Tuesday 16th July
Wednesday 17th July
Thursday 18th July
Friday 19th July
Download the conference book
The Impact of Culture and Economy on Values and Attitudes 3 |
|
| Convenor | Dr Hermann Duelmer (University of Cologne) |
| Coordinator 1 | Dr Malina Voicu (GESIS) |
Classical works in social sciences point out the impact of economic development and cultural heritage or cultural settings on value change. Although most of the authors agree on an interconnection, there is no consent regarding the direction of causality. Weber emphasizes the impact of culture, which can shape economic behavior. This perspective states that values influence economic and political changes and it is in turn influenced by them. Therefore, the Protestant Ethic helped the development of capitalism, which made possible industrial revolution and the growth of democracy. In the same line, Huntington relates religious culture with development of democracy. Marxist perspective gives priority to economy, pointing out that technological development conduces to transformation in the economic system, which shape cultural and politics and produced a change in individual values and attitudes. According to the Marxist perspective, the 'ideological suprastructure', composed by values and moral standards, mirrors the socio-economic foundation of society and changes when the economic context is changing.
This session welcome contributions which try to disentangle the effect of culture and economy on values and attitudes, employing survey data. We particularly encourage submissions based on broad international comparisons, using cross-sectional comparative survey data such as European Values Study, World Values Survey, European Social Survey, or International Social Survey Program. Substantive contributions, approaching the impact of economic development versus culture on various types of values, as well as innovative methodological approaches, which help disentangling the effect of culture and economy on social values and attitudes, are equality welcome.
The economic crisis of 2008 has had severe repercussions throughout Europe. Austerity measures have been adopted by the governments of Ireland, Cyprus, Spain, Greece and Portugal as a means of combatting enormous debt burdens. Though the citizens of these countries have responded differently to austerity, some through silent resistance (the high percentage of Irish who still have not paid their household tax) and some through violent protest (the riots in Greece), the legitimacy of all national governments has come in to question as citizens continue to bear the burden of the downfall. Given that many of these countries have very different economic and political histories, especially in comparing Ireland to the countries of Southern Europe, it is likely that changes in values and attitudes towards government would manifest itself differently in these countries.
The European Social Survey has been collecting data bi-annually on changing attitudes, beliefs and values across Europe since 2002. This paper will analyse how attitudes associated with legitimacy have changed in the austerity countries since the economic downturn of 2008 by comparing ESS data from before the crisis to ESS data collected after the crisis for those countries who have participated in all rounds of the ESS (Ireland, Spain and Portugal). Confirmatory factor analysis will be used to ensure measurement invariance. If invariance is found, then structural equation modelling will be used to analyse the impact of country, year and relevant socio-demographic variables on changing attitudes towards the legitimacy of political institutions.
In 1990-2000s the EU used different economic and cultural instruments to change institutions of Eastern European countries intending to join the EU-15: directed institutional change, financial support, educational and cultural exchange. Qualitative analysis of the EU documents showed that the EU made these efforts to stabilize political systems and legitimize national authorities of those "EU-10" countries. As nowadays the EU pursues the same goals in its Neighborhood Policy, it is worth evaluating the efficiency of the above-mentioned instruments in the past for these goals. With a help of a multi-level regression analysis, the author compares the sums allocated by the EU for programs Phare, ISPA and SAPARD in 1990-2004 with change in political stability, trust in national authorities and their legitimacy in the "EU-10". Surprisingly, judging by World Values Survey, Eurobarometer and States Fragility Index, trust in national authorities, political legitimacy and political stability fell sharply during the use of the measures, that was the opposite of the EU's goals. The only exception (Romania) may be attributed to the effect of low base. The research examines the reasons for such inefficiency and seeks to separate the influence of the EU's actions from contextual factors: national (for example, change in living standard) and non-European ones (changes in universal trust in governments, legitimacy and political stability).
The paper deals with factors determining work-related gender attitudes. With the spread of emancipative values the difference between gender roles becomes vaguer but is still strongly dependent upon country characteristics. While values are usually regarded as factors impacting socio-economic behavior, my research underlines a less explored aspect: they are themselves formed and changed in the process of economic interactions. The objective is to assess the role of gender, education and employment characteristics among factors determining gender attitudes in different types of countries. To perform the assessment exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and multilevel regression analysis are used. The 5th wave of World Values Survey (2005-2008) serves as empirical base. The targeted group of population is 20-65 (those who are likely to work and to have families). Work-related gender attitudes as well as gender gap in attitudes vary considerably by country. Nordic and other West European countries demonstrate egalitarian gender attitudes and a small gender gap in attitudes. Middle Asian, Arabic and many African countries tend to share traditional gender attitudes. In Russia as well as in other post-Soviet and Eastern European countries there is a huge gap between men's and women's gender attitudes. It could be argued that during the transition women are the first to adapt new work-related gender attitudes. Furthermore, in post-Soviet countries work-related gender attitudes are hardly influenced by the educational attainment and occupational status contrary to other types of countries. This could possibly mean that social