Value Change in Global Perspective

Preface

Preface This book is the product of a long but sporadic collaboration, for the two authors have been working together off and on for over a quarter of a century. We met at a conference on political socialization in Ann Arbor in the summer of 1967. That meeting led to a jointly authored article, which was published in 1970. In that same year, the first European Community survey measured Materialist/Postmaterialist values in Western Europe. During the next dozen years both of us worked independently on studies of intergenerational population change. In the spring of 1983 we began to analyze the impact of intergenerational value change in West Germany, Britain , The Netherlands, France, Belgium, and Italy, producing two articles, one examining the impact of replacement on values in these six countries, and one that projected the likely impact of future generational replacement. By the mid-1980s, when these articles appeared, the semiannual EuroBarometer surveys, which monitor public opinion in the European Community (now European Union) countries, were an ongoing enterprise. We recognized that the analysis of intergenerational value change was, inherently, something that would require a long-term commitment in order to obtain stronger evidence. Several additional years elapsed, providing a longer time series. We were thus able to add Denmark and Ireland to our study, and to conduct more complex multivariate tests. It gradually became apparent that a comprehensive analysis would need to go beyond Western Europe. By 1990-91, the forty-nation World Values Survey was well under way, and Inglehart, as the global coordinator of this survey, was able to begin analyzing these data in early 1992. The 1990-91 World Values Survey covers an unprecedentedly broad range of the economic and political spectrum, including 70 percent of the world's population. The study includes data from all eight of the Western European societies we study over time, from two other members of the European Community, Portugal and Spain, as well as a sample of Northern Ireland. It includes surveys from five European countries that did not belong to the Community, as well as the United States and Canada. Japan and South Korea were sampled, as well as such low income countries as India and Nigeria. Twelve societies ruled (or recently ruled) by Communist parties were sampled, including the Russian Republic and the People's Republic of China. x Preface In addition, four Latin American countries were surveyed: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. The 1990-91 World Values Survey data greatly extend the scope of previous political attitude studies. As we will show, the same processes that contribute to value change in advanced industrial societies appear to contribute to similar change in all societies that have experienced enough economic growth in recent decades for younger cohorts to have had significantly more security in their formative years than older cohorts had. We consider it crucial that scholars share their data. From 1970 to 1990, Inglehart was a coinvestigator in the EuroBarometer studies, and he initiated the program through which these data are made available to social scientists through the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This program continues, and the EuroBarometer Surveys we employ are available to scholars through the ICPSR, as well as through the Zentralarchiv fur empirische Sozialforschung at Cologne, and the European Consortium for Political Research at Essex. Data from the 1981-83 World Values Survey have been available through the ICPSR since 1989. During 1991-94 Inglehart worked, supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (SES 91-22433), to prepare the EuroBarometer surveys and the 1990-91 World Values Survey for the consortium. The 199091 World Values Survey data became available through the ICPSR in 1994. In this book, we also use National Election Studies surveys conducted by the Center for Political Studies of the University of Michigan. These data were obtained directly from the ICPSR. The standard disclaimer applies. The consortium is not responsible for our analyses of these data or for our interpretation of them. In the past decade, many scholars in the United States and Western Europe have analyzed EuroBarometer surveys. From time to time they have used these data to criticize the value change thesis. We disagree with much of this criticism, but it has been valuable and stimulating. In our book, we will discuss studies that use these data to criticize Inglehart's theory. Responding to thoughtful critiques has often led us to conduct additional analyses and to better specify...