IGNOU EPS 06 Solved Assignment 2022-23

The study of values is a key area in social science research. Inspired by Ronald Inglehart’s writings on cultural change in advanced industrialized societies,^Footnote1 it has attracted social scientists since the early 1970s. Under the auspices of Inglehart and others, the World Values Survey (WVS) was initiated in 1981 as a global network of social scientists who study changing values and their impacts on social and political life. Over the years, the WVS has demonstrated that people’s values play a key role in the flourishing of democratic institutions and the extent to which societies have effective governments.

Initially, industrial development and rising living and education standards were seen as the primary driving force for value change in modern societies. However, reflecting on the work of Max Weber, it was later acknowledged that a society’s ethic-religious background plays a key role in understanding the change in the beliefs, values, and motivations of people across the world and their understandings of democracy (Inglehart and Welzel 2010: 551).

According to the Western value change discourse, societies first witnessed a value change from traditional-religious to secular-rational values, but this did not necessarily lead to democracy. In contrast, for post-industrial societies, researchers have predicted an intensifying demand for self-expression values, accompanied by a growing desire for democracy (Inglehart and Welzel 2010: 552 f.).^Footnote2

This chapter deals with values and democracy in East Asia and Europe, comparing them. Based on the data collected by the WVS, we address the following questions: To what extent does cultural-religious background, such as Confucianism in the case of East Asia, affect the direction of value change? Is this influence even stronger than structural settings? Is there a link between value change, ethic-religious background, and democracy? We clearly distinguish between the value change that occurred in the ‘first’ or ‘simple’ modernity, and that during the ‘second’ modernity (Beck et al. 2001: 13 f.).

We first introduce the main findings and hypotheses of Western value change research. We then turn to the interaction between value change and the desire and support for democracy. Based on this, we deduce hypotheses for East Asia, shedding light on the region’s shared cultural background (Confucianism) and the related value system; here, we limit our analysis to Japan, China, and South Korea. Next, we empirically test our hypotheses concerning value change, based on the WVSs. Besides structural settings and the cultural-ethical background, we acknowledge different paths to modernity, as suggested by S.N. Eisenstadt (2000).

Value change in modernity and during the `second´ modernity

Modern society, which increasingly replaced the traditional societies from the seventeenth century onwards, was characterized by two processes: the national and the industrial revolutions (Lipset and Rokkan 1967). Both processes triggered bureaucratization, centralization of political authority, and industrialization, i.e. a shift from the primary sector to the secondary one. Industrialization was accompanied by migration to the cities and accelerated urbanization. At the value level, traditional-religious values were increasingly replaced by secular-rational or modern values. Since Christianity in Europe split owing to the Reformation, Max Weber ([1905] Weber 2009) has argued that there is a link between the ethics of ascetic Protestantism and the emergence of the spirit of modern capitalism as well as a modern, rational work ethic. Further, the intellectual movement of the Enlightenment questioned religion, tradition, and the related hierarchies; it also pushed the use and celebration of reason. The application of reason to religion fostered skepticism and a materialistic and atheistic value orientation.

According to the WVS, traditional values emphasize religion, parent-child ties, deference to authority, and traditional family values. People with a traditional-religious value orientation also tend to reject divorce, abortion, euthanasia, and suicide. It is further argued that these societies have high national pride and a nationalistic outlook. People with secular-rational values tend to have the opposite preferences concerning traditional values. They place less emphasis on religion, traditional family values, and authority. Divorce, abortion, euthanasia, and suicide are seen as relatively acceptable.^Footnote3

However, notably, the level of modern or secular-rational values is not directly measured, but is based on the rejection of traditional-religious values (Schwartz 2007: 172). Thus, a person low in religious-traditional values is considered to be high in secular-rational values. The researchers of the WVS based the traditional/secular-rational dimension on five items: the importance of God, the importance of obedience and religious faith for children, the justifiability of abortion, and a sense of national pride and respect for authority, loaded together in a factor analysis (Inglehart and Baker 2000).

The ‘second’ modernity, starting in the late 1970s, is characterized by economic globalization, accompanied by a shift from the secondary sector to the tertiary one, and by cultural globalization and ‘denationalization’ (Zürn 2002: 215). In the economic sphere, globalization processes have led to the increased interdependence of nation-states, mainly supported by transnational corporations (TNCs) that operate across borders – and thus increasingly against national ideologies (Gill 1995: 405). New technologies, especially the Internet, play a key role in this process (Rosenau 1990). In this new economic context, neo-liberalism has become the new political guiding principle in many countries across the world. Simultaneously with rising education levels and the relocation of production to low-income countries, advanced industrial countries have witnessed a sharp decline in their second-sector workforce. To date, approximately 75% of workforces in post-industrial countries are employed in the tertiary sector.

Increasing cross-border exchanges have led to an increase in intercultural contacts, intensified by the new media. This has not only fostered a universalist, cosmopolitan worldview but also a pluralization and individualization of lifestyles. However, this cultural opening is also generating strong defensive reactions by those who want to ‘safeguard’ their national culture and ‘shield’ their nation from the outside world (Kriesi et al. 2012). Many of the new right-wing populist parties in Europe mobilize along this cleavage. This value cleavage may encourage new forms of authoritarianism in Europe, − especially among those who consider themselves the economic losers of globalization (Schmidt 2015).

Rising levels of social security and education along with processes of pluralization and individualization are said to have driven a value change from survival (or material) values to self-expression (or post-materialist) values since the 1970s.^Footnote4 According to the WVS, survival values emphasize economic and physical security; such an attitude is linked to a fairly ethnocentric outlook and low trust and tolerance. Self-expression values prioritize environmental protection, growing tolerance of foreigners, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, as well as gender equality, and rising demands for participation in decision-making in economic and political life. The survival-self-expression axis has the following factor loadings: Respondents prioritize self-expression and quality of life over economic and physical security; they self-describe as very happy; homosexuality is sometimes justifiable; they have signed or would sign a petition; and they don’t think one needs to be careful about trusting people.^Footnote5 According to the WVS researchers, the correlates for this dimension across the WVS are very strong, even though it has only five variables (Ronald and Welzel 2005).

Democracy, value change, and cultural background

In our context, the ‘first’ modernity project, namely nation-building and industrialization, could have been carried out without the presence of democracy. Even so, many have pointed to the correlation between industrial development and democracy (e.g. Lipset 1959); yet, modernity could have been executed by various forms of political government, such as fascism in Germany during 1933 to 1945, ‘ultra-nationalism’ (Maruyama 2007) in Japan, especially between 1930 to 1945, or military dictatorship in South Korea from 1961 to 1987.^Footnote6 In contrast, during the ‘second’ modernity, citizens’ demands for more democracy and participation are expected to intensify. This is due to the shift from survival to self-expression values, induced by increasing economic security. Further, it is argued that the knowledge society cannot function without educated workers, who are becoming accustomed to thinking for themselves. Thus, mass publics increasingly want democracy. Rising education levels can be seen as an ‘Enlightenment force’, which triggers the change to self-expression values (Inglehart and Welzel 2010: 552–53).^Footnote7 At the same time, education provides the most powerful antidote to authoritarian notions of democracy. Accordingly, survey data show that high-income countries ranked high on this dimension of value change. However, the analysis’ outcome also supports the Weberian view that cross-national differences also reflect a society’s sociocultural history (Inglehart and Welzel 2010: 552).

Based on the assumption that structures and culture determine value orientations, Inglehart and Welzel (Inglehart and Welzel 2010: 554) presented a ‘global cultural map’ based on the analysis of the WVS data. The outcome for 2014 can be seen in Fig. 1. The Y-axis represents the value change during the ‘first’ modernity: from traditional-religious to secular-rational or modern values. The X-axis represents the value shift during the ‘second’ modernity from survival to self-expression values. The countries are grouped according to their cultural backgrounds, such as Confucian, Protestant Europe, or Catholic Europe. Movement upwards on the Y-axis over the time represents the respective countries’ shift to secular-rational values; movement to the right on the X-axis reflects the shift to self-expression values.