Muslim Integration into Western Cultures: Between Origins and Destinations

To what extent do migrants carry their culture with them, and to what extent do they acquire the culture of their new home? The answer not only has important political implications; it also helps us understand the extent to which basic cultural values are enduring or malleable; and whether cultural values are traits of individuals or are attributes of a given society. Part I considers theories about the impact of growing social diversity in Western nations. We classify two categories of society: ORIGINS (defined as Islamic Countries of Origin for Muslim migrants, including twenty nations with plurality Muslim populations) and DESTINATIONS (defined as Western Countries of Destination for Muslim migrants, including twenty?two OECD member states with Protestant or Roman Catholic majority populations). Using this framework, we demonstrate that on average, the basic social values of Muslim migrants fall roughly mid?way between those prevailing in their country of origin and their country of destination. We conclude that Muslim migrants do not move to Western countries with rigidly fixed attitudes; instead, they gradually absorb much of the host culture, as assimilation theories suggest.

LinkFinder: An expert system that constructs phylogenic trees

An expert system has been developed using the C Language Integrated Production System (CLIPS) that automates the process of constructing DNA sequence based phylogenies (trees or lineages) that indicate evolutionary relationships. LinkFinder takes as input homologous DNA sequences from distinct individual organisms. It measures variations between the sequences, selects appropriate proportionality constants, and estimates the time that has passed since each pair of organisms diverged from a common ancestor. It then designs and outputs a phylogenic map summarizing these results. LinkFinder can find genetic relationships between different species, and between individuals of the same species, including humans. It was designed to take advantage of the vast amount of sequence data being produced by the Genome Project, and should be of value to evolution theorists who wish to utilize this data, but who have no formal training in molecular genetics. Evolutionary theory holds that distinct organisms carrying a common gene inherited that gene from a common ancestor. Homologous genes vary from individual to individual and species to species, and the amount of variation is now believed to be directly proportional to the time that has passed since divergence from a common ancestor. The proportionality constant must be determined experimentally; it varies considerably with the types of organisms and DNA molecules under study. Given an appropriate constant, and the variation between two DNA sequences, a simple linear equation gives the divergence time

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Understanding Human Security

Since the end of the Cold War, security studies have broadened to take into account a wide range of non-military threats ranging from poverty to environmental concerns rather than just national defense. Security scholars, backed by international organizations and a growing number of national governments, have developed the concept of Human Security, focusing on the welfare of ordinary people against a broad range of threats. This has aroused vigorous debate. Part I of this paper proposes an analytical model of Human Security. Part II argues that it is important to measure how ordinary people perceive risks, moving beyond state-centric notions of Human Security. We examine new evidence, drawing upon survey items specially designed to monitor perceptions of Human Security, included for the first time in the 6th wave of the World Values Survey (WVS), with fieldwork conducted in 2010-2012. Part III demonstrates that people distinguish three dimensions: national, community, and personal security and then explores some structural determinants driving these perceptions. Part IV discusses why perceptions of Human Security matter, in particular for explaining cultural values and value change around the world. The conclusion argues that the shift from a narrow focus on military security toward the broader concept of Human Security is a natural response to the changing challenges facing developed societies, in which the cost-benefit ratio concerning war has become negative and cultural changes have made war less acceptable. In this setting, valid measures of perceptions of Human Security have become essential, both to understand the determinants of Human Security among ordinary people, and to analyze their consequences.

Investment Bank Expertise in Cross-Border Mergers and Acquisitions

We study the influence of country expertise of investment banks in facilitating cross‐border merger deals by analyzing a large international sample of merger and acquisition (M&A) deals. We provide evidence that the geographical proximity, cultural affinity, and local experience of investment banks advising bidding firms on cross‐border M&A deals significantly increase the probability of completion of the deal, significantly decrease the time required to complete the deal, and significantly increase the operating performance of the acquiring firm after the deal. Our results are robust to firm, deal, country‐specific factors, and endogeneity concerns

The Silent Revolution in Europe: Intergenerational Change in Post-Industrial Societies

A transformation of basic political priorities may be taking place in Western Europe. I hypothesize: (1) that people have a variety of needs which are given high or low priority according to their degree of fulfillment: people act on behalf of their most important unsatisfied need, giving relatively little attention to needs already satisfied—except that (2) people tend to retain the value priorities adopted in their formative years throughout adult life. In contemporary Western Europe, needs for physical safety and economic security are relatively well satisfied for an unprecedentedly large share of the population. Younger, more affluent groups have been formed entirely under these conditions, and seem relatively likely to give top priority to fulfillment of needs which remain secondary to the older and less affluent majority of the population. Needs for belonging and intellectual and esthetic self-fulfillment (characterized as "post-bourgeois” values) may take top priorities among the former group. Survey data from six countries indicate that the value priorities of the more affluent postwar group do contrast with those of groups raised under conditions of lesser economic and physical security. National patterns of value priorities correspond to the given nation's economic history, moreover, suggesting that the age-group differences reflect the persistence of preadult experiences, rather than life cycle effects. The distinctive value priorities imply distinctive political behavior—being empirically linked with preferences for specific political issues and political parties in a predictable fashion. If the respective age cohorts retain their present value priorities, we would expect long-term shifts in the political goals and patterns of political partisanship prevailing in these societie

Human development as a general theory of social change: A multi-level and cross-cultural perspective

This paper demonstrates that socioeconomic development, cultural modernization, and democratic regime performance constitute a coherent syndrome of social change'a syndrome whose common focus has not properly been specified by standard modernization theory. We specify this syndrome as Human Development, arguing that its three components have a common focus on individual choice. Socioeconomic development broadens individual choice by giving people more resources; cultural modernization gives rise to aspirations that lead people to seek for individual choice; and democracy extends individual choice by codifying legal opportunities. Analysis of data from 80 societies demonstrates: (1) that a universal resource-aspiration-opportunity syndrome is present at the individual, national and supra-national levels across 80 nations and 8 cultural zones; (2) that this Human Development syndrome is endogenously shaped by a causal effect from resources and aspirations on opportunities; and (3) that elite integrity or good governance is a strong exogenous determinant of the Human Development syndrome as a whole. -- Das vorliegende Papier zeigt, dass sozio-ökonomische Entwicklung, kulturelle Modernisierung und demokratische Regimeperformanz ein kohärentes Syndrom sozialen Wandels bilden - ein Syndrom, dessen integrierender Kern von der klassischen Modernisierungstheorie nicht hinreichend spezifiziert wurde. Wir spezifizieren diesen Kern mit dem Konzept der Humanentwicklung. Wir argumentieren, dass die drei Komponenten der Humanentwicklung dahingehend zusammenwirken, dass sie die individuelle Optionsvielfalt steigern. Sozio-ökonomische Entwicklung erweitert Optionen, indem sie den Individuen mehr Ressourcen verleiht; kulturelle Modernisierung mobilisiert Ansprüche, die die Individuen nach Optionsvielfalt streben lassen; und Demokratie sichert Optionen durch rechtliche Garantien. Eine Analyse der Weltwertestudien zeigt, dass es (1) einen universellen Nexus aus Ressourcen, Ansprüchen und Garantien gibt, der sich auf der individuellen, nationalen und supra-nationalen Ebene über 80 Gesellschaften und 8 Kulturzonen nachweisen lässt; (2) dass die endogene Genese dieses Syndroms der Humanentwicklung durch kausale Effekte von Ressourcen und Ansprüchen auf Garantien zustande kommt; und (3) dass regelkonformes Elitenverhalten eine exogene Determinante dieses Syndroms insgesamt ist.

“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

The JDE’s Peer Education: Reviews of the Literature (PERLs)

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/153553/1/jddj002203372015798tb05977x.pd

El veritable xoc de civilitzacions

Samuel Huntington tenia raó només en part. La línia de fractura cultural que divideix el món occidental del món musulmà no fa referència a la democràcia sinó al gènere. Segons un nou estudi, els musulmans i els seus homòlegs occidentals volen la democràcia; tanmateix, es tracta de móns molt separats pel que fa a les seves actituds vers el divorci, l’avortament, la igualtat de gènere i els drets dels homosexuals, cosa que no fa presagiar res de bo per al futur de la democràcia a l’Orient Mitjà