| Abstract: |
However much we appreciate the enormous scientific contribution by Professor
Ronald Inglehart, who initiated the international data collection of the World
Values Survey, our re-analysis of the very World Values Survey data
[“roll-outs” of the World Values Survey data wvs1981_2008_v20090914.sav]
brought us to question Inglehart’s theories, with which he and his associates
interpret the mass of the World Values Survey data. Their theoretical approach
does not use a sufficiently number of hard-core indicators how global publics
view central issues of economic policy, and their theories overemphasize a
secularistic view of the religious phenomenon in modern society. Their
theories predict the gradual waning of the religious phenomena in parallel
with the increase of human security, and even cherish at times the tendencies
brought about by such a waning of the religious element in advanced
democracies. Inglehart spells them out: higher levels of tolerance for
abortion, divorce, homosexuality; the erosion of parental authority, the
decrease of the importance of family life et cetera. Is that really something
to cherish? Today, societal and economic development is discontinuous;
regional centers of the world economy shift at an enormous speed; and above
all, religion and family values can be an important assett in the stability of
capitalist development. Economic growth inexorably shifts away from the North
Atlantic arena towards new centers of gravitation of the world economy.
Alberto Alesina’s and Paola Giuliano’s new maps of global values (Alesina and
Giuliano, 2013) present a real break with the hitherto existing secularistic
consensus of global value research. Their maps of family ties, respect for
parents et cetera coincide with the global map of economic growth today.
Leading representatives of the global economics profession now start to take
up the challenge to interpret the mass of the data from the World Values
Survey project on their own. The essay by Barro and McCleary (2003) was an
important beginning and a good example of how today economic research uses
data from the World Values Survey project to study the relationship between
religion, denominations and economic growth. Alesina (2013); Alesina and
Angeletos (2005); Alesina and Fuchs-Schündeln (2007); Alesina and Guiliano
(2010, 2011, 2013); Alesina, Cozzi and Mantovan (2012); and Alesina, di Tella,
and MacCulloch (2004) all show how the economic discipline can gain hard-core,
quantitative and valuable insights from comparative knowledge about such
phenomena as generalized trust and social capital, individualism, family ties,
morality, attitudes toward work and perception of poverty, and religious
practice for economic processes. In our re-analysis, we use the advanced
statistical multivariate analysis technique of the Promax factor analysis,
which allows for correlations between factors. It is available to the global
public via the IBM-SPSS statistical package XXI. We eliminated missing values
by listwise delition. In our first re-analysis, there were 92289 interview
partners from around the globe with complete data for all the 30 variables of
our research design. Our main model explains 47.89% of the total variance of
all the 30 variables. We highlight the relationships between the original 30
variables and the newly derived factor analytical dimensions: a) economic
permissiveness b) traditional religion c) racism d) higher education for the
younger generation (education gap between the generations) e) distrust of the
army and the press f) authoritarian character g) tolerance and respect h) the
'ego' company (i. e. the rejection of obedience and unselfishness as values in
education) i) [predominantly] female rejection of the market economy and
democracy We also look at the trajectory of global society by analyzing the
factor scores along the path of the Human Development Indicator of the UNDP
(“human security indicator”, also used by Inglehart and his associates). -
Economic permissiveness clearly captures the dimension of lawlessness,
moral-ethical decay and the shadow economy, so prominent in contemporary
economic theory of growth. In statistical terms, it is the most important of
all the resulting factors. - Traditional religion is linked in a very complex
way to the absence of economic permissiveness. We also look at the exceptional
performers (“residuals”) which best avoided economic permissiveness on each
stage of secularization. We also present Chropleth maps of human values across
the globe, and show the regional implications of our analysis. Our global
value development index combines law-abiding and social capital, avoiding
racism; trust of the army and the press; no authoritarian character; a high
degree of tolerance and respect + post-materialism; and a female acceptance of
the market economy and democracy. The weight, given to each factor,
corresponds to the Eigen values listed in this work. Our country results show
that the five best ranked countries of our entire globe are all western
democracies with a solid historical anchoring of their societies in the
traditions of the Enlightenment – Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, New Zealand,
and Australia. But we already find among the next five countries Canada, the
two developing countries Vietnam and Tanzania, and the EU-member countries
Italy (predominantly Roman Catholic, with a long history of liberal
Catholicism since the Second Vatican Council) and Finland (predominantly
Protestant). Our global value development index ranks the predominantly Muslim
nation of Morocco twelfth – just behind the United States of America – and
still ahead the Latin American democracy Uruguay and the EU-country Germany,
to be followed by Bosnia and Indonesia. While in general terms our analysis is
quite optimistic about the civil society foundations for a stable democracy
for several Muslim countries, including Morocco, Bosnia, Indonesia, Turkey and
Jordan, our analysis is fairly pessimistic for the former communist countries
and successor states of the former Soviet Union, predominantly Muslim and
non-Muslim alike. In a second factor analysis, we re-analyze the question of
Islam and feminism, based on an analysis of all respondents from the World
Values Survey. The Muslim population covered in this survey comprises
representatives of 62.6% of the Muslim population of our globe. The data were
based on the following variables: - Age - Education level (recoded) - Highest
educational level attained - How important is God in your life - How often do
you attend religious services (never?) - Important child qualities: religious
faith - Jobs scarce: Men should have more right to a job than women (reject) -
Sex (Gender) - University is more important for a boy than for a girl (reject)
- Acceptancy of woman as a single parent The respondents (all denominations)
comprised n = 173231 representative global citizens in 83 countries and
territories. After Promax factor analysis, three factors explained 53.8% of
total variance. While the distance to religious practice is explained to some
4% by the education level (correlation between the two factors is 0.192), one
can say with certainty that there is no real sharp contradiction between
religion and feminism on a global scale. And while gender determines feminist
convictions, contained in our analysis to some 40%, it is also evident that
feminist convictions are not only held by women, but also increasingly by
enlightened men, non-Muslims and Muslims alike. Interestingly enough, our data
also show that people supporting typical feminist contentions, like female
access to tertiary education and jobs even at a time of crisis (Factor 3), are
not necessarily too strongly in support of the acceptancy of women as a single
parent (factor loading 0.352, i. e. only 12.39% of variance explained). Single
parenthood is a form of household organization very common now in Western
countries: the argument is that marriage is an outdated institution et cetera.
Support for single parenthood by women is rather an expression of the distance
towards religion around the globe (factor loading of 0.431, i. e. 18.58% of
variance explained). Data emerging from the World Values Survey in the first
decade of the 2000s also seem to suggest that the precariousness, which more
and more characterizes the economies of leading Western countries leads toward
an implosion of what Inglehart and his sociological school of thought
interpreted as “self-expression values”. Our analysis of the time series
element in the World Values Survey data shows that indeed, global value change
seems to correspond to various ups and downs. To this end, we calculated which
countries – in descending order – had very high increases or decreases in
non-traditional values over preceding World Values Survey surveys from the
original WVS website Inglehart’s own data
(http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs/articles/folder_published/article_base_54).
The very idea that self-expression values in the West are imploding, while in
other regions of the world they are rising, is a challenge to existing value
theories. The world, described by Inglehart and Baker, 2000, where in advanced
industrial societies people pay large sums of money and travel long distances
to experience exotic cultures no longer seems to exist for the “1.000 Euro”
generation born after 1975, which experiences more and more job insecurity and
hardly finds full-time tenured work opportunities, let alone the financial
means to travel to long-distant countries. No wonder then that
“self-expression” is dramatically declining in the West. We also highlight the
fact that the latest wave of World Values Survey data, wave 6, from 2010 -
2014, released in May 2014 contains an item which directly asked 74,044
respondents in 52 countries whether they think that self-expression is an
important value for child education. The correlation between these data and
Inglehart’s self-expression index is negative and the R^2 between the two
variables is almost 20%. Among the twenty countries of our globe with a strong
resilience of the self-expression tendencies, there is a greater number of
Muslim countries (i.e. members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation)
among them. Let us think for an instance Inglehart’s theory to its end:
according to the World Values Survey data, among the twenty superstars of a
resilient trend towards self-expression we find Jordan; Pakistan; Bangladesh;
Nigeria; Turkey; Algeria; Egypt; and Uganda! The most notable implosions or
slow developments of self-expression – independent from the secularization
process – had to be noted by contrast in western democracies. The resilience
of self-expression is explaining more than 1/5 of economic growth in the world
system. Muslim countries are among the trend leaders in both directions, i.e.
the resilience of self expression, and economic growth during the crisis
years. Our Choropleth maps in this part of our article underline our
contentions. Even a pure Inglehartian world values analysis would have to come
to the conclusion that the value basis of Western society is eroding. So while
the methodology of the two approaches – Inglehart’s and our own – is
different, the same conclusions can be drawn from it. With all the extensions
of the World Values Survey project over the last decades, both in terms of
geography as well as the completeness of the data, the Inglehart world map of
global values recedes into the memory about a world order, which no longer
exists and which was severely shattered in its foundations by the tsunami of
the global economic crisis of 2008. As we try to show in this article, it was
also shattered by the long shadows of the internal corrosion, which social
decay and the loss of values brought about long before the 2008 crisis hit the
North Atlantic arena. In addition, we present a still more conclusive proof of
the interrelationship between the different types of permissiveness and the
weight these factors have in relationship to the other variables contained in
the World Values Survey data. Based on our analysis of the complete available
data based on 28 items from the World Values Survey from 70 countries of the
world, including the OIC (Organization of Islamic Cooperation) member
countries Albania; Azerbaijan; Bangladesh; Bosnia and Herzegovina; Burkina
Faso; Indonesia; Jordan; Kyrgyzstan; Mali; Nigeria; Turkey; and Uganda we
attempt to show the interrelationships between permissiveness, the shadow
economy, educational values, and other socio-political variables, like
fundamental positions on the market economy and democracy. The nine factors to
be extracted from the data for more than 90.000 representative respondents in
70 countries are the following: - moral (sexual) permissiveness
(‘Permissiveness 1’) - acceptancy of the shadow economy(‘Permissiveness 2’) -
distance from religion (‘Permissiveness 3’) - educational values: independence
and imagination - distance to market economy values - education values:
responsibility and tolerance - educational values: determination and
perseverance and being against saving - right wing acceptance of inequality -
educational values: favoring unselfishness, rejecting hard work Contrary to
Inglehart’s expectations about a positive role of the low importance given to
religion in society, and divorce and abortion being fully accepted, it emerges
that the two factors of permissiveness (permissive family values and the loss
of hard-core Max Weberian economic values) are closely interrelated with one
another and with the loss of religious values. Table 5.3 of our article shows
the factor loadings for each of the variables analyzed here. The variables
with a high importance for “effective democracy”, i. e. tolerance and respect
for other people, rejection or acceptance of corruption, and the assessment of
democracy as such and vis-à-vis military rule, are highlighted in our Table
5.3. Nowhere there is a notable negative or positive factor analytical loading
of beyond 0. 333 (>10% of variance explained) confirming that religious people
are antidemocratic, right-wing, and pro or anti-market. In addition, the
structure of the factor loadings even suggests the following: a) distance from
religion is even a motive to reject a democratic political system b)
moral/sexual permissiveness goes hand in hand with economic and social decay
Table 5.4 shows the correlations between the promax factors, extracted from
the correlation matrix between the variables of our model. Table 5.5 and Maps
5.1 to 5.9 show the country values for our analysis (“factor scores”) as well
as the cascades of moral and social decay in the Western countries and also
the evidence for the Muslim countries with available data. Graph 5.5 finally
summarizes the pessimistic research findings, which rather support the views
of Barro and Schumpeter against the secularistic and permissive logic,
proposed by Inglehart. In Table 5.6 we provide our readers with clear-cut
Pearson-Bravais correlation coefficients between the data presented by
Hofstede and Inglehart and the factor scores from our own analytical
dimensions, presented in this work on the bases of promax factor analysis with
individual data from up to more than 80 countries. Table 5.7 shows the
Pearson-Bravais correlations between the Schwartz dimensions and our results.
In many ways, we can show that Hofstede’s Power Distance, Individualism versus
Collectivism, Long-Term Orientation, and Indulgence versus Restraint very well
correspond to our own factor analyses. The same happens with Inglehart’s main
dimensions, traditional versus secular, and survival versus self-expression,
which we can well interpret in our own system. In all cases, however, we could
avoid some of the problematic assumptions, still inherent in the research by
Hofstede and Inglehart. Schwartz’s factors Affective Autonomy and Harmony do
not achieve any correlations which have more than 25% of variance in common
with our own factors, and in addition, the following dimensions from our own
research are untapped, it seems, by the Schwartz’ factors (to judge from the
less than 25% of variance they have in common with the Schwartz factors). In
addition, the following factors from Hofstede and Inglehart are untapped; it
seems, by Schwartz’s theories (again to judge from the less than 25% of
variance they have in common with the Schwartz factors) Hofstede: Masculinity
versus Femininity Hofstede: Uncertainty Avoidance Index Inglehart:
Self-Expression Values (WVS 1-4, 2006) Table 5.8 shows the correlations of the
country scores from Schwartz’ work with standard socio-economic indicators.
Interestingly enough, Muslim population shares and OIC membership present high
correlations with the Schwartz factors “Embeddedness”, “Hierarchy” and
“Mastery”. We then debate current contentious political cleavages, especially
in Europe in the light of the empirics, as suggested by the World Values
Survey. These days, in the leading world newspapers we read stories which tell
us a lot about the conflicts about global values in countries like Europe
today. Is prostitution justifiable? Is homosexuality justifiable? The French
socialists, it seems, for example seem to think that one is not, and the other
is. President Hollande and his administration put considerable political
energy into legalizing homosexual marriages and prohibiting prostitution. But
global citizens hold another view, and there is a high positive correlation of
0.632 between the two items in the World Values Survey, based on 218877
individuals from around the globe. I.e. people in favor of the complete
acceptability of homosexuality will also be in favor of the complete
acceptability of prostitution and vice versa. Graph 5.1 highlights the
politically, socially and ethically robust and globally applicable message of
our article on the drivers of “effective democracy”: a sound gender political
agenda, ending the political discrimination of women, and economic freedom
will be conducive to “effective democracy”. Nevertheless the path towards
“effective democracy” will be one of ups and downs, and especially in
developing countries, there will be also certain limits for a too rapid
economic liberalization in terms of “effective democracy”. As the manuscript
to this article was about to be finished, the new data of the World Values
Survey, 2010-2014 were released, containing yet another enormous wealth of new
data, including on the Muslim world. We have chosen to concentrate on two
phenomena, which received a large attention on the pages of this article –
tolerance and democracy. In Table 5.12 we calculate a simple UNDP Human
Development Index type of Index of Tolerance, minimizing the rejection of
neighbors with the following characteristics among the publics of the above
mentioned countries of wave 6 of the World Values Survey: - People who speak a
different language - People of a different religion - Immigrants/foreign
workers - People of a different race According to the World Values Survey
data, the most tolerant nation on earth today is Uruguay, followed by Sweden;
New Zealand; Spain; Trinidad and Tobago; Poland; Rwanda; Colombia; Chile and
Australia. Uzbekistan, Morocco and Kazakhstan are nowadays ahead of Germany;
and Pakistan, Qatar and Tunisia are more tolerant than the EU-member country
Romania. Some Muslim countries such as Turkey (which is still ahead of the
OECD-member country South Korea), have still a poor performance. Table 5.13
and Maps 5.9 to 5.12 list the World Values Survey results for the average
importance given by the global publics to democracy and the standard deviation
of this indicator. Where the standard deviation is low, opinions on democracy
– either way – are undivided, while high standard deviations indicate that the
publics are – often bitterly – divided on the issue of democracy. Countries
with an above than average importance assigned to democracy, and very high
internal divisions on this issue are Tunisia; Mexico; Romania; Armenia and
Yemen. While there is a general consensus that democracy is important, there
are important dissenting voices. Nostalgia for past more authoritarian
patterns of government can go hand in hand with economic discontent with
present conditions. Countries with an above than average importance assigned
to democracy, and very low internal divisions on this issue are the
Netherlands; Egypt; Sweden; Turkey; and Cyprus. For anyone, attempting to turn
back the clocks of history in such countries could result to be a very costly
error. The recent introduction of internet censorship in Turkey would be just
one example showing the relevance of this hypothesis. Countries with still a
below than average importance assigned to democracy, but already very high
internal divisions on the issue are Libya; Philippines; Qatar; the Occupied
Palestinian Territories; and Russia. In these countries and territories,
debates on the issue of democracy will surge, one way or the other. While the
average importance assigned to democracy is still lower than the world
average, the divisions on the issue are already very high, and unforeseen
events could trigger a popular movement for more participation and democracy.
Finally, countries with a below than average importance assigned to democracy,
and very low internal divisions on this issue are Singapore; Rwanda; South
Korea; Estonia; and Lebanon. One might expect that the current stagnation in
the democratic development of the country will continue: publics don’t assign
a great importance to democracy, and they are hardly divided on this issue.
Table 5.13 and our maps also have another, more immediate and direct
implication: the dire state of the support of democracy in many Western
countries, currently hit by the economic crisis and austerity packages, and
the surge of democracy in the Muslim world and the Arab world in particular.
That Egypt is ahead of Germany, Uzbekistan ahead of the EU-members Poland and
Spain, and a number of other Arab and Muslim countries in general ahead of the
United States; and Qatar ahead of the EU-member Estonia with justification
could be celebrated by the Arab and Muslim readership of this article. |