Modernization and Postmodernization

Cultural, Economic, and Political Change in 43 Societies

Ronald Inglehart

• Editorial: Princeton University Press
• Año: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780691214429
• Categoría: Social Sciences
• Categoría: Demography

Ronald Inglehart argues that economic development, cultural change, and political change go together in coherent and even, to some extent, predictable patterns. This is a controversial claim. It implies that some trajectories of socioeconomic change are more likely than others--and consequently that certain changes are foreseeable. Once a society has embarked on industrialization, for example, a whole syndrome of related changes, from mass mobilization to diminishing differences in gender roles, is likely to appear. These changes in worldviews seem to reflect changes in the economic and political environment, but they take place with a generational time lag and have considerable autonomy and momentum of their own. But industrialization is not the end of history. Advanced industrial society leads to a basic shift in values, de-emphasizing the instrumental rationality that characterized industrial society. Postmodern values then bring new societal changes, including democratic political institutions and the decline of state socialist regimes. To demonstrate the powerful links between belief systems and political and socioeconomic variables, this book draws on a unique database, the World Values Surveys. This database covers a broader range than ever before available for looking at the impact of mass publics on political and social life. It provides information from societies representing 70 percent of the world's population--from societies with per capita incomes as low as $300 per year to those with per capita incomes one hundred times greater and from long-established democracies with market economies to authoritarian states.

CHAPTER 1

Value Systems: The Subjective Aspect of Politics and Economics

MODERNIZATION AND POSTMODERNIZATION

Economic, cultural, and political change go together in coherent patterns that are changing the world in predictable ways.

This has been the central claim of Modernization theory, from Karl Marx to Max Weber to Daniel Bell. The claim has given rise to heated debate during the last two centuries. This book presents evidence that this claim is largely correct: though we cannot predict exactly what will happen in a given society at a given time, some major trends are predictable in broad outline. When given processes of change are set in motion, certain characteristics are likely to emerge in the long run.

The idea that social and economic change go together on coherent trajectories has been attractive but controversial ever since it was proposed by Marx. It is intellectually exciting because it not only helps explain economic, social, and political change, but may even provide a certain degree of predictability. So far, most efforts at prediction in human affairs have been exercises in hubris; it is common knowledge that many of Marx’s predictions were wrong. Human behavior is so complex and influenced by such a wide range of factors, operating on so many levels, that any claim to provide precise, unqualified predictions is likely to go unfulfilled.

We do not make such promises: one cannot foretell the precise course of social change. Nevertheless, certain syndromes of economic, political, and cultural changes go together in coherent trajectories, with some trajectories being more probable than others. In the long term, across many societies, once given processes are set in motion, certain important changes are likely to happen. Industrialization, for example, tends to bring increasing urbanization, growing occupational specialization, and higher levels of formal education in any society that undertakes it (Lerner, 1958; Deutsch, 1964). These are core elements of a trajectory that is generally called “Modernization.”

This trajectory also tends to bring less obvious but equally important longterm consequences, such as rising levels of mass political participation. Thus, although we cannot predict the actions of specific leaders in given countries, we can say that (at this point in history) mass input to politics is likelier to play a decisive role in Sweden or Japan than in Albania or Burma. And we can even specify, with far better than random success, what issues are likely to be most salient in the politics of the respective types of societies.

The Modernization trajectory is linked with a wide range of other cultural changes. As we will see, certain cultural values are conducive to the economic accumulation and investment that make industrialization possible, and the sharply contrasting gender roles that characterize all preindustrial societies almost inevitably give way to increasingly similar gender roles in advanced industrial society.

But social change is not linear. Although a specific Modernization syndrome of changes becomes probable when societies move from an agrarian mode to an industrial mode, no trend goes on in the same direction forever. It eventually reaches a point of diminishing returns. Modernization is no exception. In the past few decades, advanced industrial societies have reached an inflection point and begun moving on a new trajectory that might be called “Postmodernization.”

With Postmodernization, a new worldview is gradually replacing the outlook that has dominated industrializing societies since the Industrial Revolution. It reflects a shift in what people want out of life. It is transforming basic norms governing politics, work, religion, family, and sexual behavior. Thus, the process of economic development leads to two successive trajectories, Modernization and Postmodernization. Both of them are strongly linked with economic development, but Postmodernization represents a later stage of development that is linked with very different beliefs from those that characterize Modernization. These belief systems are not mere consequences of economic or social changes, but shape socioeconomic conditions and are shaped by them, in reciprocal fashion.

Modernization Theory: The Linkages between Culture, Economics, and Politics

The study of Modernization played a major role in social science in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Severely criticized subsequently, since the 1970s the Modernization concept has been widely considered discredited. As Pye (1990) has argued, it may be time to reexamine it. This chapter does so, presenting new empirical evidence and proposing a modified view of how Modernization works.

The central claim of Modernization theory is that industrialization is linked with specific processes of sociopolitical change that apply widely: though preindustrial societies vary immensely, one can meaningfully speak of a model of “modern” or “industrial” society toward which all societies tend to move if they commit themselves to industrialization. Economic development is linked with a syndrome of changes that includes not only industrialization, but also urbanization, mass education, occupational specialization, bureaucratization, and communications development, which in turn are linked with still broader cultural, social, and political changes.

One reason why Modernization theory aroused such great interest was its promise of predictive power: it implied that once a society entered the trajectory of industrialization, certain types of cultural and political change were likely to take place, ranging from lower birth rates to greater penetration by government, higher life expectancies, increased mass political participation, and perhaps even democracy. Some critics caricatured Modernization theory as implying that economic development would easily and automatically produce liberal democracies, and they dismissed this outlook as naive ethnocentrism. In fact, most Modernization theorists made more qualified prognoses than this, but if we drop the gratuitous assumption that Modernization is easy and automatic, even this claim does not seem totally implausible today.

Modernization theory has been developing for over a century. A wide variety of social theorists have argued that technological and economic changes are linked with coherent and predictable patterns of cultural and political change. But there has been continuing debate over the causal linkages: does economic change cause cultural and political change, or does it work in the opposite direction?

Marx emphasized economic determinism, arguing that a society’s technological level shapes its economic system, which in turn determines its cultural and political characteristics: given the technological level of the windmill, a society will be based on subsistence agriculture, with a mass of impoverished peasants dominated by a landed aristocracy; the steam engine brings an industrial society in which the bourgeoisie becomes the dominant elite, exploiting and repressing an urban proletariat.

Weber, on the other hand, emphasized the impact of culture: it was not just an epiphenomenon of the economic system, but an important causal factor in itself; culture can shape economic behavior, as well as being shaped by it. Thus, the emergence of the Protestant Ethic facilitated the rise of capitalism, which contributed to both the Industrial Revolution and the Democratic Revolution: this view held that belief systems influence economic and political life, as well as being influenced by them.

Some of Marx’s successors shifted the emphasis from economic determinism (which suggests that the revolutionary Utopia will come spontaneously) toward greater emphasis on the impact of ideology and culture. Thus Lenin argued that by itself, the working class would never develop sufficient class consciousness for a successful revolution; they needed to be led by an ideologically aware vanguard of professional revolutionaries.

Mao emphasized the power of revolutionary thinking even more strongly. Breaking with Marxist orthodoxy, he held that China need not wait for the processes of urbanization and industrialization to transform it; if an ideologically committed cadre could instill sufficient enthusiasm among the Chinese masses, a communist revolution could succeed even in an agrarian society. Mao’s faith in the power of ideological fervor to triumph over material obstacles seemed justified by the Chinese communist victory in 1949 over forces with vastly superior financial resources and manpower. On the other hand, the fact that ideological determinism has limits was demonstrated by the disastrous failure of the Great Leap Forward in 1959: to develop a complex society, it seems, one needs experts with specialized knowledge, as well as right-thinking masses. When building a drainage system or constructing a steel mill, there are ways that work and ways that do not work, regardless of one’s ideological perspective.

While conceding an important role to cultural factors, recent Modernization theorists such as Bell (1973) viewed changes in the structure of the workforce as the leading cause of cultural change. For Bell, the crucial milestone in the coming of “Postindustrial society” is reached when a majority of the workforce is in the tertiary sector of the economy, producing neither raw materials, nor manufactured goods, but services. This leads to a massive expansion of formal education, driven by the need for an increasingly skilled and specialized workforce. Other writers such as Lerner (1958) and Inkeles and Smith (1974) emphasized the importance of formal education as the main factor shaping a “modern” worldview.

Does Modernization lead to democracy? In the late 1950s, Khrushchev’s reforms gave rise to hopes that the communist bloc might be on the brink of democratizing. The emergence of scores of newly independent postcolonial nations in the 1960s intensified these hopes. But optimism collapsed after the communist elite drove Khrushchev from power in 1964, the Soviet world settled down into a seemingly permanent authoritarian regime under Brezhnev, and authoritarian regimes took over in most postcolonial nations. Rostow (1961) had argued that economic development was inherently conducive to democratization, but by the 1970s most social scientists were skeptical of the idea. Authoritarian regimes seemed to be a permanent feature of the world— even (or perhaps especially) in those communist states that had achieved impressive economic growth. Industrialization could give rise to either democracy or dictatorship.

We propose a revised view of Modernization theory. We agree with the Modernization theorists on their most central point: that economic development, cultural change, and political change are linked in coherent and even, to some extent, predictable patterns. Some trajectories of change are more probable than others because certain configurations of values and beliefs, and political and economic institutions, are mutually supportive—while others are not. Thus, if one knows one component of a society, one can predict what other components will be present with far better than random success.

But while we follow Marx, Weber, and their successors in believing that change tends to take predictable rather than random trajectories, we differ from most Modernization theorists on four essential points:

1. Change is not linear. It does not move in one continuous direction until the end of history. Instead, it eventually reaches points of diminishing returns and has begun to move in a fundamentally new direction during the past few decades.

2. Previous versions of Modernization theory were deterministic, with the Marxist version tending toward economic determinism and the Weberian version sometimes tending toward cultural determinism. We believe that the relationships between economics and culture and politics are mutually supportive, as are the various systems of a biological organism. It would be senseless to ask whether the behavior of the human body is “really” determined by the muscular system, the circulatory system, the nervous system, or the respiratory system: each plays an essential role, and all activity ceases if any of them breaks down. Similarly, political systems and economic systems require a supportive cultural system—otherwise they would need to rely on naked coercion, which almost never endures for long. Conversely, a cultural system that was incompatible with its economic system would be unlikely to endure. Economic determinism, cultural determinism, and political determinism are all oversimplified: the causal linkages tend to be reciprocal. Unless these systems are mutually supportive, they are unlikely to survive.

3. We reject the ethnocentric perspective of those who equated Modernization with “Westernization”: At one point in history, Modernization was concentrated in the West; today it is evident that the process is global, and that in some ways East Asia is now leading the process of Modernization. In keeping with this outlook, we propose a modified interpretation of Weber’s (1904–5) thesis concerning the role of the Protestant Ethic in economic development. Weber was correct in viewing the rise of Protestantism as a crucial event in the Modernization of Europe. However, its impact was not unique to Protestantism but was mainly due to the fact that its acquisitive rationality supplanted a set of religious norms that are common to most preindustrial societies and that inhibit economic achievement. Protestantism was uniquely Western, but acquisitive rationality is not. Although industrialization occurred first in the West, the rise of the West was only one version of Modernization.

4. Democracy is not inherent in the Modernization phase, as some Modernization theorists suggested. There are alternative outcomes, with fascism and communism being the most prominent alternatives as Moore (1966) has pointed out. But democracy does become increasingly likely as societies move beyond the Modernization phase into Postmodernization. In the Postmodern phase, a distinctive syndrome of changes occur that make democracy increasingly likely—to the point where it eventually becomes costly to avoid.

We have stated four ways in which our view—which might be termed Postmodernization theory—differs from Modernization theory. Let us provide more detail on these points. Chapter 3 will present empirical evidence that supports the central claim underlying both Modernization theory and Postmodernization theory: that technological and economic changes tend to be linked with specific types of cultural, political, and social change. In other words, history tends to move in coherent and to some extent predictable patterns.

Socioeconomic Change Is Not Linear

The prevailing direction of development has changed in the last quarter century, and this shift is so distinctive that, rather than continuing to use the term “Modernization,” we prefer to speak of “Postmodernization.” The term “Postmodern” has been used with scores of different meanings, some of which are associated with a cultural relativism so extreme that it approaches cultural determinism: it asserts that culture shapes human experience almost entirely, unlimited by any external reality. Nevertheless, the term conveys an important insight, suggesting that the process known as Modernization is no longer at the cutting edge, and that social change is now moving in a fundamentally different direction. Moreover, the literature on Postmodernism suggests some of the specific attributes of this new direction: it is a move away from the emphasis on economic efficiency, bureaucratic authority, and scientific rationality that characterized Modernization, toward a more human society with more room for individual autonomy, diversity, and self-expression.

Unfortunately, the word “Postmodern” has become loaded with so many meanings that it is in danger of conveying everything and nothing. In architecture, the term has a clear meaning, designating a style of architecture that departs strikingly from the bare functionalism of “modern” architecture, which had become sterile and aesthetically repelling. The first glass box was a stunning tour de force, but by the one-hundredth box, the novelty had worn thin. Postmodern architecture reintroduced a human scale, with touches of adornment and references to the past, but incorporating new technology. In a similar vein, we suggest that Postmodern society is moving away from the standardized functionalism and the enthusiasm for science and economic growth that dominated industrial society during an era of scarcity—giving more weight to aesthetic and human considerations and incorporating elements of the past into a new context.

Neither Cultural Determinism Nor Economic Determinism

We disagree with the cultural determinism that is sometimes linked with the concept of Postmodernism. Postmodern writers are certainly correct in thinking that everyone perceives reality through some kind of cultural filter. Moreover, these cultural factors are steadily becoming a more important component of experience as we move from societies of scarcity, in which economic necessity limits one’s behavior rather narrowly, to a world in which human will increasingly prevails over the external environment, allowing broader room for individual choice: this is a major reason why the Postmodern perspective has become increasingly credible.

But we reject the notion that cultural construction is the only factor shaping human experience. There is an objective reality out there too, and it applies to social relations as well as to natural science. External reality is crucial when it comes to the ultimate political resource, violence: when you shoot someone, that person dies regardless of whether he or she believes in ballistics or bullets. Similarly, though an architect has considerable scope for choice and imagination, if one forgets objective engineering principles, the building may collapse. Partly for this reason, architecture has preserved a healthy respect for reality. Similarly again, among physicists and astronomers...

Índice

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Changing Values and Changing Societies
• Chapter 1: Value Systems: The Subjective Aspect of Politics and Economics
• Chapter 2: Individual-Level Change and Societal-Level Change
• Chapter 3: Modernization and Postmodernization in 43 Societies
• Chapter 4: Measuring Materialist and Postmaterialist Values
• Chapter 5: The Shift toward Postmaterialist Values, 1970–1994
• Chapter 6: Economic Development, Political Culture, and Democracy: Bringing the People Back In
• Chapter 7: The Impact of Culture on Economic Growth
• Chapter 8: The Rise of New Issues and New Parties
• Chapter 9: The Shift toward Postmodern Values: Predicted and Observed Changes, 1981–1990
• Chapter 10: The Erosion of Institutional Authority and the Rise of Citizen Intervention in Politics
• Chapter 11: Trajectories of Social Change
• Appendix 1: A Note on Sampling; Figures A. 1 and A.2
• Appendix 2: Partial 1990 WVS Questionnaire, with Short Labels for Items Used in Figure 3.2
• Appendix 3: Supplementary Figures for Chapters 3, 9, and 10; Figures A.3 (Chapter 6), A.4–A.21 (Chapter 9), A.22–A.26 (Chapter 10), and A.27 (Chapter 11)
• Appendix 4: Construction of Key Indices Used in This Book
• Appendix 5: Complete 1990 WVS Questionnaire, with Variable Numbers in ICPSR Dataset
• References
• Index