) have argued that although values and beliefs vary in a great many different ways, they can be adequately summarized in two basic dimensions: the traditional/secular-rational dimension and the survival/selfexpression dimension. Inglehart’s global values map places all societies on these two dimensions. Data show that societies occupy meaningful and predictable positions on this map forming “cultural zones.” Two factors seem to have a profound effect on a given society’s position on the map. First, whether a society is predominantly agrarian, industrialized or postindustrialized makes a difference in its value system. Second, the cultural tradition of the society, that is history, seems to have a deep impact on the configuration of values. Inglehart observes that “gradual” but nevertheless “major cultural changes are occurring, and that a society’s religious tradition, colonial history, and other major historical factors, give rise to distinctive cultural traditions that continue to influence a society’s value system despite forces of modernization.” Although Inglehart emphasizes that modernization is not a linear process, nevertheless he predicts that economic development and welfare will give rise to self-expression values and that these in turn will support and enhance democratic institutions. Shalom Schwartz takes a different approach in that his cultural orientations are theoretically derived. As explained in his article in this issue as well as his earlier writings (see, for example, Schwarz 1994a; 1994b,

4 • Yilmaz Esmer and Thorleif Pettersson

2003; 2004) Schwartz takes as his starting point the specification of “a coherent, integrated system of relations among the orientations” and then moves on to test this theoretical model. Very briefly, Schwartz’ theory is based upon “seven cultural value orientations that form three cultural value dimensions.” These orientations and dimensions are explained in Schwartz’ article in this issue and therefore will not be repeated here. However, another major difference between the Inglehart and Schwartz models is worth noting: Inglehart’s dimensions are orthogonal while Schwartz’ theory depicts a circular configuration of value orientations and distinguishes between close and distant orientations. It is interesting and reassuring that, despite their differing methodologies and entirely independent data sources, Inglehart’s two dimensions are closely related to two corresponding Schwartz dimensions. However, Schwartz notes that his third dimension, mastery/harmony, “taps a different aspect of culture” and that this is to be expected since it is the only dimension that is “not strongly related to socio-economic development.” Both Inglehart’s and Schwartz’ articles include cultural maps of the world (Figures 1 and 4, respectively) reflecting, of course, their approaches and their data. Those interested in the classification and charting of cultures will find great comfort in Schwartz’ conclusion that “The most striking finding when comparing the mapping of national cultures in the research based on the Hofstede, Inglehart, and Schwartz approaches is that they identify such similar cultures around the world. [. . .] This is amazing, considering how different the approaches are.” This is not only amazing but at the same time extremely significant. It is a forceful refutation of the skeptical viewpoint that cultures cannot be measured. The article by Yilmaz Esmer is an attempt to trace value change during the longest time period that data from the values surveys will allow, that is, from 1981 to 2001. Two decades is a rather short span for the study of cultural change. As indicated by Schwartz in his article in this volume, cultural change is slow and cultural value orientations are “relatively stable.” However, the last two decades of the 20th century are a period of intense political and economic changes and turmoil. It is reasonable to assume that such far reaching changes should have had some impact on values as well. Esmer finds some evidence of change in his sample of some 20 countries but these are not “sweeping” by any stretch of the imagination. More interestingly, Esmer fails to find any confirmation of a value convergence. He concludes that cultural values are robust and resilient. Contrary to what is often assumed, the strong winds of globalization have according to Esmer’s analyses not yet been able to sweep away cultural diversity. At least for his limited sample, he observes that

Introduction • 5

values are as dispersed as ever and that “McDonaldization” has not reached beyond the surface. While Esmer tries to trace change and possible convergence in a broad range of values between 1981 and 2001, Neil Nevitte and Christopher Cochrane, in their article entitled “Keeping it together: individualization and changing moral values” focus on the process of individualization during the same period of time. It is commonly assumed that modernization and particularly economic advances accelerate the move towards individualization (Ester, Halman and de Moor, 1993). Inglehart emphasizes the role of the “postmodern shift” in freeing the individual both from religious controls (mainly a consequence of the transition from the agrarian to the industrial society) and from state authority (mainly a consequence of the transition from industrialism to post-industrialism) (Inglehart, 1997). Nevitte and Cochrane write that “at the core, the concept of individualization is about the declining salience of traditional norm-generating institutions in the lives of people in post-industrial societies,” and investigate “one central aspect of individualization, namely, the connection between religiosity and moral values.” Their article tests a number of hypotheses regarding this relationship using factor analysis, correlation and regression techniques. One of the most significant conclusions is the reaffirmation of “American exceptionalism.” The publics of all countries in their sample have become more permissive, in varying degrees, during the last two decades of the 20th century. However, although the association between religion and moral values has generally become weaker in Europe, no such change is observed in North America. To the contrary, “Among North Americans, and particularly Americans, by contrast the connection between religious and moral outlooks actually becomes significantly stronger over the same time period.” One explanation that the authors offer for this difference is the much greater levels of associational involvement in North America compared to Europe. There is no doubt that religion and religiosity are at the core of cultural values. So much so that, according to Huntington “Of all the objective elements which define civilizations, however, the most important usually is religion” (1998:42). Indeed, “religion is a central defining characteristic of civilizations” (1998:47). One frequently asked question in this respect is whether, as an overall trend, the world is secularizing (see, for example, Norris and Inglehart, 2004) or it is in fact de-secularizing (see, for example, Berger, 1999). Thorleif Pettersson tests the predictions of the two major competing theories in this field: the widely known and acclaimed secularization theory which predicts a negative correlation between socio-economic development and religiosity; and the so-called “supply side theories of religion” which view religious diversity as the

6 • Yilmaz Esmer and Thorleif Pettersson

key independent variable. Using the economic market metaphor, the latter predict a positive correlation with religious diversity and the level of religiosity in a given community. This relationship is expected to hold true regardless of the degree of modernization. Analyzing data from about 50,000 respondents in 37 predominantly Christian countries, Pettersson finds support for both modernization and supply side theories. In what must be the largest scale test of these theories, the author concludes that both theories bear some truth and that it would be too simplistic to view modernization as a universal factor behind religious decline. The last article in the volume by Christian Welzel elaborates the author’s theory of democratization as an “institutional component of a broader process of human development.” According to the UNDP, the publisher of the annual World Human Development Reports, “The real objective of development is to increase people’s development choices” (UNDP, 1991:13). Subsequently, in the 2002 Human Development Report, it was declared that “for politics and political institutions to promote human development and safeguard the freedom and dignity of all people, democracy must widen and deepen” (UNDP, 2002:1). Welzel argues that “rising emancipative ideals” are the force behind the process of human development – a process that empowers people with ever-widening choices. The all-important conclusion that Welzel reaches is that democracy is not a regime or an “achievement” that is reserved exclusively for some cultures. This conclusion has far reaching implications and is a clear refutation of the contention that some cultures are simply unable to develop a democratic culture. It is important to note that Welzel is very explicit in accepting the crucial importance of democratic values while recognizing that all cultures have the potential to develop these values. This volume, then, brings together six original articles around the theme of mapping and measuring of cultural values and tracing change in a number of important value dimensions. The first two papers by Inglehart and by Schwartz draw up two different but nevertheless complementary approaches to the delineation of major value dimensions. Both authors offer cultural maps of the world indicating the positions of national cultures. The paper by Esmer that follows these two frameworks for the study of cultural values presents a general overview of value change/stability between 1981 and 2001 and tests the convergence of values hypothesis. The subsequent articles by Nevitte and Cochrane, Pettersson and Welzel tackle three important processes: individualization, secularization and democratization. They all make generous use of the World/European Values Survey data. The volume is yet another and very modest demonstration that the

Introduction • 7

data collected by the Values Surveys is a treasure that has been and will continue to be widely used. Thanks to these data, many social science theories have for the first time been tested on world wide data. Thus, in a sense, data from these surveys gave new life to Tocqueville, Durkheim, Marx, Weber and many others. It is now possible, to a large extent, to confirm or disconfirm the many claims of the modernization theory (perhaps the most enduring and the most widely cited theory in the social sciences) and its variants using data from values surveys. Until recently, this was something that social scientists could only dream about. Data collected from values surveys are invaluable for policy makers as well. Indeed, such global organizations as the United Nations and the World Bank, among others, have recognized the great importance of values data for practitioners of economic and social development, educational reforms, democratization, marketing, etc. to name but a few areas that have made extensive use of the results obtained by values researchers. We would like to introduce this special issue of Comparative Sociology with these comments on the value surveys by Romano Prodi, the Prime Minister of Italy and the former President of the European Commission: “The growing globalization of the world makes it increasingly important to understand [. . .] cultural diversity. People with widely varying beliefs and values can live together and work together productively, but for this to happen, it is crucial to understand and appreciate their distinctive worldviews. [. . .] These surveys represent a major step in that direction. They provide data from representative samples of the publics of societies containing 85 percent of the world’s population and covering the full range of variation, from the richest countries on earth to some of the poorest, and examining societies that were historically shaped by a wide variety of religions, political and cultural traditions.”1 Acknowledgements The WVS/EVS surveys have been made possible by a large network of scholars and survey researchers around the globe. We owe each and every one of them a large debt of gratitude. On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the values surveys, it is our great pleasure to acknowledge their contributions to the creation of the WVS/EVS dataset. They are:

1 Foreword by Romano Prodi to Inglehart, R. et al., eds., 2004. Human Beliefs and Values. Mexico: Siglo XXI editors.

8 • Yilmaz Esmer and Thorleif Pettersson

Anthony M. Abela, Abdel-Hamid Abdel-Latif, Q. K. Ahmad, Rasa Alishauskene, Helmut Anheier, W. A. Arts, Jose Arocena, Soo Young Auh, Taghi Azadarmaki, Ljiljana Bacevic, Olga Balakireva, Josip Balobn, Miguel Basanez, Elena Bashkirova, Abdallah Bedaida, Jorge Benitez, Jaak Billiet, Antoine Bilodeau, Alan Black, Sheila Bluhm, Rahma Bourquia, Ammar Boukhedir, Fares al Braizat, Pierre Brechon, Pavel Campeanu, Augustin Canzani, Marita Carballo, Henrique Carlos de O. de Castro, Pi-Chao Chen, Pradeep Chhibber, Mark F. Chingono, Hei-yuan Chiu, Margit Cleveland, Russell Dalton, Andrew P. Davidson, Juan DíezMedrano, Juan Diez-Nicolas, Herman de Dijn, Karel Dobbelaere, Peter J. D. Drenth, Javier Elzo, Zsolt Enyedi, P. Estgen, T. Fahey, Nadjematul Faizah, Georgy Fotev, James Georgas, C. Geppaart, Renzo Gubert, Linda Luz Guerrero, Peter Gundelach, Jacques Hagenaars, Pham Minh Hac, Loek Halman, Mustafa Hamarneh, Sang-Jin Han, Stephen Harding, Mari Harris, Bernadette C. Hayes, Camilo Herrera, Virginia Hodgkinson, Nadirsyah Hosen, Muhamad Nadratuzzaman Hosen, Kenji Iijima, Ronald Inglehart, Ljubov Ishimova, Wolfgang Jagodzinski, Aleksandra JasinskaKania, Fridrik Jonsson, Stanislovas Juknevicius, Edward Kakonge, Mebs Kanji, Jan Kerkhofs, Johann Kinghorn, Hans-Dieter Klingemann, Hennie Kotze, Zuzana Kusa, Marta Lagos, Bernhard C. Lategan, M. Legrand, Carlos Lemoine, Noah Lewin-Epstein, Ola Listhaug, Jin-yun Liu, Ruud Luijkx, Brina Malnar, Mahar Mangahas, Mario Marinov, Carlos Matheus, Robert B. Mattes, Gustavo Mendez, Rafael Mendizabal, Shen Mingming, Felipe Miranda, Mansoor Moaddel, Temirlan Tilekovich Moldogaziev, Jose Molina, Manjit Monga, Alejandro Moreno, Gaspar K. Munishi, Neil Nevitte, Pham Thanh Nghi, Pippa Norris, Sakari Nurmela, Elone Nwabuzor, Dragomir Pantic, Rafael Pardo, Juhani Pehkonen, Pradeep Peiris, Paul Perry, Gevork Pogosian, Bi Puranen, Ladislav Rabusic, Andrei Raichev, Anu Rentel, Angel Rivera-Ortiz, Isabel Vega Robles, Catalina Romero, David Rotman, Andrus Saar, Rajab Sattarov,Tan Ern Ser, Sandeep Shastri, Renata Siemienska, Maria Silvestre, John Sudarsky, Toru Takahashi, Farooq Tanwir, Jean-Francois Tchernia, Kareem Tejumola, Larissa Titarenko, Gabor Toka, Miklos Tomka, Alfredo Torres, Niko Tos, Jorge Vala, Andrei Vardomatskii, Malina Voicu, Alan Webster, Friedrich Welsch, Christian Welzel, Manuel Villaverde Cabral, Bogdan Voicu, Seiko Yamazaki, Birol Yeshilada, Ephraim Yuchtman-Yaar, Josefina Zaiter, Brigita Zepa, Ignacio Zuasnabar, P. Zulehner. The value surveys are indebted to these scholars and many organizations that have made generous contributions to our project. Among our many friends, however, Professor Dan Brändström, Director of the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation, deserves a special mention for his invaluable support, assistance, and advice. This volume is dedicated to him.

Introduction • 9

References Berger, Peter L., ed. 1999 The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics. Grand Rapids, Mi. and Cambridge: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. Ester, Peter, Loek Halman and Ruud de Moor, eds. 1993 The Individualizing Society: Value Value Change in Europe and North America. Tilburg: Tilburg University Press. Huntington, Samuel P. 1998 The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order. London: Touchstone Books. Inglehart, Ronald 1997 Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic and Political Change in 43 Societies. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Inglehart, Ronald and Wayne Baker 2000 “Modernization, Cultural Change and the Persistence of Traditional Values.” American Sociological Review (February): 19-51. Inglehart, Ronald and Christian Welzel 2005 Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Norris, Pippa and Ronald Inglehart 2004 Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schwartz, Shalom H. 1994a “Are There Universal Aspects in the Content and Structure of Values?” Journal of Social Issues 50: 19-45. 1994b “Beyond Individualism and Collectivism: New Cultural Dimensions of Values,” pp. 85-119 in Individualism and Collectivism: Theory, Method and Applications, edited by U. Kim et al. Newbury Park, CA.: Sage. 2003 “A Proposal for Measuring Value Orientations Across Nations,” ch. 7 in Questionnaire Development Report of the European Social Survey. 2004 “Mapping and Interpreting Cultural Differences Around the World,” in Comparing Cultures: Dimensions of Culture in a Comparative Perspective, edited by H. Vinken, J. Soeters and P. Ester. Leiden: Brill. UNDP 1991 Human Development Report 1991. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2002 Human Development Report 2002. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mapping Global Values Ronald Inglehart Abstract Modernization goes through two main phases, each of which brings distinctive changes in people’s worldviews. The Industrial Revolution was linked with a shift from traditional to secular-rational values, bringing bureaucratization, centralization, standardization and the secularization of authority. In the post-industrial phase of modernization, a shift from survival values to self-expression values, brings increasing emancipation from both religious and secular-rational authority. Rising mass emphasis on self-expression values makes democracy increasingly likely to emerge. Although the desire for freedom is a universal human aspiration, it does not take top priority when people grow up with the feeling that survival is uncertain. But when survival seems secure, increasing emphasis on self-expression values makes the emergence of democracy increasingly likely where it does not yet exist, and makes democracy increasingly effective where it already exists.

Introduction The world now contains nearly 200 independent countries, and the beliefs and values of their publics differ greatly, in thousands of different ways. Yet, among the many dimensions of cross-cultural variation, two are particularly important. Each dimension reflects one of the two waves of economic development that have transformed the world economically, socially and politically in modern times: the transition from agrarian society to industrial society that emerged two hundred years ago and is now transforming China, India, Indonesia and many other countries; and the transition from industrial society to the post-industrial or knowledge society that began to emerge fifty years ago and is now reshaping

12 • Ronald Inglehart

the socioeconomic systems of the U.S., Canada, Western Europe, Japan, Australia and other economically advanced societies. These processes of economic and technological change have given rise to two key dimensions of cross-cultural variation: (1) a Traditional/SecularRational dimension that reflects the contrast between the relatively religious and traditional values that generally prevail in agrarian societies, and the relatively secular, bureaucratic and rational values that generally prevail in urban, industrialized societies; and (2) a Survival/Self-expression dimension that also taps a wide range of beliefs and values, reflecting an inter-generational shift from an emphasis on economic and physical security above all, towards increasing emphasis on self-expression, subjective well-being, and quality of life concerns. These dimensions are robust aspects of cross-cultural variation, and they make it possible to map the position of any society on a two-dimensional map that reflects their relative positions at any given time. But gradual shifts are occurring along these dimensions, transforming many aspects of society. One of the most important of these changes is the fact that the shift toward increasing emphasis on Self-expression values makes democratic political institutions increasingly likely to emerge and flourish. Our analysis is based on a body of survey evidence that represents 85 percent of the world’s population. Data from four waves of the Values Surveys, carried out from 1981 to 2001, indicate that major cultural changes are occurring, and that a society’s religious tradition, colonial history, and other major historical factors, give rise to distinctive cultural traditions that continue to influence a society’s value system despite the forces of modernization. Modernization and Cultural Change In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, modernization theorists from Karl Marx to Max Weber analyzed the emerging industrial society and tried to predict its future. Their analyses of cultural change emphasized the rise of rationality and the decline of religion, and they assumed that these developments would continue in linear fashion, with the future being a continuation of the same trends that were occurring during the 19th century. From today’s perspective, it is clear that modernization is more complex than these early views anticipated. The numbers of industrial workers ceased growing decades ago in economically advanced societies, and virtually no one any longer expects a proletarian revolution. Moreover, it is increasingly evident that religion has not vanished as predicted. Furthermore, it is apparent that modernization can not be equated with Westernization, as early analyses assumed. Non-Western societies in East Asia have surpassed their Western role models in key aspects of

Mapping Global Values • 13

modernization such as rates of economic growth and high life expectancy, and few observers today attribute moral superiority to the West. Although, today, few people accept the original Marxist version of modernization theory, one of its core concepts still seems valid: the insight that, once industrialization begins, it produces pervasive social and cultural consequences, from rising educational levels to changing gender roles. This article maps cross-cultural variation using data from the World Values Surveys and European Values Surveys, which have measured the beliefs and values of most of the world’s people. These surveys offer an unprecedentedly rich source of insight into the relationships between economic development and social and political change. They show that, even during the relatively brief time since the first wave of the Values Surveys was carried out in 1981, substantial changes have occurred in the values and beliefs of the publics of these societies. These changes are closely linked with the economic changes experienced by a given society. As we will demonstrate, economic development is associated with predictable changes away from absolute norms and values, toward a syndrome of increasingly rational, tolerant, trusting, and post-industrial values. But we find evidence of both massive cultural change and the persistence of traditional values. Throughout most of history, survival has been uncertain for most people. But the remarkable economic growth of the era following World War II, together with the rise of the welfare state, brought fundamentally new conditions in advanced industrial societies. The postwar birth cohorts of these countries grew up under conditions of prosperity that were unprecedented in human history, and the welfare state reinforced the feeling that survival was secure, producing an intergenerational value change that is gradually transforming the politics and cultural norms of advanced industrial societies. The best documented aspect of this change is the shift from Materialist to Postmaterialist priorities. A massive body of evidence gathered from 1970 to the present demonstrates that an intergenerational shift from Materialist to Postmaterialist priorities is transforming the behavior and goals of the people of advanced industrial societies (Inglehart, 1997; Inglehart and Welzel, 2005). But recent research demonstrates that this trend is only one aspect of an even broader cultural shift from Survival values to Self-expression values. Economic development and cultural change move in two major phases, each of which gives rise to a major dimension of cross-national value differences. Factor analysis of national-level data from the 43 societies studied in the 1990 World Values Survey found that two main dimensions accounted for well over half of the cross-national variance in more than a score of variables tapping basic values across a wide range of domains,

14 • Ronald Inglehart

ranging from politics to economic life and sexual behavior (Inglehart, 1997). These dimensions of cross-cultural variation are robust; when the 1990-1991 factor analysis was replicated with the data from the 19951998 surveys, the same two dimensions of cross-cultural variation emerged – even though the new analysis was based on 23 additional countries not included in the earlier study (Inglehart and Baker, 2000). The same two dimensions also emerged in analysis of data from the 2000-2001 surveys – although numerous additional countries were again added to the pool, including eight predominantly Islamic societies – a cultural region that had been relatively neglected in previous surveys (Inglehart and Welzel, 2005). Each dimension taps a major axis of cross-cultural variation involving many different values. Table 1 shows the results of this most recent set of analyses, based on data from more than 70 societies, aggregated to the national level. Although each of the two main dimensions is linked closely with scores of values, for technical reasons, our indices were constructed by using only five key indicators for each of the two dimensions. Table 1 Two Dimensions of Cross-Cultural Variation First Factor (46%) TRADITIONAL VALUES emphasize the following: God is very important in respondent’s life It is more important for a child to learn obedience and religious faith than independence and determination [Autonomy index] Abortion is never justifiable Respondent has strong sense of national prideRespondent favors more respect for authority

Factor Loadings .91 .88 .82 .81 .73

(SECULAR-RATIONAL VALUES emphasize the opposite) Second Factor (25%) SURVIVAL VALUES emphasize the following: R. gives priority to economic and physical security over self expression and quality of life [4-item Materialist/Postmaterialist Values Index] Respondent describes self as not very happy Homosexuality is never justifiable R. has not and would not sign a petition You have to be very careful about trusting people

.87 .81 .77 .74 .46

(SELF-EXPRESSION VALUES emphasize the opposite) The original polarities vary; the above statements show how each item relates to the given factor. Source: World Values Survey data from more than 200 surveys carried out in four waves in 78 societies. (Factors = 2, varimax rotation, listwise deletion)

Mapping Global Values • 15

Human values are structured in a surprisingly coherent way: the two dimensions explain fully 71 percent of the cross-cultural variation among these ten items. More impressive still is the fact that each of these two dimensions taps a broad range of other attitudes, extending over a number of seemingly diverse domains. Table 2 shows the correlations of 24 additional variables that are relatively strongly linked with the first dimension, showing correlations above the .40 level. Table 2 Correlates of Traditional vs. Secular-rational Values TRADITIONAL values emphasize the following:

Correlation with Traditional/ Secular Rational Values

Religion is very important in respondent’s life Respondent believes in Heaven One of respondent’s main goals in life has been to make his/her parents proud Respondent believes in Hell Respondent attends church regularly Respondent has a great deal of confidence in the country’s churches Respondent gets comfort and strength from religion Respondent describes self as “a religious person” Euthanasia is never justifiable Work is very important in respondent’s life There should be stricter limits on selling foreign goods here Suicide is never justifiable Parents’ duty is to do their best for their children even at the expense of their own well-being Respondent seldom or never discusses politics Respondent places self on Right side of a Left-Right scale Divorce is never justifiable There are absolutely clear guidelines about good and evil Expressing one’s own preferences clearly is more important than understanding others’ preferences My country’s environmental problems can be solved without any international agreements to handle them If a woman earns more money than her husband, it’s almost certain to cause problems One must always love and respect one’s parents regardless of their behavior Family is very important in respondent’s life Relatively favorable to having the army rule the country R. favors having a relatively large number of children

.89 .88 .81 .76 .75 .72 .71 .66 .65 .63 .61 .60 .57 .57 .57 .56 .56 .56 .53 .49 .45 .43 .41 .40

(SECULAR-RATIONAL values emphasize the opposite) The number in the right hand column shows how strongly each variable is correlated with the Traditional/Secular-rational Values Index. The original polarities vary; the above statements show how each item relates to the Traditional/Secular-rational values index. Source: Nation-level data from 65 societies surveyed in the 1990 and 1996 World Values Surveys.

16 • Ronald Inglehart

The Traditional/Secular-Rational dimension reflects the contrast between the relatively religious and traditional values that generally prevail in agrarian societies, and the relatively secular, bureaucratic and rational values that generally prevail in urban, industrialized societies. Traditional societies emphasize the importance of religion, deference to authority, parent-child ties and two-parent traditional families, and absolute moral standards; they reject divorce, abortion, euthanasia, and suicide, and tend to be patriotic and nationalistic. In contrast, societies with secular-rational values display the opposite preferences on all of these topics. Table 3 shows 31 additional variables that are closely linked with the Survival/Self-expression’ dimension, which also taps a wide range of beliefs and values. A central component involves the polarization between Materialist and Postmaterialist values that reflects an intergenerational shift from an emphasis on economic and physical security above all, towards increasing emphasis on self-expression, subjective well-being, and quality of life concerns. Societies that rank high on Survival values tend to emphasize materialist orientations and traditional gender roles; they are relatively intolerant of foreigners, gays and lesbians and other outgroups, show relatively low levels of subjective well-being, rank relatively low on interpersonal trust, and emphasize hard work, rather than imagination or tolerance, as important things to teach a child. Societies that emphasize Self-Expression values, display the opposite preferences on all these topics. These two dimensions are remarkably robust. If we compare the results from the two most recent waves of the Values Surveys, we find a .92 correlation between the positions of given countries on the Traditional/ Secular-rational values dimension from one wave of the surveys to the next. With the Survival/Self-expression dimension, the positions of given countries are even more stable: their positions in the earlier wave show a .95 correlation with their positions five years later. Although major changes are occurring along these dimensions, the relative positions of given countries are highly stable. If one compares the map based on the 1990 surveys with the map based on the 1995 surveys or the 2000 surveys, they initially seem to be the same map, showing given clusters of countries (such as Protestant Europe, the English-speaking countries, the Latin American societies, the Confucian societies) in the same relative position – although each successive wave of surveys was not only carried out roughly five years later than the previous one, but included many countries not covered in previous surveys. Figure 1 shows a two-dimensional cultural map on which the value systems of 80 societies are depicted, using the most recent data available for each country (mostly from the 2000 wave but in some cases

Mapping Global Values • 17 Table 3 Correlates of Survival vs. Self-expression Values SURVIVAL values emphasize the following:

Correlation with Survival/ Self-expression Values

Men make better political leaders than women Respondent is dissatisfied with financial situation of his/her household A woman has to have children in order to be fulfilled R. rejects foreigners, homosexuals and people with AIDS as neighbors R. favors more emphasis on the development of technology R. has not recycled things to protect the environment R. has not attended a meeting or signed a petition to protect the environment When seeking a job, a good income and safe job are more important than a feeling of accomplishment and working with people you like R. is relatively favorable to state ownership of business and industry A child needs a home with both a father and mother to grow up happily R. does not describe own health as very good One must always love and respect one’s parents regardless of their behavior When jobs are scarce, men have more right to a job than women Prostitution is never justifiable Government should take more responsibility to ensure that everyone is provided for R. does not have much free choice or control over his/her life A university education is more important for a boy than for a girl R. does not favor less emphasis on money and material possessions R. rejects people with criminal records as neighbors R. rejects heavy drinkers as neighbors Hard work is one of the most important things to teach a child Imagination is not one of the most important things to teach a child Tolerance and respect for others are not the most important things to teach a child Scientific discoveries will help, rather than harm, humanity Leisure is not very important in life Friends are not very important in life Having a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and elections would be a good form of government R. has not and would not take part in a boycott Government ownership of business and industry should be increased Democracy is not necessarily the best form of government R. opposes sending economic aid to poorer countries

.86 .83 .83 .81 .78 .78 .75 .74 .74 .73 .73 .71 .69 .69 .68 .67 .67 .66 .66 .65 .64 .62 .62 .60 .60 .58 .56 .56 .55 .45 .42

(SELF-EXPRESSION values emphasize the opposite) The number in the right hand column shows how strongly each variable is correlated with the Survival/Self-Expression Values Index. The original polarities vary; the above statements show how each item relates to the Traditional/Secular-rational values index. Source: nation-level data from 65 societies surveyed in the 1990 and 1996 World Values Surveys.

18 • Ronald Inglehart

Secular-Rational values

Figure 1 Cultural Map of the World in 2000 2.0

nfu

1.5

Co Bulgaria

1.0

Russia

S. Korea

Montenegro Latvia Albania Serbia

0.5 Moldova

Slovenia Taiwan

nis mmu E x - C o Bosnia

Georgia Azerbaijan Armenia

t

Switzerland

Luxem bourg Iceland Belgium Israel Austria Great Italy Britain Croatia New Zealand Spain

Catholic Europe

India

South Asia

Denmark Netherlands

France

Uruguay

Poland

Romania

Sweden

Norway

West Germany Finland

Greece

Slovakia

Hungary Macedonia

0

English speaking

Canada Australia

N. Ireland U.S.A.

Vietnam

Turkey Portugal Ireland Indonesia Chile Argentina Philippines Bangladesh Dominican Iran Peru Republic Pakistan South Brazil Latin America Africa Jordan Mexico Uganda Nigeria Zimbabwe Algeria Egypt Venezuela Tanzania Morocco Colombia Puerto Afr ic a Rico El Salvador

-1.0

Traditional values

Czech

Lith uania

Protestant Europe

East Germany

China Estonia

Ukraine Belarus

-0.5

Japan

n cia

-1.5

-2.0 -2

-1.5

Survival values

-1

-0.5

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

Self Expression values

from the 1995 wave). The vertical dimension represents the Traditional/ Secular-rational dimension, and the horizontal dimension reflects the Survival/Self-expression values dimension. Both dimensions are strongly linked with economic development, with the value systems of rich countries differing systematically from those of poor countries. Thus, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Japan, Sweden, the U.S. and all other societies with a 1995 annual per capita GNP over $15,000 rank relatively high on both dimensions: without exception, they fall in a broad zone near the upper right-hand corner. Conversely, every one of the societies with per capita GNPs below $2,000 falls into a cluster at the lower left of the map; India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Morocco, Brazil and Peru all fall into this economic zone, which cuts across the African, South Asian, ex-Communist, and Orthodox cultural zones. The remaining societies fall into interme-

Mapping Global Values • 19

diate cultural-economic zones. Economic development seems to pull societies in a common direction regardless of their cultural heritage. Economic Development Interacts with a Society’s Cultural Heritage Nevertheless, two centuries after the industrial revolution began, distinctive cultural zones persist. Different societies follow different trajectories, even when they are subjected to the same forces of economic development, because situation-specific factors, such as a society’s cultural heritage, also shape how a particular society develops. Huntington (1996) has emphasized the role of religion in shaping the world’s eight major civilizations: Western Christianity, Orthodox, Islam, Confucian, Japanese, Hindu, African, and Latin American. Despite the forces of modernization, these zones were shaped by religious traditions that are still powerful today. Economic development is strongly associated with both dimensions of cultural change. But a society’s cultural heritage also plays a role. Thus, all eleven Latin American societies fall into a coherent cluster, showing relatively similar values: they rank high on traditional religious values, but are characterized by stronger emphasis on Self-expression values than their economic levels would predict. Economic factors are important, but they are only part of the story; such factors as their common Iberian colonial heritage seem to have left an impact that persists centuries later. Similarly, despite their wide geographic dispersion, the English-speaking countries constitute a compact cultural zone. In the same way, the historically Roman Catholic societies of Western Europe (e.g., Italy, Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium and Austria) display relatively traditional values when compared with Confucian or ex-Communist societies with the same proportion of industrial workers. And, virtually all of the historically Protestant societies (e.g., West Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland) rank higher on both the traditional-secular rational dimension and the survival/self-expression dimension than do the historically Roman Catholic societies. All four of the Confucian-influenced societies (China, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan) have relatively secular values, constituting a Confucian cultural zone, despite substantial differences in wealth. As Huntington claimed, the Orthodox societies constitute another distinct cultural zone. A society’s religious and colonial heritage seem to have had an enduring impact on the contemporary value systems of the 80 societies. But a society’s culture reflects its entire historical heritage. A central historical event of the twentieth century was the rise and fall of a Communist empire that once ruled one-third of the world’s population. Communism

20 • Ronald Inglehart

left a clear imprint on the value systems of those who lived under it. East Germany remains culturally close to West Germany despite four decades of Communist rule, but its value system has been drawn toward the Communist zone. And, although China is a member of the Confucian zone, it also falls within a broad Communist-influenced zone. Similarly, Azerbaijan, though part of an Islamic cluster, also falls within the Communist superzone that dominated it for decades. Changes in GNP and occupational structure have important influences on prevailing world views, but traditional cultural influences persist. The ex-communist societies of Central and Eastern Europe all fall into the upper left-hand quadrant of our cultural map, ranking high on the Traditional/secular-rational dimension (toward the secular pole), but low on the Survival/self expression dimension (falling near the survivaloriented pole). A broken line encircles all of the societies that have experienced Communist rule, and, although they overlap with several different cultural traditions, they form a reasonably coherent group. Although by no means the poorest countries in the world, many Central and Eastern Europe societies have recently experienced the collapse of Communism, shattering their economic, political and social systems and bringing a pervasive sense of insecurity. Thus, Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania and Moldova rank lowest of any countries on earth on the Survival/Selfexpression dimension, exhibiting lower levels of subjective well-being than much poorer countries such as India, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, Uganda and Pakistan. People who have experienced stable poverty throughout their lives tend to emphasize survival values, but those who have experienced the collapse of their social system (and may, as in Russia, currently have living standards and life expectancies far below where they were 15 years ago) experience a sense of unpredictability and insecurity that leads them to emphasize Survival values even more heavily than those who are accustomed to an even lower standard of living. Not surprisingly, Communist rule seems conducive to the emergence of a relatively secular-rational culture: the ex-Communist countries in general, and those that were members of the Soviet Union in particular (and thus experienced communist rule for seven decades, rather then merely four decades), rank higher on secular-rational values than noncommunist countries. And, to an equally striking extent, ex-communist countries in general, and former Soviet countries in particular, tend to emphasize survival values far more heavily than societies that have not experienced communist rule. Thus, as Inglehart and Baker (2000) demonstrate with multiple regression analysis, even when we control for level of economic development and other factors, a history of Communist rule continues to account for a significant share of the cross-cultural variance in basic values (with

Mapping Global Values • 21

seven decades of Communist rule having more impact than four decades). But, by comparison with societies historically shaped by a Roman Catholic or Protestant cultural tradition, an Orthodox tradition seems to reduce emphasis on Self-expression values. A society’s position on the Survival/Self-expression values dimension has important political implications; as we will see, it is strongly linked with its level of democracy. Individualism, Autonomy and Self-expression Values As Tables 1, 2 and 3 demonstrated, the two main dimensions of crosscultural variation tap a wide range of beliefs and attitudes. But their ramifications go farther still; the Survival/Self-expression values dimension taps a concept of major interest to psychologists, although they refer to it as individualism. The broad distinction between individualism and collectivism is a central theme in psychological research on cross-cultural differences. Hofstede (1980) defined individualism as a focus on rights above duties, a concern for oneself and immediate family, an emphasis on personal autonomy and self-fulfillment, and a basing of identity on one’s personal accomplishments. Hofstede developed a survey instrument that measured individualism/collectivism among IBM employees in more than 40 societies. More recently, individualism has been measured cross-nationally by Triandis (1989, 2001, and 2003). Schwartz (1992, 1994, and 2003) measured the related concept of autonomy/embeddedness among students and teachers in scores of countries. As we will demonstrate, individualismcollectivism as measured by Hofstede and Triandis, and autonomy/ embeddness as measured by Schwartz, seem to tap the same dimension of cross-cultural variation as Survival/Self-expression values; they all reflect the extent to which a given society emphasizes autonomous human choice. Individualism/collectivism, autonomy/embeddedness and survival/ self-expression values are all linked with the process of human development, which moves toward diminishing constraints on human choice (Inglehart and Welzel, 2005). Self-expression values are defined in very similar terms to Hofstede’s emphasis on personal autonomy and self-fulfillment as core elements of individualism. Similarly, Schwartz’s emphasis on intellectual autonomy and affective autonomy captures core elements of self-expression values. All of these variables reflect a common theme: an emphasis on free choice. The core principle of collectivism is that groups bind and mutually obligate individuals. In collectivist societies, social units have a common fate and common goals; the personal is simply a component of the social,

22 • Ronald Inglehart

making the in-group crucial. Collectivism implies that group membership is a central aspect of identity, and sacrificing individual goals for the common good is strongly emphasized. Collectivism further implies that fulfillment comes from carrying out externally defined obligations, making people focus on meeting others’ expectations. Accordingly, emotional self-restraint is valued to ensure harmony, even at the cost of one’s own happiness. In collectivist societies, social context is prominent in people’s perceptions and causal reasoning, and meaning is contextualized. Finally, collectivism implies that important group memberships are seen as fixed facts of life, toward which people have no choice; they must accommodate. Boundaries between in-groups and outgroups are stable, relatively impermeable, and important; exchanges are based on mutual obligations and patriarchal ties. Today, empirical measures of individualism, autonomy and self-expression values are available from many societies, and it turns out that they all tap a common dimension of cross-cultural variation, reflecting an emphasis on autonomous human choice. The mean national scores on these three variables show are closely correlated, with an average strength of r = .66. As Table 4 demonstrates, factor analysis of the mean national scores from many countries reveals that individualism, autonomy and self-expression values all tap a single underlying dimension, which accounts for fully 78 percent of the cross- national variance. High levels of individualism go with high levels of autonomy and high levels of self-expression values. Hofstede’s, Schwartz’s, Triandis’ and Inglehart’s measures all tap cross-cultural variation in a common aspect of human psychology: the drive toward broader human choice. As the Values Surveys demonstrate, they also measure something that extends far beyond whether given cultures have an individualistic or collective outlook. Societies that rank high on self-expression tend to emphasize individual autonomy and the quality of life, rather than economic and Table 4 Self-expression Values and Individualism and Autonomy Scales tap a common dimension The Individualism/Autonomy/Self-expression Dimension: emphasis on autonomous choice (Principal Component Analysis) Inglehart, Survival vs. Self-expression values Hofstede, Individualism vs. Collectivism rankings Schwartz, Autonomy vs. Embeddedness, (mean of student/teacher samples)

Variance explained 78% .91 .87 .87

Mapping Global Values • 23

physical security. Their publics have relatively low levels of confidence in technology and scientific discoveries as the solution to human problems, and they are relatively likely to act to protect the environment. These societies also rank relatively high on gender equality, tolerance of gays, lesbians, foreigners and other outgroups; they show relatively high levels of subjective well-being, and interpersonal trust, and they emphasize imagination and tolerance, as important things to teach a child. But individualism, autonomy and self-expression are not static characteristics of societies. They change with the course of socioeconomic development. As we have seen, socioeconomic development brings rising levels of existential security (especially in its post-industrial phase), which leads to an increasing emphasis on individualism, autonomy and self-expression. Birch and Cobb (1981) view this process as reflecting an evolutionary trend towards the “liberation of life.” Inglehart and Welzel (2005) describe it as a process of human development in which the most distinctively human ability – the ability to make autonomous choices, instead of following biologically and socially predetermined behavior – becomes an increasingly central feature of modern societies. As we will see, this syndrome of individualism, autonomy, and self-expression is conducive to the emergence and survival of democratic institutions. The common dimension underlying individualism, autonomy and selfexpression is remarkably robust. It emerges even when one uses different measurement approaches, different types of samples, and different time periods. Hofstede found it in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when analyzing the values of a cross-national sample of IBM employees. Schwartz measured it in surveys of students and teachers carried out from 1988 to 2002; and Inglehart first found it in an analysis of representative national samples of the publics of 43 societies surveyed in 1989-91, with the same dimension emerging in successive cross-national surveys in 1995 and in 2000. This dimension seems to be an enduring feature of crosscultural variation, to such an extent that one might almost conclude that it is difficult to avoid finding it if one measures the basic values of a broad range of societies. Individualism, Autonomy and Self-expression as Evolving Phenomena Most cultural-psychological theories have treated the individualismcollectivism polarity as a static attribute of given cultures, overlooking the possibility that individualist and collectivist orientations reflect a society’s socioeconomic conditions at a given time. Our theory holds that the extent to which Self-expression values (or individualism) prevail over

24 • Ronald Inglehart

Survival values (or collectivism) reflects a society’s level of development; as external constraints on human choice recede, people (and societies) place increasing emphasis on self-expression values or individualism. This pattern is not culture-specific. It is universal. The most fundamental external constraint on human choice is the extent to which physical survival is secure or insecure. Throughout most of history, survival has been precarious for most people. Most children did not survive to adulthood, and malnutrition and associated diseases were the leading cause of death. This is remote from the experience of Western publics today, but existential insecurity is still the dominant reality in most of the world. Under such conditions, Survival values take top priority. Survival is such a fundamental goal that, if it seems uncertain, one’s entire life strategy is shaped by that fact. Low levels of socioeconomic development not only impose material constraints on people’s choices; they also are linked with low levels of education and information. This intellectual poverty imposes cognitive constraints on people’s choices. Finally, in the absence of the welfare state, strong group obligations are the only form of social insurance, imposing social constraints on people’s choices. In recent history, a growing number of societies have attained unprecedented levels of economic development. Diminishing material, cognitive and social constraints on human choice are bringing a shift from emphasis on Survival values to emphasis on Self-expression values, and from a collective focus to an individual one. People’s sense of human autonomy becomes stronger as objective existential constraints on human choice recede. As will be seen, this has important societal consequences. Mass emphasis on human choice tends to favor the political system that provides the widest room for choice: democracy. Economic Development and Cultural Change Because our two main dimensions of cross-cultural variation – Traditional/ Secular-rational values and Survival/Self-expression values – are linked with economic development, we find pervasive differences between the worldviews of people in rich and poor societies. Moreover, time series evidence shows that, with economic development, societies tend to move from the values prevailing in low-income societies toward greater emphasis on secular-rational and self-expression values (Inglehart and Baker, 2000; Inglehart and Welzel, 2005). These changes largely reflect a process of intergenerational value change. Throughout advanced industrial societies, the young emphasize

Mapping Global Values • 25

self-expression values and secular-rational values more strongly than the old. Cohort analysis indicates that the distinctive values of younger cohorts are stable characteristics that persist as they age. Consequently, as younger birth cohorts replace older ones in the adult population, the society’s prevailing values change in a roughly predictable direction. The unprecedented level of economic development during the past several decades, coupled with the emergence of the welfare state in advanced societies, means that an increasing share of the population has grown up taking survival for granted. Thus, priorities have shifted from an overwhelming emphasis on economic and physical security toward an increasing emphasis on subjective well-being, self-expression and quality of life. Inglehart and Welzel (2005) demonstrate that orientations have shifted from Traditional toward Secular-rational values, and from Survival values toward Self-expression values in almost all advanced industrial societies that have experienced economic growth. The Societal Impact of Changing Values Evidence from the Values Surveys demonstrates that people’s orientations concerning religion, politics, gender roles, work motivations, and sexual norms are evolving, – along with their attitudes toward childrearing, their tolerance of foreigners, gays and lesbians, and their attitudes toward science and technology (Inglehart and Norris, 2003; Inglehart and Welzel, 2005). Figure 2 provides one example, showing the percentage of respondents saying that homosexuality is “Never” justifiable. The respondents were shown a ten-point scale, on which point 1 means that homosexuality is never justifiable, and point 10 means that it is always justifiable, with the eight intermediate points indicating intermediate positions. As this figure demonstrates, in 1981 about half of those surveyed in five Western countries took the extreme negative position, placing themselves at point 1 on the scale (the publics of developing countries being even less tolerant of homosexuality). However, attitudes changed substantially in subsequent years. By the 2000 survey, only about 25 percent of the West Europeans, and 32 percent of the Americans took this position. Although attitudes toward homosexuality show a .86 stability correlation across the two most recent waves of the WVS, sizeable changes are occurring; most countries were changing, but their relative positions remained surprisingly stable, reflecting an underlying component of continuity within given generations. Thus, change is occurring largely through intergenerational population replacement. The cumulative effect of changing attitudes in this field has led to recent societal-level changes, such as the legalization of same-sex marriages

26 • Ronald Inglehart

Figure 2 Changes in the percentage saying that homosexuality is never justifiable, in Britain, France, Germany Italy, and the U.S., from 1981 to 2000 70 60 50 1981 1990 1995 2000

40 30 20 10 0 W. Europe

U.S.

in some countries and certain cities in the U.S. This, in turn, mobilized a strong reaction by people with traditional values and referenda seeking to ban same-sex marriage, giving rise to widespread belief that the U.S. public in general is becoming increasingly hostile to gays and lesbians; the opposite is true. The basic values of individuals are changing, and these changes have a major impact on a wide range of important societal-level phenomena. They are reshaping the extent to which given societies have objective gender equality in political, social and economic life, as well as human fertility rates, the role of religion, legislation concerning the rights of gays and lesbians, and environmental protection laws. Changing individuallevel values also seem to have a major influence on the extent to which a society has good governance, and the emergence and flourishing of democratic institutions. Self-expression Values and Democracy A society’s position on the survival/self-expression index is strongly correlated with its level of democracy, as indicated by its scores on the Freedom House ratings of political rights and civil liberties. This relationship is remarkably powerful, and it is clearly not a methodological artifact, since the two variables are measured at different levels and come from entirely different sources. Virtually all of the societies that rank high on Survival/Self-expression values are stable democracies. Virtually all of the societies that rank low on this dimension have authoritarian

Mapping Global Values • 27

governments. We find a correlation of .83 between survival/self-expression values and democracy; this is significant at a very high level, and seems to reflect a causal linkage (Inglehart and Welzel, 2005, articles 7 and 8). The Freedom House measures are limited by the fact that they only measure the extent to which civil and political liberties are institutionalized, which does not necessarily reflect the extent to which these liberties are actually respected by political elites. Some very important recent literature has emphasized the importance of the distinction between formal democracy and genuine liberal democracy (Ottaway, 2003; O’Donnell, Vargas Cullel and Iazzetta [eds.], 2004). In order to tap the latter, we need a measure of “effective democracy” which reflects not only the extent to which formal civil and political liberties are institutionalized, but also measures the extent to which these liberties are actually practiced, thus indicating how much free choice people really have in their lives. To construct such an index of effective democracy, we multiply the Freedom House measures of civil and political rights by the World Bank’s anti-corruption scores (Kaufman, Kraay and Mastruzzi, 2003), which we see as an indicator of “elite integrity,” or the extent to which state power actually follows legal norms (see Inglehart and Welzel, 2005 for a more detailed discussion of this index). When we examine the linkage between this measure of genuine democracy and mass self-expression values, we find an amazingly strong correlation of r = .90 across 73 nations. This reflects a powerful cross-level linkage, connecting mass values that emphasize free choice, and the extent to which societal institutions actually provide free choice. Figure 3 depicts the relationship between this index of effective democracy and mass self-expression values. The extent to which self-expression values are present in a society explains over 80 percent of the crossnational variance in the extent to which liberal democracy is actually practiced. These findings suggest that the importance of the linkage between individual-level values and democratic institutions has been underestimated. Mass preferences play a crucial role in the emergence of genuine democracy (Inglehart and Welzel, 2005). The linkage between mass self-expression values and democratic institutions is remarkably strong and consistent, having only a few outliers: such countries as China, Iran and Vietnam show lower levels of democracy than their publics’ values would predict. These countries have authoritarian regimes that are under growing societal pressure to liberalize, and we expect that they will liberalize within the next 15 to 20 years. Authoritarian rulers of some Asian societies have argued that the distinctive “Asian values” of these societies make them unsuitable for democracy (Lee and Zakaria, 1994; Thompson, 2000). But, in fact, the position

28 • Ronald Inglehart

Figure 3 Self-expression values and Effective Democracy. From Inglehart and Welzel, 2005 HIGH 105

Finland

100 95

Level of Effective Democracy (2000-2002)

Sweden

Iceland

Netherld.

Switzerld. Canada

90

Austria

85

Norway U.S.A.

Australia

G.B. Ireland Germany (E.) Germany (W.)

80 75

Portugal

70

Spain

France

Japan

Chile

Belgium

65 Slovenia

Israel

60 Taiwan

55

Uruguay

Estonia

Italy

Hungary

South Africa Czech R. Slovakia Poland

50 45

South Korea

40

Lithuania

Latvia

35

Bulgaria

Croatia Dominican R.

30

India

Peru Brazil

El Salvad.

Romania

25 20

Philippines Argentina

Jordan Moldova Albania

15

Bangladesh Georgia Algeria Tanzania Pakistan

10 5

LOW

New Zeald.

Denmark

Zimbabwe

0 5

10

Azerbaij

15

Mexico

Turkey Yugoslavia Venezuela

r = .90***

Nigeria Egypt Indonesia China Belarus Uganda Iran


75,000).2 This survey is intended to include all the motivationally distinct values likely to be recognized across cultures, a claim for which there is growing evidence (Schwartz, 2005a). Values whose meanings differ across cultures should not be used in cross-cultural comparison. Otherwise, group differences might reflect the fact that different concepts are measured in each group. Separate multidimensional scaling analyses of the value items within each of 66 countries established that 45 of the items have reasonably equivalent meanings in each country (Schwartz, 1994a, 1999; Fontaine, et al., 2005). To test

2

I am indebted to over 100 collaborators for their aid in gathering the data.

A Theory of Cultural Value Orientations: Explication and Applications • 41

the theory, I specified in advance a set of three to eight value items expected to represent each of the seven cultural orientations. Data from representative national samples in 20 countries, gathered as part of the European Social Survey (2002-3), provided a second test of the theory. This survey includes a 21-items short version of the Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ: Schwartz, et al., 2001; Schwartz, 2003, 2005b, 2006) designed to measure basic individual values. Each portrait describes a person’s goals, aspirations, or wishes that point implicitly to the importance of a value. For example, “Thinking up new ideas and being creative is important to her. She likes to do things in her own original way.” Regarding each portrait, respondents answer: “How much like you is this person?” Respondents’ own values are inferred from their self-reported similarity to people described implicitly in terms of particular values. Within-country analyses in each country confirmed reasonable meaning equivalence across countries for all 21 items. To test the theory, I specified in advance items expected to represent the cultural orientations. Empirical Evaluation of the Theory of Cultural Value Orientations A first assessment of the validity of the seven cultural value orientations and the relations among them used SVS data gathered in 1988-2000. Participants were 80 samples of schoolteachers (k-12) from 58 national groups and 115 samples of college students from 64 national groups, together constituting 67 nations and 70 different cultural groups. Samples from ethnically heterogeneous nations came from the dominant, majority group. Most samples included between 180 and 280 respondents. For each sample, we computed the mean ratings of the 45 value items and then correlated items across samples. This treats the sample as the unit of analysis. The sample level correlations are statistically independent of the correlations across individuals within any sample. Thus, the analyses are at the sample (country) or culture level, not the individual level. Correlations between the sample means were used in a multidimensional scaling analysis (Borg & Lingoes, 1987; Guttman, 1968) to assess the presence of the seven cultural orientations and the relations among them. The 2-dimensional projection in Figure 2 portrays the pattern of intercorrelations among values, based on the sample means. Each value item is represented by a point such that the more positive the correlation between any pair of value items the closer they are in the space, and the less positive their correlation the more distant. Comparing Figure 2

42 • Shalom H. Schwartz

with Figure 1 reveals that the observed content and structure of cultural value orientations fully support the theorized content and structure. This analysis clearly discriminates the seven orientations: The value items selected a priori to represent each value orientation are located within a unique wedge-shaped region of the space.3 Equally important, the regions representing each orientation form the integrated cultural system postulated by the theory: They emanate from the center of the circle, follow the expected order around the circle, and form the poles of the three broad cultural dimensions. The second assessment of the theory of cultural value orientations used the 21-item PVQ data from the representative national samples of the ESS. To obtain a sufficient number of samples for a reliable Multidimensional Scaling Analysis, we split the 20 countries into 52 cultural groups, each with a minimum of 40 respondents.4 We computed group means for each item and correlated the items across the groups. Figure 3 presents the two dimensional projection of relations among the items. The observed content and structure of cultural value orientations in this figure again support the theorized content and structure fully. Because the ESS value scale has few items and was not designed to measure cultural orientations, only three or fewer items represent each orientation (except embeddedness with six). Nonetheless, there are seven distinguishable regions representing the seven orientations. The regions follow the expected order around the circle and form the three polar cultural dimensions. The score for each cultural value orientation in a country is the mean importance rating of the value items that represent it. Prior to computing these scores, we centered each individual respondent’s ratings of the value items on his/her mean rating of all of the items. This controls for individual as well as group biases in use of the response scales.5 In order to increase the reliability of country scores based on the SVS data, I combined the means of the teacher and student samples in the 52 countries in which both types of samples were available. In 21 countries, only either teacher or student data were available. For these countries, I estimated the missing sample means based on regression coefficients

3 One item, ‘accepting my portion in life,’ emerged in the egalitarianism region rather than in the expected harmony region which is adjacent. Its correlations with other items also failed to support an interpretation as a harmony value. We therefore dropped it from the analyses. 4 My thanks to Ariel Knafo for deriving these ethnic group samples. 5 Schwartz (1992; 2006) further explains how to perform the scale use correction and why it is necessary.

*CURIOUS

INTELLECTUAL AUTONOMY

*LOYAL

*SOCIAL JUSTICE

HELPFUL*

AFFECTIVE AUTONOMY

ENJOYING*LIFE

VARIED LIFE*

*WORLD OF BEAUTY

MASTERY

*DARING

INFLUENTIAL*

SOCIAL*RECOGNITION CHOOSING OWN GOALS*

*INDEPEDENT

*AUTHORITY

*SOCIAL POWER

*WEALTH

HIERARCHY

OBEDIENT* *MODERATE POLITENESS* *HONOR ELDERS NATIONAL *SECURITY CLEAN* *SELF *FAMILY DEVOUT* DISCIPLINE SECURITY *WISDOM *PROTECT MY PUBLIC IMAGE RECIPROCATION *OF FAVORS *HUMBLE

*SOCIAL ORDER

EMBEDDEDNESS

*RESPECT TRADITION *FORGIVING

*CAPABLE SUCCESSFUL* AMBITIOUS*

*WORLD AT PEACE

PLEASURE*

EXCITING LIFE

*CREATIVITY

*BROADMINDEDNESS *FREEDOM

*EQUALITY

RESPONSIBLE*

HONEST*

EGALITARIANISM

ACCEPT MY PORTION IN LIFE*

*PROTECT ENVIRONMENT *UNITY WITH NATURE

HARMONY

Figure 2 Cultural Level MDS-195 Samples, 70 Cultural Groups (Coefficient Alienation .18)

A Theory of Cultural Value Orientations: Explication and Applications • 43

follow rules 7

HIERARCHY

tradition 20 wealth 2 successful 13 4 show abilities

8 understand listen

loyal 18 devoted

fun 21 pleasure

new 6 experiences

AFFECTIVE AUTONOMY

10 good time spoil self

free, own INTELLECTUAL 11decisions AUTONOMY creative 1 original

EGALITARIANISM

help others 12

equality 3 for all

HARMONY

risk 15 excitement

MASTERY

tell 17 others

state protect behave 14 properly 16 5 secure surroundings

EMBEDDEDNESS

inconspicuous modest 9

care for 19 nature

Figure 3 Cultural Level MDS-52 Cultural Groups from ESS (coefficient alienation .14)

44 • Shalom H. Schwartz

A Theory of Cultural Value Orientations: Explication and Applications • 45

generated by regressing student and teacher means from the 52 countries where both were available on one another. For a lower-bound estimate of the adequacy of the combined teacherand student-based SVS scores for measuring cultural differences among societies, I correlated them with the scores based on 25 representative national or sub-national samples from the ESS. I refer to this as a ‘lowerbound’ estimate because of a set of methodological factors that would weaken any associations: The ESS scores are each based on very few items, as noted above, the ESS data were gathered an average of seven years later, the ESS and SVS methods of measurement differ greatly and, most important, the ESS countries come only from Europe plus Israel, thereby substantially restricting the range of scores on the cultural orientations. The observed Pearson correlations ranged from .45 (mastery) to .80 (intellectual autonomy), mean .63. In light of the methodological problems that weaken these correlations, this finding provides considerable support for the adequacy of the combined teacher- and student-based SVS scores for capturing cultural differences among whole societies Contrasting the Inglehart and Schwartz Dimensions Based on the European and World Value Surveys, Inglehart (e.g., Inglehart & Baker, 2000) extended his earlier work on materialism and post-materialism to propose two value dimensions on which to compare national cultures, tradition vs. secular-rational and survival vs. self-expression. This section discusses conceptual and empirical relations between these dimensions and the cultural orientations presented above. Inglehart derived scores on the two dimensions for 72 countries, 63 of which overlap with the countries I have studied with the SVS. Correlations between the Inglehart and Schwartz dimensions across these countries provide an empirical basis for assessing their similarities and differences. To further assess relations among the Inglehart and Schwartz dimensions, I used the scores on my dimensions derived from the PVQ21 in the ESS countries. I computed separate scores for East and West Germany because Inglehart has separate scores for these regions. These 21 groups vary less than the 63 countries in the SVS-based analyses both culturally and socially. Should both sets of analyses yield similar results, despite diverse samples and different methods, we can have confidence in their robustness. The tradition/secular-rational dimension centrally concerns orientations toward authority. It contrasts societies in which religion, nation, and family are highly important with those in which they are not so important. In traditional societies, children’s first duty is to their parents

46 • Shalom H. Schwartz

and parents are expected to sacrifice themselves for their children. Male dominance is the norm, absolute standards of morality prevail, and national pride is high. “Societies with secular-rational values have the opposite preferences on all of these topics” (Inglehart & Baker, 2000, p. 25). The five-item index used to measure this dimension correlates highly with these beliefs and attitudes. The two items that load most strongly on the factor, however, both concern religious belief. This dimension overlaps conceptually with my autonomy/embeddedness dimension. Both concern the degree to which the individual is submerged in all-encompassing structures of tight mutual obligations. Inglehart’s description implies that, in traditional societies, people’s ties to their religious, national, and family groups are the source of meaning in their lives – a core aspect of embeddedness. The weakening of encompassing structures and of absolute standards in secular-rational societies frees individuals to think, do, and feel more independently – a core aspect of autonomy. Now consider correlations between the dimensions across 63 countries with the SVS measure of my dimensions and, in parentheses, across the 21 ESS countries with the PVQ21 measure. The tradition/secular-rational dimension correlates .60 (.51) with intellectual autonomy, .53 (.38) with affective autonomy, -.57 (-.33) with embeddedness, and .60 (.41) with the autonomy/embeddedness dimension. As the pairs of correlations indicate, both sets of analyses yield similar pictures. For a more in-depth examination, I elaborate on the 63-country analysis. The autonomy/embeddedness dimension shares considerable variance (36%) with the tradition/ secular-rational dimension, but they array nations somewhat differently. For example, East Germany ranks in the top 10% of nations on both dimensions and Zimbabwe in the bottom 15%. But Bulgaria, China, and Estonia rank in the top 10% on tradition/ secular-rational but the bottom third on autonomy/embeddedness. The centrality of religion in the Inglehart index may explain this difference in country locations on the two dimensions. Their high secularrational rankings may be due to a breakdown of religious faith and absolute standards of traditional morality during decades of communist rule. The autonomy/embeddedness dimension gives less weight to religious faith. It focuses more on how legitimate it is for individuals to cultivate unique ways of thinking, acting, and feeling vs. submerging the self in an encompassing collectivity. The culture in Bulgaria, China, and Estonia may have become quite secular. At the same time, the low scores on autonomy/embeddedness suggest that the culture still stresses finding meaning through ties to the in-group. The two dimensions apparently capture different aspects of the culture in these countries.

A Theory of Cultural Value Orientations: Explication and Applications • 47

The tradition/secular-rational dimension also has some conceptual overlap with the egalitarianism/hierarchy dimension. Both concern deference to authority. The emphasis on national pride in traditional societies also expresses a hierarchical orientation, and the preference for male dominance is compatible with hierarchy and opposed to egalitarianism. The overlap is limited, however, because the Inglehart dimension does not relate to the primary focus of egalitarianism/hierarchy. Both egalitarianism and hierarchy seek to preserve the social fabric by promoting responsible behavior that considers the welfare of others. They differ in grounding such behavior in voluntary choice based on internalized commitments (egalitarianism) or in conformity to the obligations and expectations of ascribed roles (hierarchy). The empirical associations reflect little overlap. The tradition/secular-rational dimension correlated -.00 (.22) with egalitarianism, -.32 (-.21) with hierarchy, and .22 (.25) with the egalitarianism/hierarchy dimension. Unexpectedly, given no obvious conceptual overlap, the tradition/secular-rational dimension correlated somewhat positively with the harmony/mastery dimension (.36/.34). Thus, more secular-rational societies are also societies that tend more to emphasize fitting into the natural and social world as it is, trying to understand and appreciate rather than to change or to exploit. The nations with cultures especially high on both harmony and secular-rational orientations are all in Western Europe. These nations have well-to-do, educated, and involved publics. Such publics responded to two devastating wars and to severe ecological crises by developing rationally-based relations of harmony among themselves and with the environment. Inglehart’s second dimension, survival/self-expression, contrasts societies in which people primarily focus on economic and physical security (survival) with societies in which security is high and quality-of-life issues are central (self-expression). In the latter, many people are well educated and work in the services. This demands of them more freedom of judgment, innovation, and autonomous decision-making and equips them with relevant communication and information-processing skills. Trust, tolerance, subjective well-being, political activism, and concern for the environment are high. At the survival pole, people feel threatened by and are intolerant of those who are different (e.g., ethnically or in sexual preference) or who seek cultural change (e.g., women’s movements). At the self-expression pole, difference and change are accepted and even seen as enriching, and out-groups are increasingly seen as meriting equal rights. This dimension also overlaps with the autonomy/embeddedness dimension. They both concern the degree to which individuals should be

48 • Shalom H. Schwartz

encouraged to express their uniqueness and independence in thought, action, and feelings. Empirically, they are substantially associated. Survival/self-expression correlated -.66 (-.65) with embeddedness, .55 (.40) with affective autonomy, .57 (.65) with intellectual autonomy, and .64 (.63) with the autonomy/embeddedness dimension, with which it shares 41% of its variance. These two dimensions array nations quite similarly. For example, Sweden and Denmark rank very high on both dimensions and Uganda and Zimbabwe rank very low. But there are differences. Both Ghana and West Germany are moderate on survival/self-expression, but Ghana is very low on autonomy/embeddedness and West Germany very high. The egalitarianism/hierarchy dimension also overlaps conceptually with survival/self-expression. The latter pits trust, tolerance, and support for the equal rights of out-groups against low trust, intolerance, and rejection of out-groups as threatening. This closely parallels some aspects of high vs. low egalitarianism. Political activism and opposition to change in accepted roles also conflict with hierarchy, though these elements are less critical. The empirical correlations support these inferences. Survival/ self-expression correlated .72 (.63) with egalitarianism, -.41 (-.25) with hierarchy, and .59 (.50) with the egalitarianism/hierarchy dimension with which it shares 35% of its variance. Sweden and Norway are very high on both dimensions and Bulgaria is very low on both. But many nations do not exhibit consistent ranks on the two cultural dimensions. Japan is very low on egalitarianism (vs. hierarchy) but moderately high on self-expression (vs. survival), for example. My dimension emphasizes the idea that Japanese culture organizes relations of interdependency in role-based hierarchical terms. The Inglehart dimension may reflect the consequences for culture of Japanese society’s wealth, high level of education, and advanced service economy. Thus, these two dimensions capture different, not necessarily contradictory, aspects of culture. The contrasting feelings of interpersonal threat vs. trust and the focus on material security vs. environmental protection of the survival/selfexpression dimension parallel a low vs. high harmony orientation. Empirically, however, there is no association either with harmony or with the harmony/mastery dimension. Harmony emphasizes fitting into and accepting the social and natural environments rather than changing or using them. Self-expression implies a more activist orientation to people and nature. This may explain the lack of association. In sum, there is substantial overlap between Inglehart’s tradition/ secular-rational dimension and my autonomy/embeddedness dimension and between Inglehart’s survival/self-expression dimension and both my

A Theory of Cultural Value Orientations: Explication and Applications • 49

autonomy/embeddedness and egalitarianism/hierarchy dimensions. Given the differences in the way the dimensions were derived, in the scales used to measure them, and in the nature of the samples studied, this overlap is striking. It strongly supports the idea that these dimensions capture real, robust aspects of cultural difference. On the other hand, some nations exhibit substantially divergent rankings on the overlapping dimensions. This makes clear that each dimension also captures unique aspects of culture. Thus, for example, the level of conventional religious commitment in a country appears to influence tradition/secular-rational scores crucially but have much less impact on autonomy/embeddedness scores. In contrast, the cultural emphasis on extended in-group bonds vs. pursuit of individual uniqueness appears to influence autonomy-embeddedness scores more than tradition/secular rational-scores. Moreover, my harmony/mastery dimension apparently taps aspects of culture not measured by the Inglehart dimensions, as evidenced by its low correlations with them. As we will see, harmony/mastery is the only cultural dimension not strongly related to socio-economic development. Countries as a Cultural Unit Almost all large, comparative, cross-cultural studies treat countries as their cultural unit. Countries are rarely homogeneous societies with a unified culture. Inferences about national culture may depend on which subgroups are studied. The research on my cultural dimensions with the SVS used country scores from teacher and student samples rather than representative national samples. This makes it especially important to establish that scores derived from different types of samples order countries in the same way on the dimensions. If a meaningful general culture impacts upon varied groups within countries, the order of countries on cultural dimensions should be quite similar whether we measure culture using one type of subsample from the dominant group or another. The same countries should score higher and the same countries lower on each cultural orientation whether the set of samples consists, for example, of older or of younger respondents. I assessed consistency in the relative scores of countries on the seven cultural orientations measured with the SVS, using three types of subsamples. I first assessed whether younger and older subcultures yield similar relative national scores. I split the teacher samples into those 37 years or younger and those older. There were 55 countries with at least 33 respondents in each age group. The relative national scores, based on these two subgroups, were very similar. Correlations ranged from .96

50 • Shalom H. Schwartz

for embeddedness to .78 for mastery (mean .91). I also compared national scores using male vs. female student subgroups across 64 countries. This yielded similar results: Correlations ranged from .96 for embeddedness to .82 for egalitarianism (mean .90). Finally, I compared national scores based on the teacher vs. the student samples across 53 countries. Correlations ranged from .90 for egalitarianism to .57 for mastery (mean .81). Although still substantial, the somewhat weaker correlations in this last comparison reflect the fact that the samples differed in both age and occupation. This suggests that closely matching the characteristics of the samples from each country is critical when comparing national cultural orientations. These data demonstrate that the similarity of cultural value orientations within countries, when viewed against the background of cultural distance between countries, is considerable. Taken together, the findings support the view that countries are meaningful cultural units. In comparing national cultures, however, it is important to insure that the samples from different countries are matched on critical characteristics (e.g., all teacher samples, all student samples, or all properly drawn national samples). Cultural Distinctiveness of World Regions Both theoretical arguments and empirical analyses suggest that there are culturally distinct world regions (Hofstede, 2001; Huntington, 1993; Inglehart, 1997; Schwartz, 1999). This section examines the locations in cultural space of 76 cultural groups based on the combined teacher and student samples (73 countries, with Israel split into Arabs and Jews, Germany into East and West, and Canada into Anglo and French-speaking national groups). For this purpose, I first standardized the mean importance of all seven cultural orientations within each group. Each group profile therefore reflects the relative importance of each cultural orientation within a national group. Unlike Inglehart’s mapping of national cultures on two orthogonal variables (his dimensions), I map them simultaneously on seven variables (my cultural orientations). Mapping locations of the national groups on the seven orientations in a two dimensional space necessarily entails some imprecision. The richness gained in describing cultures largely compensates for the loss of precision because the degree of imprecision is limited (see below). The ‘co-plot’ multidimensional scaling technique (Goldreich & Raveh, 1993) maps the cultural distances between groups. It computes a matrix of profile differences between all pairs of groups by summing the absolute differences between the groups on each of the seven value orientations. From this matrix it generates a two-dimensional spatial representation

A Theory of Cultural Value Orientations: Explication and Applications • 51

of the similarities and differences among groups (see Figure 4). It then calculates vectors (optimal regression lines) in the MDS space that show the direction of increasing scores for each of the seven orientations. In Figure 4, I drew the full vector for embeddedness from lower left to upper right and short arrows to indicate the angles of the vectors for the other orientations. These other vectors also extend through the center of gravity of the figure, just above Romania. The correlation between the actual scores of the cultural groups on an orientation and their locations along the vector that represents the orientation appear in parentheses. The substantial magnitude of these correlations (range .75 to .98) indicates that the locations of most samples provide quite an accurate picture. This is because countries usually exhibit a profile that reflects the coherence of the theoretical structure of cultural dimensions. If the culture of a country emphasizes one polar value orientation, it typically deemphasizes the opposing polar orientation. Moreover, the relative importance of adjacent cultural orientations is usually similar too. For example, Italian culture, compared to all the others, is very high both in egalitarianism and in the adjacent harmony orientation but very low in the opposing hierarchy and adjacent mastery orientations. Chinese culture shows the reverse profile.6 Locations of nations along these vectors relative to one another reveal, graphically, the specific ways in which national cultures resemble or differ from one another. For example, the farther a nation toward the upper right, the greater the cultural emphasis on embeddedness relative to other nations and the farther toward the lower left, the less the cultural emphasis on embeddedness. To locate a nation on a cultural orientation, draw a perpendicular line from the position of the nation to the vector for that orientation. Perpendiculars drawn to the embeddedness vector in Figure 4 show that this orientation is especially emphasized in Yemen, less so in Macedonia, and very little in East Germany. Consider two examples of how Figure 4 represents the cultural profile of a country on all seven cultural orientations. Culture in Sweden (upper left) strongly emphasizes harmony, intellectual autonomy, and egalitarianism and moderately emphasizes affective autonomy. The cultural emphasis on embeddedness is low, and it is very low for mastery and 6

Japan presents a striking exception. Seven samples from around Japan reveal an unusual combination of cultural elements. The culture strongly emphasizes hierarchy and harmony but not embeddedness, which is adjacent to them, and it strongly emphasizes intellectual autonomy but not the adjacent egalitarianism. Thus, the location of Japan in the co-plot is necessarily misleading. This unusual combination would not surprise many scholars of Japanese culture (e.g., Benedict, 1974; Matsumoto, 2002). It points to a culture in tension and transition.

SPAIN

NORWAY

FINLAND

ITALY

INTELLECTUAL AUTONOMY (.93)

MEXICO ROMANIA

POLAND

INDONESIA SINGAPORE

CANADA ENG

AFFECTIVE AUTONOMY (.92)

NEW UK ZEALAND

ISRAEL JEWS

JAPAN

MASTERY (.88)

USA THAILAND

HIERARCHY (.87)

ZIMBABWE

CHINA

INDIA

JORDAN

IRAN

UGANDA

NAMIBIA

NEPAL

GHANA

NIGERIA

SENEGAL

EMBEDDEDNESS (.98)

S AFRICA

YEMEN

S KOREA

VENEZUELA ARGENTINA YUGO- TURKEY MACEDONIA ISRAEL BRAZIL SLAVIA RUSSIA PERU ARABS COSTA BULGARIA RICA UKRAINE TAIWAN AUSTRALIA CROATIA HONG KONG IRELAND

CHILE

HUNGARY

SLOVAKIA GEORGIA FIJI BOSNIA HZ PHILIPPINES ESTONIA CYPRUS BOLIVIA Gr MALAYSIA

LATVIA

CZECH REP

SLOVENIA

PORTUGAL NETHERLANDS GREECE FRANCE

BELGIUM SWEDEN GERMANY DENMARK AUSTRIA W CANADA GERMANY E FR

SWITZERLAND FR

EGALITARIANISM (.75)

HARMONY (.79)

ETHIOPIA

EGYPT CAMEROON

Figure 4 Co-Plot Map of 76 National Groups on Seven Cultural Orientations (coefficient alienation .11)

52 • Shalom H. Schwartz

A Theory of Cultural Value Orientations: Explication and Applications • 53

hierarchy. In contrast, in Zimbabwe (lower right), mastery, embeddedness, and hierarchy are highly emphasized, affective autonomy moderately emphasized, and egalitarianism, intellectual autonomy, and harmony receive little cultural emphasis. The spatial map of the 76 national cultures reveals seven transnational cultural groupings: West European countries (clear circles) to the far left, English-speaking countries in the lower left center (dark circles), Latin American countries in the center (shaded circles), East European countries in the upper center and to the left of Latin America (lightly shaded circles), South Asian countries (shaded circles) in a band to the right, Confucian influenced countries below them to the right (clear circles), and African and Middle Eastern countries (dark circles) to the far right and above. Only nine cultures are located outside of their expected region. Four of these are from the culturally diverse Middle East (Turkey, Greek Cyprus, Israel Arabs, Israel Jews) The regions show striking parallels with the zones Huntington (1993) suggested and those Hofstede (1980) and Inglehart and Baker (2000) found. Schwartz and Ros (1995) and Schwartz and Bardi (1997) provide initial explanations for the emergence of the English-speaking, West European, and East European cultural profiles. Most regions reflect some geographical proximity. Hence, some of the cultural similarity within regions is doubtless due to diffusion of values, norms, practices, and institutions across national borders (Naroll, 1973). But shared histories, language, religion, level of development, and other factors also play a part. To illustrate the sensitivity of the cultural orientations to such factors, consider the cultures that are not located in their expected regions. French Canadian culture is apparently closer to West European and particularly French culture than to English speaking Canadian culture, reflecting its historic and linguistic roots. East German culture is close to West German rather than part of the East European region. This probably reflects continued cultural ties from the pre-communist era. Turkish culture is higher on egalitarianism and autonomy and lower on hierarchy and embeddedness than its Middle Eastern Muslim neighbors are. This probably reflects its secular democracy, long history of East European influence, and recent struggles to join the West. Greek Cypriot culture is relatively high in embeddedness and low in autonomy. This may reflect its history of over 1000 years of rule by the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires and its Eastern Orthodox religion. Israeli Jewish culture is close to the English-speaking cultures and distant from the surrounding Middle East to which its Arab culture is close. Europeans founded Israel and it has strong political and economic links to the USA. Among the Latin American countries, the populations of Bolivia and Peru were least

54 • Shalom H. Schwartz

exposed to European culture and economically least developed. This probably explains why their cultures are much higher in hierarchy and embeddedness than those of their neighbors. For Japan, see footnote 5. Next, let us examine the cultural orientations that characterize each distinct cultural region. I base these characterizations on the actual cultural orientation scores because, as noted above, locations on seven variables in two dimensions cannot be perfect. Nonetheless, the locations of regions on the vectors in Figure 4 are quite accurate and highly informative. West Europe. Corresponding to its location on the left of Figure 4, West European culture emphasizes intellectual autonomy, egalitarianism, and harmony more than any other region. It is the lowest region on hierarchy and embeddedness. This profile holds even after controlling for national wealth (GDP per capita in 1985). Thus, though West Europe’s high economic level may influence its culture, other factors are apparently critical. This cultural profile is fitting for a region of democratic, welfare states where concern for the environment is especially high (cf. Ester, Halman, & Seuren, 1994). Although when compared with other world regions, West European countries share a broad culture, there is substantial cultural variation within the region too. Consider two examples. Greek culture is the least typical of Western Europe – higher on mastery and lower on intellectual autonomy and egalitarianism than the others are. French and Swiss French cultures display a relatively high hierarchy orientation for Western Europe, together with the usual high affective and intellectual autonomy. They apparently retain a somewhat hierarchical orientation despite their emphasis on autonomy. Detailed analysis of such variations is beyond the scope of this article, but cultural differences within regions are meaningful. English-Speaking. The culture of the English-speaking region is especially high in affective autonomy and mastery and low in harmony and embeddedness, compared with the rest of the world. It is average in intellectual autonomy, hierarchy, and egalitarianism. The culture in America differs from that in other English-speaking countries by emphasizing mastery and hierarchy more and intellectual autonomy, harmony, and egalitarianism less. This profile points to a cultural orientation that encourages an assertive, pragmatic, entrepreneurial, and even exploitative orientation to the social and natural environment. With the exception of the USA, this region is particularly homogeneous. Cultural Differences in the ‘West’. There is a widespread view of Western culture as individualist. Hence, the differences within the West that the more complex conception of cultural orientations reveals deserve more

A Theory of Cultural Value Orientations: Explication and Applications • 55

detailed explication (see Schwartz & Ross, 1995). Comparisons of 22 West European samples with six United States samples show large and significant differences on six of the seven culture orientations. Egalitarianism, intellectual autonomy, and harmony are higher in Western Europe; mastery, hierarchy, and embeddedness are higher in the United States. Using the term “individualist” to describe either of these cultures distorts the picture these analyses reveal. Cultural orientations in Western Europe are individualist in one sense: They emphasize intellectual and affective autonomy and de-emphasize hierarchy and embeddedness relative to other cultures in most of the world. But West European priorities contradict conventional views of individualism in another sense: They emphasize egalitarianism and harmony and de-emphasize mastery. That is, this culture calls for selfless concern for the welfare of others and fitting into the natural and social world rather than striving to change it through assertive action. This runs directly counter to what individualism is usually understood to mean. Cultural emphases in the United States show a different but equally complex pattern: The individualistic aspect of American value orientations is the emphasis on affective autonomy and mastery at the expense of harmony. This combination may be the source of the stereotypical view of American culture as justifying and encouraging egotistic selfadvancement. But this is not prototypical individualism because intellectual autonomy is relatively unimportant. Moreover, both hierarchy and embeddedness, the orientations central to collectivism, are high compared with Western Europe. This fits the emphasis on religion, conservative family values, and punitiveness toward deviance in America. The empirical profile is compatible with in-depth analyses of American culture (Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, & Tipton, 1986; Etzioni, 1993). Confucian. The Confucian-influenced region also exhibits a pragmatic, entrepreneurial orientation. However, this orientation combines a heavy emphasis on hierarchy and mastery with a rejection of egalitarianism and harmony as compared with other regions. This region emphasizes embeddedness more than all the European and American cultures. This cultural profile is consonant with many analyses of Confucian culture (e.g., Bond, 1996). Within-region differences are small except for Japan, which is substantially higher on harmony and intellectual autonomy and lower on embeddedness and hierarchy. Africa and the Middle East.7 The cultural groups from sub-Saharan and North Africa and the Muslim Middle East form a broad region that

7

I exclude Cyprus, Israeli Jews, and Turkey, which were discussed above.

56 • Shalom H. Schwartz

does not break down into clear sub-regions. These cultures are especially high in embeddedness and low in affective and intellectual autonomy. Thus, they emphasize finding meaning in life largely through social relationships and protecting group solidarity and the traditional order rather than cultivating individual uniqueness. This fits well with the conclusions of studies of the Middle East (e.g., Lewis, 2003) and sub-Saharan Africa (e.g., Gyekye, 1997). There is a great deal of variation within the region on all but embeddedness, egalitarianism, and intellectual autonomy. South Asia. The culture in the South Asian region is particularly high in hierarchy and embeddedness and low in autonomy and egalitarianism. This points to an emphasis on fulfilling one’s obligations in a hierarchical system – obeying expectations from those in roles of greater status or authority and expecting humility and obedience from those in inferior roles. As in Africa, here social relationships rather than autonomous pursuits are expected to give meaning to life. With the exception of India’s especially high rating on mastery, all the groups are culturally quite homogenous. The variety of dominant religions (Hinduism, Roman Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism, Methodist Protestantism) in this region does not produce cultural heterogeneity on the basic orientations. East Europe. The East European cultures are low in embeddedness and hierarchy compared with Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, but higher in these cultural orientations than Western Europe and the Americas. Although the East European cultural groups do form a region in the spatial projection, the cultures in this region vary substantially on hierarchy, mastery, and harmony. A closer look at the map reveals that the Baltic and East-Central states form a sub-region toward the top center and the Balkan and more Eastern states form a sub-region to their right and below.8 The former are higher in harmony, intellectual autonomy, and egalitarianism and lower in mastery and hierarchy than the Balkan and more Eastern states. The Baltic and East-Central states have stronger historical and trade links to Western Europe, were less penetrated by totalitarian communist rule, and threw it off earlier. This may help account for why their profile is closer to that of Western Europe. In an earlier paper, my colleagues and I inferred from the profile of the EastCentral states that their population had largely rejected both the rhetoric and the social organization of communist regimes, while insisting on their intellectual independence (Schwartz & Bardi, 1997; Schwartz, Bardi, & Bianchi, 2000).9

8

Georgia and Bosnia-Herzegovina are exceptions that require further study. The finding that East European countries that experienced more invasive communist rule were lower in harmony and higher in mastery undermines our earlier inter9

A Theory of Cultural Value Orientations: Explication and Applications • 57

Latin America. Finally, the culture of the Latin American region is close to the worldwide average in all seven orientations. Moreover, excepting Bolivia and Peru, whose populations have been least exposed to European culture, this region is particularly homogeneous culturally. Some researchers describe Latin American culture as collectivist (e.g., Hofstede, 2001; Triandis, 1995). Compared with Western Europe, this seems to be so. Latin America is higher in hierarchy and embeddedness, presumably the main components of collectivism, and lower in intellectual autonomy, presumably the main component of individualism. The opposite is the case, however, when we compare Latin America to Africa and the Middle East, South Asia, and Confucian-influenced cultures. This example highlights the importance of the frame of comparison. The culture of a group may look different when viewed in a worldwide perspective than when inferred from narrower comparisons. Relations of Culture to Socioeconomic, Political, and Demographic Characteristics Having seen that national cultural groups and regions of the world differ systematically on the cultural dimensions, two critical questions arise. How do these cultural differences arise? And do they matter? Socioeconomic, political, and demographic factors all impact on culture and, I will argue, are themselves reciprocally influenced by culture. I present analyses for one key variable representing each of these factors – socioeconomic development, level of democracy, and household/family size. Welzel, Inglehart, and Klingemann (2003) traced a causal sequence among socioeconomic development, values, and democratization. They argued that socioeconomic development increases individual resources and thereby gives people the means to make choices. Utilizing these means, people cultivate their presumed inherent human desire for choice, giving rise to “mass emancipative values.” Pursuit of these values leads to democratization – institutionalizing freedom rights that provide the legal guarantee of choice. Using a measure of emancipative values drawn from the World and European Value Surveys, Welzel, et al. present analyses showing that values indeed mediate the relationship between socioeconomic development and democratization. Their causal argument contradicts views that values impact on socioeconomic development or that democratization influences values. I next examine how well this argument holds when we employ different measures of values and a set of 72 countries, 15 of which do not overlap those they studied. pretation of the high harmony scores as reflecting adaptation to life in totalitarian regimes by avoiding trouble and refraining from taking initiatives.

58 • Shalom H. Schwartz

In order to simplify the empirical presentations, I will use the three polar value dimensions formed by the seven cultural orientations rather than the separate orientations. Two of the cultural value dimensions express what Welzel et al. call emancipative values – the dimensions of autonomy versus embeddedness values and of egalitarianism vs. hierarchy values. The first dimension emphasizes autonomous choice and cultivation of individuals’ unique ideas and preferences rather than following and preserving traditional and externally imposed ideas and preferences. The second dimension emphasizes voluntary regulation of behavior based on equality rather than regulation of behavior through submission to role expectations built into existing hierarchies. Socioeconomic Development and Democratization The top panel of Table 1 presents correlations across 73 countries between four indexes of socioeconomic development and scores on the three value dimensions. The latter are computed by subtracting the score for the second pole from the first (e.g. harmony minus mastery). The values data are largely from the mid-90’s.10 The correlations portray associations with development about 10 and two years earlier, concurrently, and almost 10 years later. The second panel of Table 1 presents correlations with democratization scores from Freedom House (higher scores signify greater civil liberties and political rights) about 10 years earlier, concurrently, and seven years later (Freedom House, various years). As expected, all correlations with the autonomy and egalitarianism dimensions are substantial, whereas those with the harmony vs. mastery dimension are low. To assess causal relations, I carried out a path analysis in which earlier indexes of democratization predict later indexes and in which development might affect democratization either directly or through values. Following Welzel, et al., I measured development with the Vanhanen (1997) ‘index of power resources’ for 1993. This index includes measures of material and intellectual resources and the complexity of the occupational system. This makes it better than a pure economic index for measuring individual resources. Because the 1995 index of democratization is included in Figure 5a to predict the 2002 index, paths from other predictors signify effects on change in the level of democratization. Figure 5a reveals that cultural emphases on autonomy and on egalitar10 Combining values data from somewhat different points in time poses little problem because value change at the national level on these dimensions is very slow (see Schwartz, Bardi, & Bianchi, 2000).

A Theory of Cultural Value Orientations: Explication and Applications • 59 Table 1 Correlations of Cultural Value Dimensions with Socioeconomic Development Democratization, and Household Size N

Autonomy minus Embeddedness

Egalitarianism minus Hierarchy

Harmony minus Mastery

Socioeconomic Development 1985 GDPpc 1995 GDPpc 1993 Index of Power Resources 2004 GNIpc

73 73 72 73

.58** .73** .78** .75**

.42** .46** .58** .53**

.27* .19 .14 .20

Democratization 1985 Freedom House Index 1995 Freedom House Index 2002 Freedom House Index

73 73 73

.58** .71** .70**

.46** .52** .57**

.03 .36** .38**

Household Size 1985 Average Family Size 2001 Average Household Size

73 73

-.70** -.75**

-.61** -.36**

-.41** -.32**

**p