“There is a crucial need for competent social scientists”…

Received 20 December 2016. Accepted 17 March 2017. Published online 15 April 2017.We decided to conduct our journal’s first interview with Ronald F. Inglehart – Lowenstein Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan (USA), Academic Supervisor of the Laboratory for Comparative Social Research at National Research University Higher School of Economics (Russia) and Founding President of the World Values Survey Association. We asked him about challenges to contemporary social sciences and trends in their development. Professor Inglehart is interviewed by Olga Iakimova, the executive editor of CS&P

Evolutionary Modernization Theory: Why People’s Motivations are Changing

Received 4 June 2017. Accepted 24 August 2017. Published online 29 September 2017.A society’s culture is shaped by the extent to which its people grow up feeling that survival is secure or insecure. This article presents a revised version of modernization theory – Evolutionary Modernization theory – which argues that economic and physical insecurity are conducive to xenophobia, strong in-group solidarity, authoritarian politics and rigid adherence to their group’s traditional cultural norms – and conversely that secure conditions lead to greater tolerance of outgroups, openness to new ideas and more egalitarian social norms. Earlier versions of this theory have been presented in publications by Inglehart, Norris, Welzel, Abramson, Baker and others (Inglehart & Baker, 2000; Inglehart & Norris, 2004; Inglehart & Welzel, 2005; Welzel, 2013), and a forthcoming book (Inglehart, 2018) tests this theory more extensively, analyzing survey data gathered from 1970 to 2014 in over 100 countries containing more than 90 percent of the world’s population

Research in Context: Measuring Value Change

Abramson and Inglehart find a significant trend toward postmaterialist values in Western Europe, which they argue is largely driven by the gradual processes of generational replacement. Clarke, Dutt, and Rapkin argue that this trend is a methodological artifact of the wording of Inglehart's four-item measure of materialist/ postmaterialist values. They claim that because this battery does not include a question about unemployment, in periods of high unemployment respondents tend to choose postmaterialist goals. The long-term trend toward postmaterialism in Western Europe, they argue, results from rising levels of unemployment during the past two decades. Abramson and Inglehart point out that increases in inflation have a short-term impact on decreasing postmaterialism, but maintain that the positive relationship between unemployment and postmaterialism is spurious. As this analysis shows, Clarke, Dutt, and Rapkin find a positive relationship between unemployment and postmaterialism by building a model that has little theoretical justification and that is not robust to changes in specification. As this analysis demonstrates, unemployment is actually linked with support for materialist goals, and the trend toward post-materialism is robust in the face of alternative time frames, models, and specifications. The weight of the evidence demonstrates that the long-term trend toward postmaterialism in Western Europe is driven by generational replacement.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45487/1/11109_2004_Article_423943.pd

Sex Ideologies in China: Examining Interprovince Differences

In recent decades, premarital sex, extramarital sex, and homosexuality have become increasingly visible in China, leading scholars to claim that a national “sex revolution” is under way. However, China’s internal sociocultural diversity calls this nation-level generalization into question. How do sex ideologies vary across China’s distinct provinces? To what extent are inter-province variations in sex ideologies associated with distinct macro- level social factors in China? In this research, data from the 2010 China General Social Survey and the 2011 Chinese Statistics Yearbook were analyzed using multilevel models to test four contending theories of inter-province differences in sex ideologies in China: modernization, Westernization, deindustrialization, and the “rice theory.” The modernization theory was unsupported by the results, as socioeconomic development is not significantly associated with sex ideologies. Higher levels of deindustrialization and Westernization were associated with less traditional sex ideologies, but the strength of association varied across the domains of premarital sex, extramarital sex, and homosexuality. The rice theory was consistently supported, as the distinction between rice and wheat agriculture explained up to 30% of the province-level variance in sex ideologies. The findings underline the roles of both long-standing geographic differences and recent social changes in shaping China’s ideational landscape of sex

Conducting a Street‐Intercept Survey in an Authoritarian Regime: The Case of Myanmar*

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/149211/1/ssqu12611_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/149211/2/ssqu12611.pd

Lokale politische Kultur

Sofern die schwache Datenbasis überhaupt Verallgemeinerungen zuläßt, entspricht die lokale Politische Kultur der Bundesrepublik weitgehend den Anforderungen an eine demokratische Staatsbürgerkultur: Die Mehrheit der Bevölkerung vertraut der Exekutive, und sie hält sich selbst für fähig, das Handeln der lokalen politischen Führung zu beeinflussen. Den politischen Parteien bringt sie mehr positive als negative Gefühle entgegen. Mit zunehmender Gemeindegröße schwächt sich das Vertrauen zur Exekutive graduell ab, die Einschätzung der politischen Parteien wird positiver und das Kompetenzbewußtsein der Bürgerinnen und Bürger steigt. Die Balance verschiebt sich also von einer traditionellen Untertanenorientierung zu einer partizipativen, konfliktorientierten Politischen Kultur

Muslim Integration into Western Cultures: Between Origins and Destinations

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/91196/1/j.1467-9248.2012.00951.x.pd