Ronald Inglehart

Culture Shift

Chapter 1

The Main Theme

Culture has independent effects of its own in effecting the political structure and operation of a nation, particularly the likelihood of the emergence and maintenance of democracy - which is the topic Inglehart is primarily concerned with.

Theoretical Framework on what "Culture" is:

1. Culture is ingrained as a fairly stable and permanent feature of the society as a result of historical processes - it is different from such variables as political attitudes, which reflect the specific and temporary conditions as performance of a particular regime.

2. Inglehart seems to perceive of culture as those aspects of personality primarily shaped by the processes of early socialization - as such, Inglehart claims that to the extent that we can methodologically claim culture is asserting its independent effects, we are likely to observe the generational or the cohort effect - rather than the period effects of behavioral change.

3. Finally, the relationship between culture, economic development, and political structure (in this case particular emphasis is on the presence of democratic regime) is never deterministic but rather a complex interplay of these three factors mutually influencing the others. However, insofar as the focus of this chapter is on culture, then it is particularly important to note that Inglehart regards culture as capable of asserting its own independent effects once established firmly in society, whatever the origin of a particular cultural feature of a society may be.

Empirical Support to above theoretical claims

One of the good feature of this work is it is strongly and consistently concerned with providing empirical proof to whatever the theoretical arguments it makes - he is certainly trying to be responsible for whatever he says!

1. It is reported that answers to survey questions tapping on the general level of happiness, sense of interpersonal trust, high rates of political discussion, and support for the existing social order, which Inglehart regards as representing the difference in deep rooted culture rather than temporary shift in attitude, vary systematically across nations - that is, they tend to go together and higher occurrence of positive answers to these answers tend to go with positive answers on others as well. Further, the trend of answers to these questions is remarkably stable within nations. These factors seem to support the theoretical claims numbers 1 and 2, but how about the point 3, that culture has independent effects on political structure?

2. It is also reported that higher occurences of positive answers to these questions on culture is correlated highly with economic development and existence of democracy. Then, what is the causal arrow? Is it not that political order has effects on the cultural perception of life, or that economic development is responsible for both of cultural and political outcomes?

Inglehart responds to the first question primarily by theoretical argument, that is, since political structure of democracy influences directly only the fairly limited sphere of life, it is quite difficult to conceive of that as having a wholehearted effect on the "general cultural perception of life". For the second question, Inglehart responds with the regression analysis - and posits that even after controlling for economic variables of GNP and % of labor force in tertiary sectors, the "civic culture" factor has strong independent effect on the persistence of democracy in the years 1900-86. Obviously, it is not that Inglehart maintains that culture is the sole determinant of the political outcome or the economic development, but rather stresses of the complex interplay of these three realms of life as mutually influencing the other. Nevertheless, in the end he agrees with Weber's claim that once in the picture, culture is likely to assert its own independent effects.

Interestingly enough, Inglehart implies that the economic growth of a nation may follow a cyclical pattern - this is done by introduction of ideas on the rise of Postmaterialist values. Postmaterialists take economic wealth more or less for granted, and place greater emphasis on non-economic achievements in life such as belonging, self-worth and environment. Emprically, Inglehart notes that the rise of this value type is associated with slower economic growth. While it may appear that economic growth is related with the eventual decline of the growth, Inglehart maintains that it is the rise of the distinctive Postmaterialist culture which is the key in causing slower economic growth.

In a final note, in looking at the recent success in East Asian economic development, Inglehart posits culture as the key independent factor in making these East Asian nations more successful than other regions of the world in development.

A Critique

One of the persistent problem a cultural explanation of political structure and processes is that it tends to be open to the attack that it cannot account for the origin of that culture in the first place - forcing the analyst to go back to the effects of economic and structural factors. Inglehart did a nice job in establishing a claim that once set in place, culture tends to have independent effect of its own - while acknowledging for the interplay of culture, politics and economy, particularly at the stage of the initial formation of cultural values and dispositions. The logical move made here frees the cultural explanation considerably from its supposed weakness of inability ot account for the origin of cultural change, and allows the analyst to legitimately ask the question of: In analyzing the present political and economic conditions of any particular society, what part and how much is attributable to the cultural element that society is endowed with.

Chapter 11.

The Main Theme

Postmaterialist values have independent effects in making people act: they are one of the driving force behind the rise of "new social movements" in modern industrial nations.

Theoretical Framework

Number of things come together in engendering social movements. There are objective factors - actual conditions, often involving some form of visible deprivations, that lead people to act politically to solve problems. There is then the element known as the mobilization factor in the sociological literature - people need organizational resources, political institutions, and social networks to act effectively. Often, it is deemed that very collective actions themselves will not even get started without this mobilization factor. There is then the element of values and ideology. Value system or ideology motivate people to act. The Materialist/Postmaterialist distinction belongs to the last element of value system, and it is the independent effect of this factor in engendering the rise of what is broadly known as the new social movement - ecology movement, peace and anti-war movement, anti-nuclear movement, etc. - that is the focus of this chapter.

Yet, not all people can equally realize the full potential of what their value system "really mean" and act accordingly to achieve what that value system aspires for. The extent to which people have this capacity to make the basic implication of the value system articulate and act accordingly is called "coginitive mobilization" by Inglehart. So, accordingly, the interaction between Materialist/Postmaterialist distinction and cognitive mobilization is important - for only those with relatively high level of cognitive mobilization (Inglehart uses educational attainment as the proxy for this level of cognitive mobilization) are capable of acting in a consistent fashion with their Materialist/Postmaterialist stance (Here measured by their relative propensity to vote for the Right, Centre, Left, or the "New Political" parties).

The differential contribution of values and ideology in causing people to act, or merely to have certain attitudes.

The title just about says it all - Inglehart reports that the value system, in this case of course the basic distinction of Materialist/Postmaterialist contrast, is the strongest propensity to act concretely - that is, participating in new social movement organizations. In contrast, ideology, as measured by the self-reported identification on the traditional Left-Right scale (although this may lead to underestimation of the idelogy effect since the meaning of Left-Right distinction itself has changed under the new Materialist/Postmaterialist scheme), while being the strongest predictor of people's attitudes toward new social movements, are not so strongly related with their propensity to act. Inglehart asserts that this is one strong evidence that Materialist/Postmaterialist identification is a significant cause of the rise of new social movements. Cognitive mobilization is also a strong predictor of propensity to act than of mere attitude, as such political skills and high level of cognitive ability are presumably almost prerequisites for active participation in such movements.

Final Multivariate Analysis

Lastly, is it not possible that the effect of Materialist/Postmaterialist distinction is actually a spurious variable of some other variables? That is, is it not possible that M/P distinction and propensity to act in new social movements are spurious effects of age, or else that since both cognitive mobilization and Postmaterialist values are strongly linked with location in relatively high levels of income and education, they are both the surrogate indicators of social class? Inglehart denies both of these possibilities through the regression analysis. His analysis evinces that M/P distinction remains to be the strongest predictor of the propensity to participate in ecology movement and antiwar movement even after controlling for the variables of age, income, religiosity, and closeness to political party. Left-Right self-placement and cognitive mobilization also have substantial effects - while income, a proxy measure for class location, fares very poorly. This indicates that the rise of the new social movement has little to do with class conflict. On the other other hand, age does have significant impact, and Inglehart admits that some life-cycle effects are operating probably. Finally, closeness to a political party has very little predictive power - another indication that new social movements are genuinely new, and are little derived from traditional forms of political organization and the structure of social conflict.

In sum, the new social movements are really new in the sense that to far more greater extent than the traditional form of social movements they are engendered as results of the combination of individual's value system, ideololgy and political skills, rather than depending on the traditional form of class conflict or political parties.