scholarly journals The Economy and Governance as Determinants of Political Trust in Europe: An Analysis of the European Values Study and World Values Survey, 1990-2019

2021 ◽  
Vol 56 (6) ◽  
pp. 791-834
Author(s):  
Marta Kołczyńska
2020 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-26
Author(s):  
Marta Kołczyńska

This article examines the links between education, democratic values, and political trust. Research on education systems as carriers of modern orientations and democratic values worldwide predicts that educated individuals will exhibit more democratic values than less educated ones, regardless of the country’s level of democracy. In the political culture approach, political trust can be understood as a reflection of the congruence or incongruence between individual democratic values and the level of democracy of the political system, which emphasizes trust’s relational character. Integrating these strands of literature, I formulate hypotheses about the mediating effect of democratic values between education and political trust. To test these hypotheses, I employ multilevel models of data from the World Values Survey and the European Values Study covering 73 countries. The results show that democratic values partially mediate the effect of education on political trust, but the magnitude of this effect depends on the level of democracy. Analyses also show that, while education is positively associated with democratic values regardless of the country’s level of democracy, this association is much stronger in democratic countries than in non-democratic ones.


Sociologija ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 419-439
Author(s):  
Milos Besic

In this paper, we compare the latent construct measurement of political and interpersonal trust in two researches: the European Values Study and the European Social Survey. The main goal was to estimate the validity of measuring the respective concepts. In order to achieve this goal, we conducted a number of Principal Component Analyses and Confirmatory Factor Analyses. Additionally, we used multilevel regression modelling to test and compare the effect of socio-demographic variables on political and interpersonal trust in both researches. We identified that socio-demographic predictors had a similar effect on both types of trust. The paper is complemented with descriptive data that portray the differences among countries when it comes to interpersonal and political trust.


2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (9) ◽  
pp. 740-762
Author(s):  
Plamen Akaliyski ◽  
Christian Welzel

Soon after the collapse of Soviet-type communism in Central and Eastern Europe, a new geopolitical division began to reshape the continent. Our study demonstrates that this newly emerging geopolitical divide has been underpinned by a corresponding cultural divergence, of which “emancipative values” are the most powerful marker. Using the European Values Study/World Values Survey 1990 to 2014, we find that the former Iron Curtain no longer constitutes a cultural boundary because the ex-communist states that joined the European Union have been converging with the West’s strong emphasis on emancipative values. Instead, a new and steeply growing cultural gap has emerged between the European Union and its Eastern neighbors. The two competing geopolitical formations in the West and East—the European and Eurasian Unions, respectively—have diverged culturally in recent decades. The divergence goes back to contrasting supranational identities that originate in different religious traditions, which rulers have increasingly accentuated to strengthen their nations’ endorsement or dismissal of emancipative values. Through this sorting-out process, emancipative values became an increasingly significant marker of a Western-vs-Eastern cultural identity. Our study is the first to link this groundbreaking cultural transformation to civilizational identities and geopolitical rivalry.


2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 351-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bogdan Voicu ◽  
Claudiu D. Tufiş

This paper considers the case of the international migrants’ confidence in political institutions, from a social embeddedness perspective on political trust. We use country-level aggregates of confidence in institutions as indicators of specific cultures of trust, and by employing data from the European Values Study, we test two competing hypotheses. First, as confidence in institutions depends on the values formed during early childhood, the international migrant’s confidence in political institutions in the current country of residency will be influenced by the confidence context from the country of origin. Second, the host country may have different norms of trust in political institutions, and a process of re-socialization may occur. Therefore, the immigrants’ confidence in institutions is influenced by two confidence contexts: one from the origin country and one from the host country. The time spent in the two cultures, along with other characteristics from these contexts, shape the interaction effects we tested in multilevel cross-classified models.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alisa Remizova ◽  
Maksim Rudnev

Several large international surveys, including the World Values Survey and the European Values Study, have been using the moral attitudes scale (MAS) to measure individual and country differences for decades. However, the validity of the instrument has been barely assessed. The current study addressed the concurrent and content validity of four popular MAS items (justifiability of homosexuality, suicide, prostitution, and euthanasia). A sample of 493 Russians completed both MAS and the four validated multi-item scales. Results demonstrated that, except for the homosexuality item, the MAS items had low concurrent validity, explaining less than 50% of the variance of the corresponding multi-item scales. The MAS items underestimated the justifiability of homosexuality, prostitution, and suicide, and overestimated the justifiability of euthanasia. The MAS homosexuality item appeared to be a precise measure of attitude towards male (but not female) homosexuality, responses to the prostitution and suicide items overlooked the positive arguments and the euthanasia item tapped more into attitudes towards active euthanasia of a dying person. The four items showed strong dependence on the overall justifiability. We conclude that separate MAS items should be used with caution, given the detected content bias and the items’ strong link to non-specific overall justifiability.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Lettinga ◽  
P.O. Jacquet ◽  
J-B. André ◽  
N. Baumard ◽  
C. Chevallier

AbstractAlthough humans cooperate universally, there is variability across individuals, times and cultures in the amount of resources people invest in cooperative activities. The origins of such variability are not known but recent work highlights that variations in environmental harshness may play a key role. A growing body of experimental work in evolutionary psychology suggests that humans adapt to their specific environment by calibrating their life-history strategy. In this paper, we apply structural equation models to test the association between current and childhood environmental harshness, life-history strategy and adult cooperation in two large-scale datasets (the World Values Survey and the European Values Study). The present study replicates existing research linking a harsher environment (both in adulthood and in childhood) with a modulated reproduction-maintenance trade-off and extends these findings to the domain of collective actions. Specifically, we find that a harsher environment (both in adulthood and in childhood) is associated with decreased involvement in collective action and that this association is mediated by individuals’ life-history strategy.


2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 32-52
Author(s):  
Lidia Okolskaya

The aim of the paper is to analyze parental values in Russia and 33 other countries, and explore how they’ve changed between 1990 and 2017–2020. Russian dynamics are shown on 7 waves, international — on 2 waves. We used a combination of data from the World Values Survey and the European Values Study. We found that in 1990 the Russian value agenda in regards to children was essentially directed towards survival. By 2017–2020 certain changes had occurred: Russians no longer considered survival values to be as important (such as hard work, thrift, obedience); self-expression values (e.g., independence and imagination) became more popular; humanistic values lost much of their importance for Russians. In 33 countries humanistic values remained as popular as in 1990, while survival values seem to be less important. Russian parental values change in the same direction as do Russian personal values.


2006 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 363-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Germen Janmaat

This paper examines the nature of civic culture and the strength of civic attitudes in postcommunist and western countries. In particular, it seeks to explore the internal consistency and durability of civic culture using World Values Survey and European Values Study data. It discusses three perspectives on the strength and durability of civic attitudes in East and West, (the historical roots, the legacy of communism, and the postcommunist transition perspectives) and explores to what extent the pattern of civic attitudes in the two regions matches the predicted outcomes of these perspectives. The paper finds that the attitudes associated with civic culture do not form a coherent syndrome, neither at the individual nor at the societal level. It further finds only marginal support for the historical perspective, which accords a great degree of persistence to civic culture. It therefore concludes that civic culture is not the monolithic and durable phenomenon that some cultural theorists claim it is.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arnstein Aassve ◽  
Francesco C Billari ◽  
Léa Pessin

We argue that the divergence in fertility trends in advanced societies is influenced by the interaction of long-standing differences in generalized trust with the increase in women's educational attainment. Our argument builds on the idea that trust enhances individuals’ and couples’ willingness to outsource childcare to outside their extended family. This becomes critically important as women's increased education leads to greater demand for combining work and family life. We test our hypothesis using data from the World Values Survey and European Values Study on 36 industrialized countries between the years 1981 and 2009. Multilevel statistical analyses reveal that the interaction between national-level generalized trust and cohort-level women's education is positively associated with completed fertility. As education among women expands, high levels of generalized trust moderate fertility decline.


Author(s):  
Sjoerd Beugelsdijk ◽  
Mariko J. Klasing

Diversity research has shown that ethno-linguistic, religious, and genetic diversity are related to a variety of socio-economic outcomes. We complement this literature by focusing on a dimension of diversity so far ignored in diversity research for lack of data: Diversity in key human values. Using data from all available waves of the World Values Survey and the European Values Study we develop a multi-item indicator of value diversity. This measure reflects the extent to which key human values are shared among the inhabitants of a country. Our newly developed measure is available for up to 111 countries and three decades (1981-2014). We conclude by comparing our newly developed measure of value diversity with existing measures of social diversity and relating it to various indicator of socio-economic performance.


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