341European Journal of Political Research 42: 341–379, 2003
The theory of human development: A cross-cultural analysis
CHRISTIAN WELZEL1
, RONALD INGLEHART2
&
HANS-DIETER KLINGEMANN3
1
International University Bremen (IUB), Germany; 2
University of Michigan at Ann Arbor,
USA; 3
Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB), Germany
Abstract. This article demonstrates that socioeconomic development, emancipative cultural
change and democratization constitute a coherent syndrome of social progress – a syndrome
whose common focus has not been properly specified by classical modernization theory. We
specify this syndrome as ‘human development’, arguing that its three components have a
common focus on broadening human choice. Socioeconomic development gives people the
objective means of choice by increasing individual resources; rising emancipative values
strengthen people’s subjective orientation towards choice; and democratization provides
legal guarantees of choice by institutionalizing freedom rights. Analysis of data from
the World Values Surveys demonstrates that the linkage between individual resources,
emancipative values and freedom rights is universal in its presence across nations, regions
and cultural zones; that this human development syndrome is shaped by a causal effect
of individual resources and emancipative values on freedom rights; and that this effect
operates through its impact on elite integrity, as the factor which makes freedom rights
effective.
Introduction
Researchers concerned with development and change in human societies followed
three major trajectories of societal change. The most fundamental one,
socioeconomic development, has been described as a set of closely linked
changes including technological innovation, productivity growth, improving
health and life expectancy, increasing incomes, rising levels of education,
growing access to information and increasing social complexity (among
many others, see Lewis 1955; Rostow 1961; Bell 1973; Chirot 1986; Perkin
1996; Rowen 1996; Barro 1997; Estes 1998; Rodrik 1999; Hughes 1999; Sen
2001).
The second process – value change – comes along with socioeconomic
development when expanding markets and social mobilization diversify and
intensify human activities, such as commercial transactions and civic exchange.
These processes strengthen horizontal bargaining relations and weaken verti©
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cal authority relations that restrict human autonomy (Weber 1958; Banfield
1958; Eckstein 1988; Coleman 1988). Fading constraints on human autonomy
tend to reshape people’s value orientations in ways that have been described
in various terms, such as the emergence of ‘civic cultural’ values (Almond &
Verba 1963), ‘individual modernity’ (Inkeles & Smith 1974; Inkeles 1983),
‘postmaterialistic values’ (Inglehart 1977, 1990), ‘liberal values’ (Brint 1984;
Flanagan 1987; Nevitte 1996), ‘anthropocentric values’ (Bürklin et al. 1996)
and ‘self-expression values’ (Inglehart 1997; Inglehart & Baker 2000). Whatever
the terminology, most theories of value change coincide in the notion
that traditional conformity values, which subordinate human autonomy to
community discipline, tend to give way to more emancipative values that
emphasize human choice. Accordingly, we characterize this process as an
emancipative value change.
A third major process involves a society’s political institutions. The most
notable development in this field has been a massive trend towards more
democracy. This happened in two ways during the past three decades. Most
obviously, many authoritarian regimes changed into formal democracies by
adopting democratic constitutions in the ‘Third Wave of Democratization’
(Huntington 1991; Sørensen 1993; Kurzman 1998; Nagle & Mahr 1999;
Dorenspleet 2000). At the same time, a more subtle change has taken place
in established democracies. Since the late 1970s, most of them have implemented
or extended direct democratic institutions (Cronin 1999; Scarrow
2001) and they have experienced rising levels of direct civic participation
(Barnes et al. 1979; Budge 1996; Dalton 2001; Norris 2002). Some scholars see
these changes as an acceleration of a more enduring historical trend towards
democracy (Gurr et al. 1990; Modelski & Perry 1991; Diamond 1993; Jaggers
& Gurr 1995).
As often as the processes of socioeconomic development, emancipative
value change and democratization have been described, they have been called
into question (see Randall & Theobald 1998: Chapters 1–2). It has been
debated, for instance, whether these processes manifest irreversible linear
trends or follow cyclical patterns with major setbacks; whether they are uniformly
global or culture-specific in a way that prescribes an inherently Western
model; and even whether they are desirable or not.
One point, however, can be hardly denied: if socioeconomic development,
emancipative value change and democratization occur, they tend to go
together. Poor societies, whose citizens suffer from scarce resources – most
obviously in Sub-Saharan Africa – tend to be dominated by conformity values
that reflect constraints on human autonomy. These societies are usually governed
by authoritarian regimes. Even if they have a democratic constitution,
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such formal democracies seldom operate effectively because highly corrupt
elites deprive people of their rights (Heller 2000). At the other end of the continuum,
the citizens of OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development) societies profit from an affluence of individual resources and
their prevailing values are characterized by a stronger emphasis on human
emancipation. These citizens are usually governed by democratic regimes in
which freedom rights are effectively set in practice. Overall, societal levels of
individual resources, emancipative values and effective democracy tend to correspond
to each other, as is shown in Figures 1 and 2 (see pp. 368–369).
This insight is not new. In fact, it is conventional wisdom of classical
modernization theory (see Lerner 1958; Lipset 1959; Coleman 1968; Pye 1990;
Diamond 1992). What is new, is the empirical evidence that has been added
in recent years. Thanks to the World Values Surveys, this applies in particular
to the role of value change (Inglehart 1997; Inglehart & Baker 2000). Nevertheless,
we still lack an integrated theory of social change. Modernization
theorists have argued that there are close relations between socioeconomic
development, emancipative values and degrees of democracy, but they did not
sharpen the common focus of these three phenomena. ‘Modernization’ was
either used as an umbrella term that was defined by enumerating its concrete
components but not by what integrates them (e.g., Lerner 1968: 385); or it was
described in such general terms as ‘functional differentiation’ (Mouzelis 1999),
allowing one to subsume almost anything under ‘modernization’. In conclusion,
there is no general definition of modernization that clarifies in which
common principle its various components converge.
Empirical studies reflect this lack of conceptual integration. Most analyses
focus on only one of the three relationships between socioeconomic development,
value change and democracy. Even the few studies that deal with all
three processes dissolve the whole complex into single pairs of relations, each
of which is discussed in separation (Muller & Seligson 1994; Inglehart 1997;
Sides 1999; Inglehart & Baker 2000). As a result, the debate is fragmented into
three separate strings.
First, following Lipset (1959), various authors claimed that socioeconomic
development helps to establish or sustain democracy (among others, Cutright
1963; Bollen & Jackman 1985; Lipset et al. 1993; Helliwell 1993; Burkhart &
Lewis-Beck 1994; Barro 1997; Vanhanen 1997; Gasiorowski & Power 1998);
while others argue that democracy promotes political stability, provides better
economic policies and thus is conducive to socioeconomic development
(Ersson & Lane 1996; Rowen 1996; Leblang 1997; Feng 1997; Frey & AlRoumi
1999; Olson et al. 2000). Second, some observers maintain that socioeconomic
development gives rise to ‘modern’ values (Inkeles & Smith 1974;
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Inkeles 1983; Flanagan 1987; Inglehart & Baker 2000), but others insist that
‘modern’ values accelerate socioeconomic development (Putnam 1993;
Fukuyama 1995; Knack & Keefer 1997; Landes 1998). And, third, while some
analysts suggest that democracy helps to produce ‘civic’ values (Rustow 1970;
Muller & Seligson 1994; Jackman & Miller 1998), others claim the contrary:
emerging ‘civic’ values put political elites under popular pressure to institutionalize
democratic rules and to keep these rules effective (Gibson &
Duch 1994; Inglehart 1997: Chapter 5; Welzel & Inglehart 2001; Welzel
2002a).
Summarizing these contradictions, Dahl (1998: 35) concluded that ‘the
exact nature of the relationship among socioeconomic modernization, democratization,
and the creation of a democratic culture is almost as puzzling
today as it was a quarter-century ago’. It remains puzzling because no one,
as far as we know, started from the most fundamental question: ‘What is
the common denominator underlying socioeconomic development, emancipative
value change and effective democracy?’ This question is made all the
more pressing by the striking coincidence of these three phenomena, as we
will demonstrate. We start from this fundamental question and elaborate
on the syndrome as such before we dissolve the whole complex into separate
relations.
We unfold a concept based on the principle of ‘human choice’. This principle
is implicit in modernization theory (Lewis 1955: 9–19), but its capacity to
integrate related changes in socioeconomic structure, political culture and
regime institutions has not yet been fully developed. The following section
unfolds the concept of ‘human development’ as an integrating framework.
Anand and Sen (2000) introduced the term ‘human development’, arguing
that ‘human choice’, or the capability of human beings to choose the lives
they want, should be the ultimate measure of social progress. We share this
humanistic approach, but, following Welzel (2002a), we elaborate the concept
of ‘human development’ more comprehensively in a way that includes political
culture. Using this framework, we analyze data from the World Values
Surveys together with socioeconomic data from Vanhanen (1997), civil and
political rights ratings from Freedom House and estimates on elite corruption
from Transparency International. Subsequent sections demonstrate that the
syndrome of human development operates across nations, regions and cultural
zones;that this syndrome is shaped by a process in which socioeconomic development
and rising emancipative mass values lead to rising levels of effective
democracy; and that the effect of emancipative values on effective democracy
operates through their impact on elite integrity. Indeed, elite integrity (i.e., the
reverse of elite corruption) is the factor that makes formal democracy
effective.
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Theory
The three components of human development
Our conception follows Welzel (2002), arguing that socioeconomic development,
rising emancipative values and effective democracy work together in
promoting human choice among societies (see also, Welzel & Inglehart 2001).
Socioeconomic development includes a bundle of processes (e.g.,
urbanization, social mobilization and occupational differentiation) that
increase social complexity and multiply social transactions between human
beings (Bendix 1974; Durkheim 1988; Simmel 1984; Blau 1994). These tendencies
help to emancipate people from closed in-group discipline, to weaken
vertical authority relations and to strengthen horizontal bargaining relations,
giving people greater autonomy over their resources. Moreover, socioeconomic
development not only individualizes available resources, it also enlarges
these resources: rising incomes, skills and information facilities increase
people’s physical and intellectual resources. Socioeconomic development
diminishes the most existential constraints on human choice by increasing
individual resources. These resources give people the objective means of
choice. This view is as old as Aristotle and has been argued from Adam Smith
and Karl Marx to Amartya Sen.
Emancipative cultural change is the second component relevant to human
choice. When growing individual resources widen the scope of possible human
activities, the strive for self-realization, autonomy and emancipation finds
greater leverage, strengthening people’s desire to have free choice and control
over their lives. Rising emancipative values direct people’s subjective orientations
towards human choice, contributing the motives component to this
theme. This is consistent with the notion that choice is not only a matter of
one’s means but also of one’s mind and motivation (Rokeach 1960).
Democracy is the third component of human development. It is related to
human choice because it institutionalizes legal rights that guarantee choices
in people’s private and public activity. However, it is important that these
rights are not only formally guaranteed but work effectively in practice. This
is what distinguishes effective democracy from formal democracy. Effective
democracy contributes effective rights to human choice and thus represents its
rules component. Effective democratization, in this sense, is any extension
of people’s effective rights. This notion can be traced back to Mill and
Dewey who saw effective opportunities for ‘individual self-development’
(Macpherson 1977: 44–76) as the core value of democracy.
Individual resources, emancipative values and effective rights represent
the means, motives and rules components of human development. These comthe
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ponents are provided by socioeconomic development, emancipative value
change and democratization, respectively. Table 1 summarizes this conception
of human development.
The three components of Human Development all coincide in their focus
on human choice. Progress in any of these components improves a society’s
‘conditio humana’, giving people larger means, stronger motivations and more
effective guarantees to make use of their personal potential. Human development
of societies means growing human choice on a mass level.
Human development is not a teleological concept. It does not imply that
its three components necessarily grow in a linear upward direction. Societies
can move in either direction: progressing or regressing. However, our theory
does imply that people’s means, motivations and rights tend to develop coincidentally,
either narrowing or widening the range of human choice.
The concept of ‘human development’ goes beyond standard modernization
theory in having both a wider scope and a sharper focus. Usually, theories
cannot maximize scope and focus at the same time, but the concept of ‘human
development’ does. On the one hand, its scope is comprehensive, integrating
major changes in socioeconomic structure, political culture, and regime institutions.
On the other hand, this concept is sharply focused on one theme: the
growth (or decline) of human choice.
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Table 1. The concept of human development
Human development
Economic Cultural Institutional
dimension dimension dimension
Components Individual Emancipative Freedom
resources values rights
Generating processes Socioeconomic development Emancipative Democratization,
cultural change extension of rights
Sphere of means Sphere of motives Sphere of rules
Societal spheres (social structure) (political culture) (regime institutions)
Prevailing causal direction Means-motives linkage Motives-rules linkage
Underlying theme Human choice on a mass level
᭤
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The two linkages of human development
We suggest that the human development syndrome is shaped by two linkages:
a means-motives linkage that connects emancipative values with individual
resources, and a motives-rules linkage that ties effective rights to emancipative
values.
The Means-Motives Linkage: A public’s prevailing value orientations
reflect the constraints imposed on human autonomy by more or less pressing
social conditions. These constraints are most existential and pressing in the
socioeconomic sphere, when scarce resources deprive people of many options
in their life. Usually, people tend to adapt their aspirations to these constraints
(Schwartz 1992; Diener et al. 1995; Cummins 2000; Eckersley 2000; Schmuck
et al. 2000). This mechanism – known in social psychology as ‘aspiration adjustment’
(Costa et al. 1987) – has emerged through human evolution because
it secured survival (Birch & Cobb 1981; Doyal & Gough 1991; Tooby &
Cosmides 1992). Aspiration adjustment leads people to aspire for the most
pressing things first and to avoid wasting energy on unattainable goals
(Maslow 1988). Downward adjustment of aspirations works against the
higher-ordered human strives, in particular for self-expression. Striving for
self-expression requires freedom and choice, and cannot unfold under pressing
social constraints. Yet, the striving for self-expression is latent in each
person: it follows from the simple fact that human beings are self-conscious.
This insight led many theorists – including Marx, Maslow, Inkeles and
Flanagan – to the conclusion that less pressing and more permissive social
conditions (which offer greater choice) create greater satisfaction and fulfillment.
Indeed, data from the World Values Surveys support the view that
greater human choice increases individual life satisfaction. In each of 148
national representative surveys,conducted in such diverse societies as Uganda,
China, Iran, Brazil, Sweden or Poland, there is a highly significant correlation
between people’s life satisfaction and their perception of how much choice
they have in shaping their live.1
If pressing social conditions restrict human choice, people are forced to
reduce their actual emphasis on self-expression, although this downward
adjustment of aspirations has psychological costs in that it diminishes life satisfaction.
Downward adjustment of aspirations is nevertheless necessary to
make a living under pressing human conditions, such as those prevailing in
poor societies where scarce resources drive people into a struggle for survival.
Survival strategies may constitute a Hobbesian ‘homo homini lupo’ situation
in which outsiders are distrusted as hostile competitors for scarce resources.
Distrust towards outsiders forces individuals into rigid in-group discipline
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that leaves little room for human autonomy. Banfield (1958) examined the
Southern Italian community of Montegrano to describe such a typical survival
situation. Putnam (1993) reaches similar conclusions in his description of differences
between Italian citizens of the affluent North and the poor South,
finding that Southern Italians distrust their fellow citizens. These citizens tend
to place emphasis on group discipline, social control, hierarchy, moral rigidity
and strong authority – conformity values that prevail under restrictive human
conditions.
Inglehart (1997) demonstrated for a much wider array of countries that the
public’s suffering from scarce resources tend to be dominated by conformity
values. Similarly, societies whose people dispose of more individual resources
place stronger emphasis on emancipative values. This reflects the fact that the
benefits of conformity values recede when existential constraints on human
choice fade. Accordingly, conformity values tend to give way to emancipative
values, which is reflected in greater tolerance of human diversity, higher
life satisfaction and stronger emphasis on individual freedom. According
to Flanagan (1987), this value change reflects a functional mechanism of
aspiration adjustment at the societal level.
The Motives-Rules Linkage: Living an emancipated life involves activities,
both private and public, that require a legal space based on effective freedom
rights. Emancipative orientations are therefore inherently directed towards
effective rights. So, if emancipative orientations gain momentum among the
broader public, their directedness towards effective rights should be consequential
for the stability of political regimes.
If growing individual resources give rise to emancipative orientations
within an autocracy, people will consider authoritarian rule as an illegitimate
restriction of their rights. Confronted with an elite unwilling to democratize,
these people will withdraw as much material and moral support as they can.
This makes authoritarian rule increasingly ineffective and costly. The exhaustion
of a regime’s resources and the loss of legitimacy make two events more
likely: that a faction of the elite splits off in an attempt to regain legitimacy by
mobilizing popular support for liberal reforms (Przeworski 1992), and that
democratic dissidents campaign for holding free elections (see Foweraker &
Landman 1997; McAdam et al. 2001: Chapter 9). Depending on the strength
and spread of emancipative orientations, the mobilization of the public will
then be channeled in the direction of democratization, helping to terminate
an authoritarian regime and to establish freedom rights.
If emancipative orientations grow in a democracy, the likely result is not
regime change but an increasing effectiveness of given freedom rights. A
society may be organized as a formal democracy such that all the basic
freedom rights are legally guaranteed, but legal guarantees do not necessarily
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make these rights effective. Even a democracy can be ruled by corrupt elites
who deprive the citizens of their rights. In a poor society that is dominated by
conformity values, most citizens have neither the resources nor the motivation
to form effective popular pressure such that the elites feel urged to respect
people’s rights. However, in a society in which emancipative values are more
strongly pronounced, people will be more willing to exert public pressure
to keep the elites accountable. Usually, these citizens also dispose of the
resources to make their pressure effective. As noted by Verba et al. (1978: 73),
‘in all nations, citizens appear to convert socioeconomic resources into political
involvement’.
In democracies, elites are recruited from the electorate. Thus, changing
values among the citizens will affect the elites as well. So, if there is a shift
toward emancipative values in the population, the elites also will be affected
by these values. Data from the World Values Surveys support this assumption,
demonstrating that people with university degrees place more emphasis on
emancipation than do ordinary citizens (Welzel 2003: 278). Yet the crossnational
differences in emphasis on emancipation are just as large among
people with university degrees as they are among the ordinary citizens. Given
that elites are overwhelmingly recruited from people with university education,
this finding suggests that a public’s emphasis on emancipation is well
represented among its elites.
If the elites are influenced by emancipative values, they are more likely to
consider corrupt behavior as an illegitimate violation of freedom rights. Thus,
there are two reasons why a societal shift towards emancipative values will
reduce corrupt elite behavior and increase the effectiveness of given rights.
One is that the masses dispose of more resources and stronger motivations to
put elites under popular pressure. The other reason is that the elites are, by
their own beliefs, willing to respect people’s rights. From a rational choice
perspective, there is no reason to expect that elites avoid maximizing their
benefits through corruption, unless their own values or popular pressure
eliminate this option from rational calculation.
Consider now the reverse relation: Can freedom rights by their mere presence
create emancipative values among the citizens? Our answer is ‘no’, unless
the resources which feed these values are present. For example, consider India:
though offering its citizens a wide array of freedom rights during 50 years of
formal democracy, most Indians did not develop a correspondingly strong
emphasis on human emancipation (as is demonstrated by India’s location in
Figures 1A and 2A). On the other hand, former Czechoslovakia provided its
citizens with much narrower freedom rights under four decades of communist
rule, but the Czechs (and, to a lesser degree, the Slovaks) developed much
stronger emphasis on emancipation than most of the Indians did – in keeping
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with their greater material and intellectual resources (see again Figure 1A).
This does not mean that formal democracy cannot exist without corresponding
emancipative values. Actually it can, as the Indian example shows. Yet, if
so, formal democracy is likely to be ineffective. To be practiced effectively,
formal rights need corresponding values, but cannot create them. Formal
rights are only an institutional offer that cannot by itself create the demands
that make it effective. In conclusion, effective democracy is the consequence
rather than the cause of emancipative mass values.
Formal democracy and effective democracy
The Indian case illustrates how important it is to differentiate between formal
democracy and effective democracy. India is without doubt a formal democracy
that guarantees its citizens a wide array of freedom rights, but as Heller
has pointed out (2001), most Indians do not have the resources enabling them
to exert their rights effectively. They also do not place so much emphasis on
emancipation that they are willing to insist on fully practicing their rights. In
terms of effective democracy, India ranks closer to China than to Japan (see
Figure 2A), although India has a democratic constitution.
Democracy is central to human development because it gives the citizens
formal rights. Codifying these rights creates formal democracy, which is a necessary
component of effective democracy:without formal democracy there can
be no effective democracy. Yet formal rights are not sufficient to make democracy
effective. Formal rights are effective to the extent that the elites respect
these rights in their actual behavior. Law-abiding elite behavior, or what we
call ‘elite integrity’, is an expression of the ‘rule of law’ that, as Linz and Stepan
(1996) and many others have claimed, distinguishes effective democracy from
formal democracy. Hence, in order to measure effective democracy, we weigh
formal democracy by elite integrity, using elite integrity as a grading factor
that either downgrades or upgrades given levels of formal democracy.
The mass-system linkage in human development
Our theory of human development maintains that effective democracy is
linked to emancipative mass values and that these values are in turn linked to
people’s available resources. However, while the linkage between effective
democracy and emancipative values becomes manifest only at the societal
level, the linkage between emancipative values and available resources
originates at the individual level from where it simply accumulates to the
societal level. This accumulation reflects mass tendencies that are important
to understand the mass-system linkage in human development.
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Evidence that the linkage between available resources and emancipative
values originates at the individual level is given by the fact that individuals
with more resources show a significantly stronger emphasis on emancipation
(see the section on data sources and measurement below for a description of
these variables): within each of 112 opinion polls from the World Values
Surveys there is a significantly positive correlation between individuals’
emphasis on emancipation and their income and education. On average, these
individual-level correlations within nations point to r = 0.29 (standard deviation:
0.08).2
Yet compared to the societal level, where we measure a 0.91
correlation, the correlation is relatively weak at the individual level within
nations. Why this is so can be explained by gravity effects, reflecting mass
tendencies within populations.
National communities are held together by institutions that socialize citizens
into common traditions. Accordingly, nations tend to create distinguished
‘central tendencies’ among their citizens’ prevailing values. Thus, there is
larger variance in value orientations between citizens of different nations than
between those of the same nations. Of course, emphasis on emancipation
varies considerably between individuals within nations. Yet, within each nation
a majority of the individuals cluster near their nation’s mean emphasis on
emancipation. In other words, most people’s emphasis on emancipation is
close to the average citizen’s emphasis. However, these averages vary enormously
from nation to nation (see Figure 2A on p. 369). In fact, the national
averages in emphasis on emancipation capture fully 40 per cent of the total
individual-level variance among all people ever surveyed in four waves of the
World Values Surveys. This is a remarkable proportion, with only 73 national
units accounting for nearly half of the variance among 158,802 individuals (this
is more than 2,000 times the random likelihood).
The relevance of nations’ mass tendencies becomes evident when one
recognizes another regularity in social sciences: variations in an independent
variable x do never perfectly translate into corresponding variations of a
dependent variable y. All known relationships in social reality are probabilistic,
showing a ‘range of uncertainty’ within which variations in x are not
reflected in corresponding variations in y (Inglehart & Welzel 2003). Only
large variations in x that exceed this uncertainty range are reflected in corresponding
variations of y.
From this point of view, consider the relation between available resources
and emancipative values and assume that both variables show relatively concentrated
distributions within nations. This implies that only a minority of individuals
deviates largely from the national averages in both variables. In other
words, the majority of individuals is bound in the uncertainty range within
which variations in available resources are not reflected in corresponding
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variations in emancipative values, which necessarily produces a small
individual-level correlation within nations. Yet across nations, most individuals’
resources deviate so largely from the global mean that they exceed the
range beyond which corresponding deviations in emancipative values occur.
In this case, the individual-level correlation is stronger across than within
nations. Therefore, it is important to take cross-national variation into account:
this makes individual-level relations visible that are otherwise hidden by the
nations’ mass tendencies.
The nations’ mass tendencies are reproduced through social processes that
affect national populations uniformly but to degrees that vary largely between
them. The growth of individual resources is a typical process of this kind.
Germany is one among many examples where most people’s financial income
is close to the average national income. This was so 40 years ago and it is still
so today. However, during these 40 years the average individual income has
quadrupled, with little effect on the distribution of incomes (Zapf & Habich
1999). Hence, income growth is a process that affects national populations
rather uniformly, although this process varies enormously between nations. As
noted by Landes (1998: xx), 200 years ago the income ratio of the richest to
the poorest nations was approximately 5:1. Uneven economic growth has
dramatically raised this ratio to 400:1 today. Thus, economic development
moves through nations in a way that reproduces their central tendencies to a
considerable degree, while it creates much greater disparity between them. As
a consequence, any effect connected to growing individual resources, such as
rising emancipative values, must be more pronounced between than within
nations.
If two related variables show distributions that are concentrated within and
divergent between nations, the individual-level correlation must be stronger
across than within nations. Across nations, the correlation becomes even
stronger when the respective variables are averaged to the nation level. The
reason of this regular phenomenon is that aggregation eliminates random
variations at the individual level. Survey data usually contain much random
variation due to measurement error: many respondents give erratic answers
that reflect ‘non-attitudes’, producing a good deal of random noise at the individual
level (Converse 1970). These measurement errors increase the random
terms in correlations, which produces small correlations at the individual level
(Yule & Kendall 1950; Blalock 1961). However, since measurement errors are
largely random, one can reduce these errors through aggregation. Averaging
individual-level data to the nation level diminishes measurement error
because random deviations to the left and right of a national mean simply
cancel each other out (Page & Shapiro 1993: 40). Consequently, the random
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term of a correlation becomes smaller and the correlation as such becomes
larger through aggregation. In the presence of random measurement error,
aggregation does not obscure but reveals the ‘real’ correlation.
Another question refers to the essential meaning of aggregate data, such
as a nation’s average emphasis on emancipation. Is this average a real
community characteristic? Of course, this average is calculated from each
individual’s responses. Yet, for each individual the average reflects to practically
100 per cent the responses of all other individuals. Thus, aggregate figures
represent mass tendencies that are almost perfectly exogenous to the individuals
from which they are calculated. It is therefore not mistaken to consider
a nation’s average emancipative orientation as a feature of this nation. The
nation level is the level at which emancipative orientations get linked with
democracy.
The linkage between emancipative mass values and effective democracy
reflects a relation between two different sorts of societal characteristics. Emancipative
values represent an aggregated mass characteristic that accumulates
from the individual level. By contrast, effective democracy is a genuine system
characteristic that does not exist at the individual level. Yet the difference
between mass characteristics and system characteristics does not invalidate the
question of their relationship. Quite the contrary, this question is at the heart
of democratic theory because democratic theory is interested in the relationship
between the citizens and their political regimes. In this sense, democratic
theory searches for the mass-system linkage. If such a mass-system linkage
should exist, it must be reflected in the relation between a mass variable, such
as emancipative values, and a system variable, such as effective democracy.
Human development theory focuses on precisely this linkage.
Analyses
Data sources and measurement
In order to measure emancipative values, we use the largest available data set
– the European/World Values Surveys (EVS/WVS), which cover 73 countries
representing 80 per cent of the world’s population.3
We measure emancipative
values using a scale of factor scores summarizing several attitudes that
Inglehart and Baker (2000) have proposed as indicators of self-expression
values. We replicate their analyses using for the first time all four waves of the
EVS/WVS conducted between 1981 and 2001. The results are reported in
Table 2.
the theory of human development
© European Consortium for Political Research 2003
354 christian welzel, ronald inglehart & hans-dieter klingemann
© European Consortium for Political Research 2003
Table 2. The composition of emancipative values
Levels of analysis
Individual level Individual level Aggregate
within nations across nations cross-national
Variables (mean loadings) (pooled loadings) level
Strong emancipative values
imply:
Tolerance of human diversity1
0.47 0.68 0.82
Inclination to civic protest2
0.45 0.65 0.87
Liberty aspirations3
0.54 0.59 0.82
Trust in people4
0.34 0.47 0.64
High life satisfaction5
0.13 0.44 0.76
Weak religiousness6
-0.29 -0.37 -0.41
Weak emancipative values
imply the opposite.
Explained variance 23% 29% 54%
Number of cases 137 158,803 137
national surveys individuals nation per
wave units
Notes: Entries are factor loadings. Explorative principal components analysis (extraction
of factors with ‘Eigenvalues’ above 1 adviced), no rotation. 1
‘Not mentioned’ for ‘disliked
neighbors’ coded ‘1’ and dichotomized against ‘0’; scores added for neighbors with AIDS
(V58) and homosexual neighbors (V60). Aggregate data are national averages on this 0–2
scale. 2
‘Already done’ for ‘signing petitions’ (V118) coded ‘1’ and dichotomized against ‘0’.
Aggregate data are national percentages already done. 3
Respondents’ first and second
priorities for ‘giving people more say in important government decisions’ and ‘protecting
freedom of speech’ (V106–107) added to a four-point index, assigning 3 points for both items
on first and second rank, 2 points for one of these items on first rank, 1 point for one of
these items on second rank and 0 for none of these items on first or second rank. Aggregate
data are national averages on this 0–3 scale. 4
Respondents believing ‘most people can
be trusted’ (V27) dichotomized as ‘1’ against ‘0’. Aggregate data are national percentages
of people trusting. 5
10-point rating scale for life satisfaction (V65). Aggregate data are
national averages on this 1–10 scale. 6
‘How important is God in your life?’ (V190). 10-point
scale (‘1’: not at all, ‘10’: very important). Aggregate data are national averages on this 1–10
scale.
Source: European/World Values Surveys I-IV, available online at http://wvs.isr.umich.edu.
355the theory of human development
© European Consortium for Political Research 2003
The logic of emancipative values points to what Rawls (1993) calls a
‘rational sense of reciprocity’: emancipated people who have self-respect and
emphasize their liberty also have strong respect for the liberty of their fellow
citizens. In a way, it is natural that people who emphasize their own liberty
respect other people’s liberty as well. Emancipative values, in this sense, reflect
the logic and the experience of mutual human exchange, which rests on giving
and taking: people tend to treat their peers like they have been and want to
be treated by them (Axelrod 1983). Thus, emancipative values not only include
an ‘ego-emphasizing’ attitude, reflected in liberty aspirations4
and an inclination
to protest activities (such as signing petitions)5
, but also an attitude of
openness towards ‘alter-ego’, as reflected in tolerance of human diversity and
interpersonal trust (see the notes to Table 2 for the operationalization of these
variables). Moreover, emancipative values are linked with greater life satisfaction,
which implies that striving for freedom, autonomy and emancipation
is embedded in human motivation, leading to greater satisfaction and fulfillment.
Finally, as a typical conformity value, strong religiousness is negatively
linked with emancipative values.
As expected, factor loadings increase systematically from the individual
level within nations to the pooled individual level to the aggregate level across
nations. The reasons were explicated in the previous section: first, there are
pronounced mass tendencies within nations that bound individual value orientations
into a relatively small range. Individual-level variations within this
range are to a large degree random. Thus, the linkage between individual-level
attitudes is not so clearly structured within nations: hence, the smallest factor
loadings at the individual level within nations. Second, variations in mass
tendencies between national populations are more pronounced and less
random than individual-level variations within nations. Therefore, taking
cross-national variation into account by pooling individual-level data brings
the linkage between individual-level attitudes more clearly to the fore: hence,
the factor loadings are larger at the pooled individual level than at the individual
level within nations. Finally, there are still measurement errors at the
individual level. Averaging the data to the national level eliminates these
errors, making the linkage between mass attitudes even more evident: hence,
the strongest factor loadings occur at the aggregate level.
In subsequent analyses, we examine emancipative mass values that are
measured in either the early or the mid-1990s. In order to keep the number
of observations as large as possible, we replaced measures of the early 1990s
with those of the mid-1990s when the former were not available (or vice
versa). The Appendix gives a detailed description of these procedures. Pooling
value orientations from slightly different points of time is unproblematic
because value change proceeds slowly. Accordingly, a public’s emancipative
356
orientation at one point in time is highly indicative for its orientation at a
slightly earlier or later point in time. Indeed, the predictive quality of emancipative
values in the early 1990s for emancipative values in the mid-1990s (or
vice versa) is above 90 per cent. Not making use of this strong relationship
would be a waste of information.
The means component of human development – individual resources – is
measured using Vanhanen’s (1997) ‘index of power resources’. This index combines
aggregate measures of physical and intellectual resources, and a measure
of social complexity. We use Vanhanen’s most recent version of this index that
captures the early 1990s.6
This measure is preferable to single indicators such
as per capita GDP (gross domestic product). The use of GDP has been criticized
for good reasons. Anand and Sen (2000) have argued that per capita
GDP is an incomplete measure of a society’s human resources. Moreover,
GDP does not include the distribution of resources, although from the viewpoint
of democratic theory (Dahl 1973: Chapter 4; Muller 1997), a relatively
equal distribution of resources is a crucial precondition for the functioning of
democracy. Finally, social complexity (which is important for the individualization
of resources) is also not tapped by GDP.
For these reasons, the Human Development Index has been constructed to
provide a more complete measure of individual resources (United Nations
Development Program 2000). However, this index has its own limitations. One
of its three components – life expectancy – does not measure individual
resources at all. By contrast, the Vanhanen index captures individual resources
in all aspects that are relevant to our theory of human development. It measures
both physical and intellectual resources, and it measures not only levels
but also the distribution of these resources. Finally, it includes a measure of
social complexity. In the theoretical perspective of human development, this
is the most appropriate index to measure individual resources.
The institutional component of human development – effective democracy
– is measured using the Freedom House scores for civil and political rights and
estimates from Transparency International on elite corruption.7
The scores
from Freedom House range from 1 to 7 on both the civil and the political
rights scales, with 1 indicating the highest and 7 the lowest level of freedom.8
We added scores on these scales for 1999 and 2000. Then we reversed the
resulting scores so that higher figures indicate a broader scope of freedom
rights. Finally, we equaled the highest possible score (28) with 100 and
standardized all other scores on this value. This allows an interpretation in
percentages: a score of 75 indicates that a country reaches 75 per cent of the
possible maximum in freedom rights. The scores from Freedom House are
expert judgments that estimate the scope of given rights. We interpret these
christian welzel, ronald inglehart & hans-dieter klingemann
© European Consortium for Political Research 2003
357
estimates as a measure of formal democracy, which is a necessary but insufficient
element of effective democracy.
The Freedom House scores are imperfect measures of freedom rights. They
neglect the extent to which given rights are respected by actual elite behavior.
In order to measure how much given rights are respected by a society’s
office holders, we use the corruption perception scores from Transparency
International.9
These scores, too, reflect expert judgments, estimating how
corrupt the political, bureaucratic and economic office holders of a country
behave. Corruption is a reasonable indicator for the effectiveness of people’s
rights, showing how far private and public services are provided on the basis
of bribes instead of rights. Basing services on bribes always means a violation
of the rule of law and that people are deprived of their rights: if bribery
governs the provision of services, people do not obtain what they are legally
entitled to obtain (see Rose 2001 for a similar argument). The corruption perception
scores for 1999–2000 range from 0 to 10, with 0 indicating complete
corruption and 10 indicating an absence of corruption among office holders.
Positively coined, this index provides a measure of ‘elite integrity’, reflecting
how strictly office holders abstain from corruption and follow the law. We
transformed this index standardizing it to a maximum of 1.0.
As argued in the previous section, we operationalize effective democracy
as the interaction between formal democracy and elite integrity, multiplying
formal democracy (0 to 100 scale) with elite integrity (0 to 1 scale):
In this equation, elite integrity is the weighing factor that grades formal
democracy, making it more or less effective. Since elite integrity operates as a
grading factor, it cannot compensate for a low level of formal democracy: even
a maximum elite integrity of 1.0 cannot do more than reproduce the level of
formal democracy that is given. As has been shown in a two-dimensional plot
(Welzel 2003: 287), to reach a high score in effective democracy is much less
easy than obtaining a high score in formal democracy.
In summary, we have measures of the spread of individual resources, the
strength of emancipative values and the degree of effective democracy in societies.
These measures refer to different points in time and are obtained from
completely different sources. Given that these measures are imperfect and
may have considerable measurement error, any systematic relationship
Effective
Democracy
Formal
Democracy
Elite
Integrity
0 to 100 scale 0 to 100 scale 0 to 1.0 scale
1999-2000 1999-2000 1999-2000
= *
( ) ( ) ( )
the theory of human development
© European Consortium for Political Research 2003
358
between them points all the more to the conclusion that they capture some
robust aspect of reality.
Operationalizing cultural zones
In order to test the general applicability of human development theory, one
question must be answered: ‘Are the two linkages of human development
universal in their presence across cultural zones?’ The theory of human development
can only be considered as a general theory if cultural zones are differentiated
in ways that reflect the logic of human development.
Weber (1958), Eisenstadt (1986), Huntington (1996) and many others have
emphasized that nations cluster into larger units labeled ‘cultural zones’ or
‘civilizations’. Nations belonging to the same cultural zone tend to share
similar worldviews, institutional traditions and patterns of economic subsistence.
Thus, cultural zones can be considered as ‘supra-national units of
diffusion’ that let nations follow similar patterns of societal development.
Three variables have been considered as typical characteristics of cultural
zones: historical traditions (reflected in common religious roots), imperial
legacies, and region or vicinity (a spatial factor that facilitates diffusion
between nations) (Kopstein & Reilly 2000).
Each of the gray shadowed areas in Table 3 summarizes a group of nations
in a distinguished cultural zone. The first criterion of this classification is
religious tradition, which produces 18 countries with a historically Protestant
tradition; 27 Catholic countries; 10 Christian Orthodox countries; 10 Islamic
countries; and a residual category of 5 countries in the tradition of an ‘Asian’
religion, such as Buddhism, Hinduism or Confucianism (a quasi-religion).
These five religious groups were subdivided for region or imperial legacy,
if there were enough cases to allow for such a division. Thus, the Catholic
countries were divided into the zones of ‘Catholic Western Europe’, ‘Catholic
Eastern Europe’ and ‘Latin America’. The division between Western and
Eastern Europe reflects whether a country belonged to the Soviet communist
empire or not. Latin America as well not only represents an own region, but
is distinguished by its Iberian imperial legacy.
For some countries, specific decisions had to be made. Among the Asian
countries, we saw no criterion to group China and India together with other
nations. According to Huntington (1996), both of these countries, each with a
population of more than one billion, represents a ‘civilization’ of its own. On
the other hand, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan share a Confucian tradition
and have in common that they are economically far advanced. Thus we
summarized them as ‘Developed Far East’. Moreover, Estonia and Latvia,
although having a Protestant tradition, were grouped with the Catholic
christian welzel, ronald inglehart & hans-dieter klingemann
© European Consortium for Political Research 2003
359the theory of human development
© European Consortium for Political Research 2003
Table 3. The location of the WVS nations within cultural zones and regions
360 christian welzel, ronald inglehart & hans-dieter klingemann
© European Consortium for Political Research 2003
Eastern European countries with which they share the legacy of Soviet communism
and the tradition of ‘Western Christianity’, as opposed to Orthodox
Eastern Christendom (Huntington 1996: 159). Finally, the Sub-Saharan
countries have not been divided on the basis of religion. Although there are
Christian and Islamic influences in Sub-Saharan Africa, there remain specific
Black African imprints, based on this region’s animist religious roots and its
distinctive ethnic make-up. This justifies classifying the Sub-Saharan countries
as a specific cultural zone (Huntington 1996).
Our classification is crude. Yet, it captures respectively 85, 84 and 83 per
cent of the variance in individual resources, emancipative values and effective
democracy across 73 nations. Even this crude classification designates
relatively homogeneous zones.
In addition to this differentiation of ‘cultural zones’, we use a more finetuned
classification based on 24 smaller ‘regions’, such as Scandinavia, the
Baltics, Transcaucasia, Mediterranean Europe, Central America and so forth.
These regions are marked by the smaller boxes in Table 3. The regional classification
captures 93, 92 and 91 per cent of the cross-national variance in individual
resources, emancipative values and effective democracy. Though the
classification into regions entails more than twice as many categories as the
classification into cultural zones, it explains only 8 per cent more of the crossnational
variance, confirming the adequacy of the cultural zones in Table 3.
The human development linkages in cross-cultural perspective
Nations, regions and cultural zones form a three-level hierarchy, with nations
nested inside regions and regions inside cultural zones. From this perspective,
the question is whether there are ‘frictions’ in the cross-level translation of the
two linkages of human development: ‘Do these linkages translate from the
national to the regional to the cultural zone level with or without frictions?’
If there are frictions, human development could not be considered as a general
theory because its linkages would vary depending on the level at which they
are observed. Using regression models, such frictions become evident to the
extent that the intercepts and slopes of the two human development linkages
vary at different levels of aggregation.
As Table 4 demonstrates, the human development linkages do not substantially
vary in either their intercepts or slopes at different levels of aggregation.
Whether at the national, regional or cultural zone level, intercepts
and slopes remain virtually constant. The correlations, of course, increase
systematically with higher levels of aggregation, indicating that random variation
among lower-level units is averaged out through aggregation to higherlevel
units. Yet, apart from the correlations, neither intercepts nor slopes vary
361the theory of human development
© European Consortium for Political Research 2003
Table4.Thelinkagesofhumandevelopmentatdifferentlevelsofaggregation(regressionanalyses)
Means-motiveslinkageMotives-ruleslinkage
EmancVals1995=b0+b1*IndivResour1990+eEffecDemoc1999–00=b0+b1*EmancVals1990+e
Interceptb0Slopeb1Pearson’sRNInterceptb0Slopeb1Pearson’sRN
Levels(standarderror)(standarderror)(standarderror)(standarderror)
Nations-1.49***(0.09)0.06***(0.01)0.907338.94***(1.91)29.40***(2.07)0.8768
Regions-1.10***(0.11)0.05***(0.01)0.932443.07***(2.15)27.80***(2.04)0.9524
Cultural-1.52**(0.15)0.06**(0.01)0.97837.87***(2.52)33.97**(3.19)0.978
zones
Notes:Significancelevels:*p<0.100;**p<0.010;***p<0.001.UsingtheDFFITSstatistic,nounusualcaseshavebeenidentified.Meaning
ofabbreviations:EmancVals1995:Emancipativevaluesmid-1990s;IndivResour1990:Individualresourcesearly1990s;EffecDemoc1999–00:
Effectivedemocracy1999–2000;EmancVals1990:Emancipativevaluesearly1990s.
362 christian welzel, ronald inglehart & hans-dieter klingemann
© European Consortium for Political Research 2003
at different levels of aggregation, showing that human development translates
without frictions from lower to higher levels of aggregation.
Another perspective on these results is to specify multi-level models in
which we estimate overall intercepts and slopes that are constant across cultural
zones, together with the intercept and slope variances for cultural zones
(Goldstein et al. 1998). Thus, we formulate the relation between individual
resources and emancipative values, and that between emancipative values and
effective democracy in two-level models. The levels of variation are indicated
with suffix ‘j’ for the national level and suffix ‘k’ for the cultural zone level.
Allowing intercepts and slopes to vary produces a ‘random intercepts/random
slopes model’ that is written as follows:
We can express the composition of intercept and slope as follows:
Intercept and slope are each composed of a fixed part that is constant
across cultural zones (b0, b1) and a variable part that differs for cultural zones
(u0k, u1k). In addition, there is an error term for nations’ remaining variation
(ejk). This variation is random and can neither be attributed to the overall
effects nor to their variation for cultural zones.
As Table 5 shows, the overall effects of both linkages are highly significant,
greatly exceeding their standard errors. Hence, there exist overall effects of
individual resources on emancipative values and of emancipative values on
effective democracy that are independent of cultural zones. Compared to
these overall effects, the cultural zone-related variances of intercepts and
slopes are negligible. They do not capture significant proportions of the
variance that remains unexplained by the overall effects. This can be seen
by calculating the share that the intercept and slope variances have in the
unexplained variance: only the intercept variance in the model explaining
emancipative values captures more than 20 per cent of the random variance.
However, the random variance is small because only a little variance is left
unexplained by the overall effects. Hence, the intercept variance captures
negligible 3.8 per cent of the total variance. Overall, the two linkages of human
development show little variation for cultural zones.
Still another way to model these findings is to control the effect of individual
resources on emancipative values for the cultural zone level of emancipative
values. In other words, we assign to each nation its cultural zone
Intercept
Slope
:
:
b b
b b
0 0 0
1 1 1
k k
k k
u
u
= +
= +
EmancVals IndivResour
EffecDemoc EmancVals
1995 1990
99 00 1990
0 1
0 1
jk k k jk jk
jk k k jk jk
e
e
= + +
= + +
b b
b b
*
*–
363
average in emancipative values and introduce this variable as an additional
predictor. Thus, we test the extent to which a nation’s own emphasis on emancipation
is a function of the average emphasis found in its cultural zone, treating
the single nations’ emphasis on emancipation as a function of diffusion
within cultural zones. In order to avoid a tautological measure of cultural zone
diffusion, we assign each nation the mean cultural zone level calculated by
excluding a given nation’s own value. Hence, we specify for each nation an
exogenous cultural zone effect, which is crucial for the concept of diffusion.
Similarly, we estimate the effect of emancipative values on effective democracy,
controlling for the cultural zone level of effective democracy.
The results of these regressions are shown in Table 6. As is evident, the
effects of individual resources on emancipative values and of emancipative
values on effective democracy remain highly significant across nations, even
controlling for diffusion within cultural zones. This confirms our previous
finding: the two linkages of human development are independent of cultural
zones to a considerable degree. On the other hand, cultural zones as well show
a significant impact. In fact, diffusion within cultural zones captures 30 per cent
the theory of human development
© European Consortium for Political Research 2003
Table 5. The linkages of human development in integrated multi-level models
Means-motives linkage Motives-rules linkage
EmancVals1995jk EffecDemoc1999–00JK
= b0k + b1k * = b0k + b1k *
Components IndivResour1990jk + ejk EmancVals1990jk + ejk
Intercept, fixed b0 -1.54*** (0.09) 39.42*** (1.91)
component
Intercept variance for v0k 3.12 297.95
cultural zones
Slope, fixed b1 0.06*** (0.01) 29.23*** (2.04)
component
Slope variance for v1k 0.01 127.27
cultural zones
Variance unexplained ejk 14.17 15,382.66
by fixed effects
Variance explained by 67.32 49,325.89
fixed effects
Number of cases 71 nations in 8 66 nations in 8
cultural zones cultural zones
Notes: Meaning of suffixes: 0 = Intercept; 1 = Slope; j = Nation level; k = Cultural zone level.
Meaning of abbreviations: EmancVals1995: Emancipative values mid-1990s; IndivResour1990:
Individual resources early 1990s; EffecDemoc1999–00: Effective democracy
1999–2000; EmancVals1990: Eamncipative values early 1990s.
364 christian welzel, ronald inglehart & hans-dieter klingemann
© European Consortium for Political Research 2003
Table6.Thelinkagesofhumandevelopmentcontrolledfordiffusionwithinculturalzones
Dependentvariable:Dependentvariable:
Emancipativevaluesmid-1995sEffectivedemocracy1999–2000
PredictorsModel1.1Model1.2Model1.3Model2.1Model2.2Model2.3
Individualresources0.06***0.04***–––
early1990s(.01)(.01)
Emancipativevalues–––29.40***12.77**
early1990(2.07)(3.93)
Culturalzonelevelof0.97***0.40**0.97***0.59***
dependentvariable(0.06)(0.12)(0.06)(0.13)
Constant-1.49***-0.05-.97***38.94***1.1616.47**
(.09)(0.06)(0.19)(1.91)(2.88)(5.15)
AdjustedR2
0.810.780.850.750.770.82
N737171687266
Notes:Entriesareunstandardizedregressioncoefficients(standarderrorsinparentheses).Significancelevels:***p<0.001;**p<0.010;
*p<0.100.
365the theory of human development
© European Consortium for Political Research 2003
of the sole effect of individual resources on emancipative values, and 40 per
cent of the effect of emancipative values on effective democracy. Why this is
so, is demonstrated in Figures 1 and 2.
Figures 1A and 2A show the linkages of human development across
nations, and Figures 1B and 2B across regions and cultural zones. We can see
that both linkages are clearly shaped across nations, although the confidence
intervals within which these linkages appear are relatively broad. This points
to relatively large ‘ranges of uncertainty’ within which the linkages do not
appear. ‘Ranges of uncertainty’ can be examined in the vertical dimension (y)
or in the horizontal dimension (x). The range of uncertainty in x, for instance,
is the horizontal distance between the left and the right boundaries of the confidence
interval. This distance is constant for any value of y, since the confidence
interval has parallel boundaries. What does this range of uncertainty
mean?
Consider Figure 2A and assume you begin traveling from weaker to
stronger emancipative values (i.e., from left to right) starting at any point of
the left boundary of the confidence interval: as long as you travel a horizontal
distance that is shorter than the ‘range of uncertainty’, it is not certain that
the next society you meet is farther advanced in effective democracy than the
previous one. Within this range, there is much random variation in effective
democracy. Yet once your travel from weaker to stronger emancipative values
exceeds the range of uncertainty, there is more than 95 per cent probability
that the next society you meet actually is farther advanced in effective democracy.
The same logic applies to the relation between individual resources and
emancipative values (see Figure 1A). You must exceed a certain distance in
the growth of individual resources in order to be certain that the next society
you meet shows stronger emphasis on emancipation. This distance represents
a threshold in the effect of individual resources on emancipative values.
Now consider Figures 1B and 2B. It is evident that the horizontal distances
covered by cultural zones are so small that they hardly exceed the threshold
beyond which the two linkages of human development appear. Obviously
there is diffusion, clustering regions and nations into relatively homogenous
cultural zones. In other words, the largest cross-national differences are
between and not within cultural zones. So the decisive question is whether the
linkages of human development operate across these cultural zones. Figures
1B and 2B leave little doubt that this is actually the case. The means-motives
linkage and the motives-rules linkage do work across cultural zones. In other
words, these linkages are so pronounced across nations because they operate
across the units that homogenize nations.
The human development syndrome is strikingly evident at the crosscultural
level. It is present there to an even higher degree than cultural zones
366
homogenize nations: cultural zones capture nearly 85 per cent of the crossnational
variance in each of the three components of human development, but
the linkages between these components explain more than 90 per cent of the
cross-cultural variation. In conclusion, the linkages of human development are
not culture-specific but universal. Cultural zones differ from each other in
ways that reflect the logic of human development.
The genesis of human development
According to our theory, growing individual resources on a mass level tend to
shift a society’s values toward greater emphasis on human emancipation.
Growing mass emphasis on emancipation then channels popular pressure in
the direction of effective democracy. The most debatable assumption in this
argument concerns the causal relation between mass values and democratic
institutions.A number of writers have claimed that the causal relation between
political culture and political institutions operates into the opposite direction:
only democratic institutions can produce pro-democratic values (Rustow 1970;
Muller & Seligson 1994; Jackman & Miller 1998).
If this is correct, emancipative mass values should be the consequence
of a nation’s preceding democratic tradition rather than the cause of its
subsequent democratic performance. This assumption can be tested. For this
purpose, we specified a cross-national path model that starts from individual
resources in the early 1990s and democratic traditions up to 1995,10
continues
with emancipative values as of the mid-1990s and ends up with effective
democracy 1999–2000. If human development theory is correct, emancipative
values should have a stronger effect on subsequent democracy than prior
democratic traditions have on emancipative values. If the opposite assumption
is correct, the contrary should hold true.
The path model in Figure 3 supports human development theory. While
democratic traditions have no effect on emancipative values, emancipative
values do have a significant impact on subsequent degrees of effective democracy.
This effect holds up controlling for individual resources and democratic
traditions. Hence, in explaining effective democracy, the linkages of human
development seem to be more important than democratic traditions, implying
that growing individual resources give rise to emancipative mass values that
in turn tend to promote effective democracy – even if there is a weak democratic
legacy from the past.
To figure out how the impact of emancipative values on effective democracy
works, we decomposed effective democracy into its components: elite
integrity and formal democracy. Controlling for all other effects in the model,
christian welzel, ronald inglehart & hans-dieter klingemann
© European Consortium for Political Research 2003
367
elite integrity proves to be the only factor with a significant impact on formal
democracy. This reflects that elites are the prime force in shaping formal
democracy. Indeed, the scope of freedom rights is determined by what the
elites write into the constitutions – a basic premise of the elite approach
(O’Donnell & Schmitter 1986; Higley & Gunther 1992; Casper & Taylor 1996).
On another point, however, adherents of this approach seem to be wrong.
Obviously, elite behavior is not such an independent factor as they assume.
Quite the contrary, emancipative mass values have a sound effect on elite
integrity. In other words, the impact of mass culture on effective democracy
operates primarily through its impact on elite behavior. Mass emphasis on
human emancipation tends to produce ‘proper’ elites who act in ways that
make formal democracy effective.
There is little reason to assume a reverse causation in the relationship
between emancipative values and elite integrity. Elites may have possibilities
to influence public opinion in specific issues. However, such deeply rooted
values as emphasis on human emancipation cannot simply be created by elite
campaigns. Elites can appeal to such values but not create them. Even if they
could, which interest should elites have in breeding a public that is more
demanding than deferential – which the public definitely is in case of strong
the theory of human development
© European Consortium for Political Research 2003
H U M A N D E V E L O P M E N T
in in in
socio-economic political-cultural legal-institutional
sphere sphere sphere
Individual
resources
(1990)
Self-
expression
values (1995)
Elite
integrity
(1999)
Formal
democracy
(2000)
Effective democracy
(1999–2000)
0.81***
0.45**
0.58***
Years of
democracy
(until 1995)
0.34*
T I M E
0.31*
0.47**
Figure 3. Democracy as a component of human development.
Notes: Coefficients are standardized path coefficients. Bold arrows indicate strongest effect
on respective dependent variable. Interrupted arrows show insignificant effects. There is no
overall fit for this fully identified model. Dropping the effects of ‘Years of democracy’,
the Adjusted Goodness of Fit Index points to 0.88, showing that democratic tradition is
negligible. Number of cases: N = 68.
368 christian welzel, ronald inglehart & hans-dieter klingemann
© European Consortium for Political Research 2003
German Tongue
Scandinavia
Mediterranean
Benelux
British Islands
Australia/NZ
North America
South America
Central America
Baltics
Central Europe
Catholic Ex-Yugosl.
Trans-Caucasus
Slavic Ex-Soviet
Oriental Ex-Yugosl.
Balcans
Middle East
Arab
South Asian Islam
Developed Far
East
India
China
-2.0
-1.5
-1.0
-0.5
0.0
0.5
1.0
1.5
2.0
-05 00 05 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60
Presence of Individual Resources (early 1990s)
StrengthofEmancipativeValues(mid1990s)
y = -1.49 + 0.06 * x
R sq. = 0.87
Protestant Western Zone
Catholic Western
Europe
Catholic Eastern Europe
Latin America
Orthodox Eastern Europe
Islamic Zone
Sub-
Saharan
Africa
Figure 1B. The means-motive linkage across regions and cultural zones.
Argentina
Australia
Austria
Azerbaijan
Bangladesh
Belarus
Belgium
Bosnia
Brazil
Bulgaria
Canada
Chile
China
Colombia
Croatia
Czech R.
Denmark
Dominic. R.
Germany (E.)
Egypt
El Salv.
Finland
France
Georgia
Ghana
Greece
Hungary
Iceland
India
Iran
Ireland
Italy
Japan
Jordan
Latvia
Luxemb.
Macedon.
Malta
Mexico
Moldova
Netherld.
New Zeald.
Nigeria
Norway
Pakistan
Peru
Philipp.
Poland
Portugal
Romania
S-Africa
S-Korea
Slovakia
Slovenia
Spain
Sweden
Switzerld.
Taiwan
Turkey
Uganda
G.B.
Uruguay
U.S.A.
Venez.
Germany (W.)
Yugosl.
Zimbabwe
-2.0
-1.5
-1.0
-0.5
0.0
0.5
1.0
1.5
2.0
-05 00 05 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60
Presence of Individual Resources (early 1990s)
StrengthofEmancipativeValues(mid-1990s)
y = -1.49 + 0.06 * x
R sq. = 0.81
Range of 'uncertainty' within which
change in x has no effect on y
95%-Confidence
Interval
Figure 1A. The means-motives linkage across nations.
369the theory of human development
© European Consortium for Political Research 2003
China
India
Developed Far
East
South Asian Islam
Arab
Middle East
Balcans
Oriental Ex-Yugosl. Slavic Ex-Soviet
Trans-Caucasus
Catholic Ex-Yugosl.
Central Europe
Baltics
Central America
South America
North America
Australia/NZ
British Islands
Benelux
Mediterranean
Scandinavia
German Tongue
-05
05
15
25
35
45
55
65
75
85
95
105
-1.5 -1.3 -1.1 -0.9 -0.7 -0.5 -0.3 -0.1 0.1 0.3 0.5 0.7 0.9 1.1 1.3 1.5 1.7 1.9 2.1
Strength of Emancipative Values (early 1990s)
DegreeofEffectiveDemocracy(1999-2000)
y = 37.80 + 32.44 * x
R sq. = 0.92 Protestant Western Zone
Catholic Western Europe
Catholic Eastern Europe
Latin America
Islamic Zone
Sub-
Saharan
Africa
Orthodox
E.-Europe
Albania
Argentina
Australia
Austria
Azerbaijan
Belarus
Belgium
Brazil
Bulgaria
Canada
Chile
China
Colombia
Croatia
Czech R.
Denmark
Egypt
El Salv.
Estonia
Finland
France
Ghana
Greece
Hungary
Iceland
India
Ireland
Italy
Japan
Jordan
LatviaLithuania
Luxemb.
Macedon.
Mexico
Moldova
Netherld.
New Zeald.
Nigeria
Norway
Peru
Philipp.
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Russia
S-Africa
S-Korea
Slovakia
Slovenia
Spain
Sweden
Switzerld.
Taiwan
Turkey
Uganda
G.B.
Ukraine
Uruguay
U.S.A.
Venez.
Germany (W.)
Yugosl.
Zimbabwe
-05
05
15
25
35
45
55
65
75
85
95
105
-1.5 -1.3 -1.1 -0.9 -0.7 -0.5 -0.3 -0.1 0.1 0.3 0.5 0.7 0.9 1.1 1.3 1.5 1.7 1.9 2.1
Strength of Emancipative Values (early 1990s)
DegreeofEffectiveDemocracy(1999-2000)
y = 38.94 + 29.40 * x
R sq. = 0.75
Range of 'uncertainty' within which
change in x has no effect on y
95%-Confidence
Interval
Figure 2A. The motives-rules linkage across nations.
Figure 2B. The motives-rules linkage across regions and cultural zones.
370
emancipative values. From a rational choice perspective, elites have no reason
to avoid maximizing their benefits by corruption, unless there are severe
restrictions on such behavior. An emancipative mass culture constitutes certainly
one of the strongest of these restrictions. Such a culture either translates
into powerful public pressure against corruption-seeking elites or it
creates elites whose own beliefs eliminate corruption as a legitimate option.
Specifying legal sanctions against breaches of the law is not enough to avoid
them, if there is strong elite consensus in holding these sanctions ineffective.
In conclusion, we maintain that the most plausible reading of the evidence is
that mass emphasis on human emancipation increases elite integrity rather
than the reverse.
Conclusion
Socioeconomic development, rising emancipative values and democratization
constitute a coherent syndrome of social progress. Modernization theorists did
not invest much effort to sharpen this syndrome’s common focus. By contrast,
the concept of ‘human development’, as introduced by Anand and Sen, provides
a potential conception of this focus, but this potential has not been fully
exploited. Thus far, the concept has neither included mass values nor elite
integrity. We followed Welzel in describing human development as a targeted
syndrome, arguing that the underlying theme of its three components is human
choice: socioeconomic development provides people the objective means of
choice; rising emancipative mass values strengthen people’s subjective orientation
towards choice; and formal democracy grants people the legal guarantees
of choice, which are made effective by responsive elites.
Inglehart and Baker proposed a revised theory of modernization, showing
that cultural zones have a significant additional impact on the effect that individual
resources have on emancipative values. We go one step further here in
that we add effective democracy as a third component to individual resources
and emancipative values, arguing that these three components converge in a
more comprehensive syndrome of human development. Furthermore,we have
argued that the role of cultural zones is not one that operates against the
mechanisms of human development. To be sure, diffusion within cultural zones
homogenizes nations to a considerable degree, but this does not cancel the
mechanisms of human development. It raises them to a higher level of
operation: the way in which cultural zones differ follows the logic of human
development. Thus, in cultural zones where people have larger individual
resources, emphasis on human emancipation is stronger; and in cultural zones
christian welzel, ronald inglehart & hans-dieter klingemann
© European Consortium for Political Research 2003
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where emphasis on human emancipation is stronger, there is a higher degree
of effective democracy.
The empirical evidence indicates that the syndrome of human development
is shaped by a causal priority of individual resources and emancipative values
over effective democracy. Democracy is effective only to the degree that it
finds support by a mass culture that emphasizes human emancipation. Such
an emancipative culture needs a socioeconomic basis that reduces existential
constraints on human autonomy. Effective democracy is an evolutionary
phenomenon that cannot be simply created through intelligent constitutional
engineering. The emergence of effective democracy reflects changes appearing
at the mass basis of societies. Effective democracy is linked to these
changes by the emancipative logic of human development. Due to this logic,
effective democracy improves the institutional basis of human choice.
The data we used are, of course, imperfect measures. The Vanhanen index
of individual resources, the measures of emancipative values from the World
Values Surveys, the freedom rights scores from Freedom House and the corruption
estimates from Transparency International may all contain a considerable
amount of estimation error. However, if the measurement error of
these variables were large, it would be highly unlikely for one to be able to
find such strong correlations as we did – unless all involved variables would
be biased by the same systematic measurement error. Yet this is also highly
unlikely because these variables measure clearly distinguished phenomena at
different times and are taken from completely different sources. This points
all the more to the conclusion that the strong linkages we found capture relevant
aspects of social reality. These linkages can therefore be considered as
a cross-validation of an underlying dimension – namely, human development.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Barry Hughes, Hanspeter Kriesi, Seymour Martin Lipset
and the anonymous revewiers of EJPR for helpful comments on earlier drafts
of this article.
Appendix
Aggregate measures of emancipative values have been calculated running the
factor analysis shown in Table 2 across the time-pooled aggregated data set of
the EVS/WVS, including 128 ‘nation per wave’ units (not including additional
regional surveys in Russia and Spain).
the theory of human development
© European Consortium for Political Research 2003
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Identifying emancipative values in the early 1990s
The time-pooled data matrix provides national aggregates of emancipative
values from the second EVS/WVS (about 1990) for 34 countries, including:
Argentina, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China,
Denmark, Germany (East), Germany (West), Finland, France, Great Britain,
Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Mexico, Netherlands,
Nigeria, Norway, Portugal, Russia, South Korea, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden,
Turkey and the United States.
In the case of 29 countries, missing emancipative values in the second
EVS/WVS have been estimated from existing emancipative values in the third
EVS/WVS (about 1995). Estimates are obtained using the following regression
equation (which explains 91 per cent of the variance across 21 countries):
‘EmancVal1990 = 0.12 + 0.84 * EmancVal1995’. Estimates have been
assigned to the following countries: Albania, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan,
Bangladesh, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic,
Dominican Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Ghana, Lithuania, Macedonia,
Moldova, New Zealand*, Pakistan*, Peru, Philippines, Romania, South Africa,
Slovakia, Switzerland, Taiwan, Ukraine, Uruguay, Venezuela and Yugoslavia.
For another 10 countries, missing emancipative values in the second
EVS/WVS have been estimated from existing emancipative values in the
fourth EVS/WVS (about 2000). Estimates are obtained using the following
regression equation (which explains 92 per cent of the variance across 28 countries):
‘EmancVal1990 = 0.05 + 0.86 * EmancVal2000’. Estimates have been
assigned to the following countries: Egypt, El Salvador, Greece, Iran, Jordan*,
Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
Identifying emancipative values in the mid-1990s
The time-pooled data matrix provides national aggregates of emancipative
values from the third EVS/WVS (about 1995) for 50 countries, including:
Albania, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Belarus,
Bosnia-Herzegovina,Brazil,Bulgaria,Chile,Colombia,Croatia,Czech Republic,
Dominican Republic, Germany (East), Germany (West), Great Britain,
Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Ghana, Hungary, India, Latvia, Lithuania,
Macedonia, Mexico, Moldova, New Zealand*, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan*,
Peru, Philippines, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain,
Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, the United States, Ukraine, Uruguay,
Venezuela and Yugoslavia.
In the case of 13 countries, missing emancipative values in the third
EVS/WVS have been estimated from existing emancipative values in the
christian welzel, ronald inglehart & hans-dieter klingemann
© European Consortium for Political Research 2003
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second EVS/WVS (about 1990). Estimates are obtained using the following
regression equation (which explains 91 per cent of the variance across 21 countries):‘EmancVal1995
= -0.13 + 1.08 * EmancVal1990’. Estimates have been
assigned to the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Canada, China,
Denmark, France, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Portugal and
South Korea.
For another 10 countries, missing emancipative values in the third
EVS/WVS have been estimated from existing emancipative values in the
fourth EVS/WVS (about 2000). Estimates are obtained using the following
regression equation (which explains 89 per cent of the variance across 27 countries):‘EmancVal1995
= -0.16 + 1.00 * EmancVal2000’. Estimates have been
assigned to the following countries: Egypt, El Salvador, Greece, Iran, Jordan*,
Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
(*In the case of Jordan, New Zealand and Pakistan, aggregate measures of
emancipative values have been calculated excluding ‘tolerance of human
diversity’ (see the note to Table 2), since the relevant questions have not been
asked there. Using the reduced scale of emancipative values, we identified
the location of these three countries relative to all other countries. Then we
translated their location to the complete scale of emancipative values using
regression.)
Notes
1. Life satisfaction in the World Values Surveys is measured on a 10-point rating scale (as
noted in the note to Table 2). Choice perception, too, is measured on a 10-point rating
scale based on the following question (V82): ‘Some people feel they have completely
free choice and control over their lives, while other people feel that what they do has
no real effect on what happens to them. Please use this scale where “1” means “none
at all” and “10” means “a great deal” to indicate how much freedom of choice and
control you feel you have over the way your life turns out.’ In each of 148 of a total of
178 surveys where these variables can be created, there is a highly significant positive
correlation. The average within-survey correlation points to 0.35. Pooled across all
surveys, the individual-level correlation is 0.42. At the aggregate level of nations, the
correlation is 0.85. The individual-level correlation holds even controlling for financial
satisfaction. See Note 3 below for data source.
2. Income and education are measured as an interaction term between individuals’ years
of schooling and their financial income, measured in deciles of national currencies. The
correlation between this interaction term and individuals’ emphasis on self-expression
is significantly positive in 112 of a total of 120 surveys (94 per cent) where these variables
could be created. Using years of schooling and financial income as sole correlates,
the same applies to 95 and 94 per cent of the surveys, respectively.
3. Data from the first till the third wave of the World Values Surveys can be obtained from
the International Consortium for Political Research (ICPSR) under the study number
the theory of human development
© European Consortium for Political Research 2003
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6160. Data from the fourth wave are not yet public domain. More detailed information
on questionnaire, methods and fieldwork can be obtained from the World Values Study
Group’s homepage: http://wvs.isr.umich.edu. For the data provided by the European
Values Study Group, see http://evs.kub.nl and Halman (2001).
4. Although these items are taken from the postmaterialism scale (see the notes to Table
2), we have reason to distinguish them as ‘liberty aspirations’ from other components
of postmaterialism, namely preferences for a ‘less impersonal society’, ‘beautiful cities’
and ‘a society in which ideas count more than money’. The postmaterialist interpretation
implies that these are ‘new’ values that emerged only recently in postindustrial
societies. We, however, believe this is not true in case of liberty aspirations, which are
historically related to the rise of prosperous ‘middle classes’ as, for instance, in ancient
Athens, in seventeenth-century England or in Southeast Asia during recent decades.
This is argued in more detail by Welzel & Inglehart (2001).
5. As noted by Barnes et al. (1979), signing petitions is a low-cost form of civic protest.
Hence, a society with many people who sign petitions has a rich opportunity structure
for low-cost protest. This in turn implies that there must be many people who invest the
higher costs that are necessary to create low-cost opportunities for all.
6. Vanhanen creates three subindices. The subindex of ‘physical resources’ is generated
from the share of family farms in the agricultural sector (weighted for the agricultural
sector’s share in GDP) and the de-concentration of non-agricultural resources (measured
by 100 minus the share in GDP generated by the state, foreign enterprises and
large national trusts).The subindex of‘intellectual resources’ is measured by the number
of students per 100,000 inhabitants and the literacy rate. The subindex of ‘occupational
diversification’ (‘social complexity’, in our terminology) is produced from the proportion
of the urban population and the percentage of the non-agricultural workforce. All
component variables are standardized before they are combined to the subindices. The
three subindices are each combined additively from their component variables, assuming
that each subindex represents an own dimension. The same assumption then leads
to a multiplicative combination of the three subindices to create the overall index of
individual resources. This index is standardized to 100 as the maximum. For a detailed
description of scale construction, see Vanhanen (1997: 42–63) and the appendices of his
book for extensive documentation of data sources.
7. See Elkins (2000), who provides convincing theoretical reasons, plus empirical evidence,
that Przeworski & Limongi’s (1997) pleading for a dichotomous classification of democracies
versus non-democracies is flawed, and that continuous measures of democracy
are preferable.
8. The Freedom House scores can be obtained from the homepage of Freedom House:
http://www.freedomhouse.org. For a description of the estimation process and scale construction,
see Freedom House (1996: 530–535). On the validity of these indices compared
to other democracy scales, see Bollen & Paxton (2000).
9. Transparency International is the world’s leading NGO (nongovernmental organization)
in the field of corruption watch. It gathers estimates on corruption from a variety
of sources (including the World Bank, for example), summarizing these estimates into
an overall corruption index. Data and a methodological report can be obtained from
Transparency International’s homepage: http://www.transparency.org.
10. The variable ‘democratic tradition’ measures the number of years that a country has
spent under a democratic constitution. These years haven been counted from the beginning
of a nation’s independence (or from 1850 onward in case of countries that have
christian welzel, ronald inglehart & hans-dieter klingemann
© European Consortium for Political Research 2003
375
been independent before 1850) until 1995. Countries that emerged from the dissolution
of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia have been dealt with like their former mother
country as long as they belonged to it. A year has been counted as one under democratic
constitution, if a country obtained at least +7 points on the ‘Autocracy-Democracy’
index from Jaggers & Gurr (1995). This index is based on an analysis of constitutions
considering the extent of restrictions on executive power and the voters’ opportunities
to influence politics. Jaggers & Gurr (1995) classify countries as ‘coherent democracies’
if they reach +7 or more points on their -10 to +10 index. Data and a methodological
description can be obtained from the homepage of the ‘Polity 98’ project:
http://www.bsos.umd.edu/cidcm/polity. We used these data here because they reach
farther back in time than the scores from Freedom House and are therefore more
adequate to measure the endurance of the democratic tradition.
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Address for correspondence: Christian Welzel, School of Humanities and Social Sciences,
International University Bremen, PO Box 750 561, D-28725 Bremen, Germany.
E-mail: c.welzel@iu-bremen.de
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