Study On Ronald Inglehart’s Civic Values Change Theory

Ronald Inglehart as a famous contemporary American political scientist and an important representative of the political and cultural revival movement, he proposed the famous values change theory.In his book The Silent Revolution:Changing Values and Political Styles Among Western Publics, Inglehart points out that from the1970s, the values of Western publics have been shifting from an overwhelming emphasis on materialism toward greater emphasis on post-materialism. To demonstrate his hypothesis, Inglehart initiated and chaired the World Values Survey Research. Through chronological cross-cultural survey, Inglehart draws a lot of data to verify and rectify his hypothesis.This thesis will focus on three aspects to elaborate Inglehart’s civic values change theory:the cause and the influencing factors of change, the mode of the change and the political consequence which is caused by change. Inglehart’s analysis is based on the "system-individual-system" mode which moves from the system level to the individual level and then returns to they system. It starts with events in given societies, turns to their impact on people’s values, and finally these intrapersonal events may have influence on a society. Inglehart believes that after World-War II, Western countries have experienced an unprecedented period of economic growth and they have all been free form invasion. Consequently, we might expect that younger generation, particularly those brought up since World War, would place less emphasis on economic and physical security. Instead, they put more emphasis on the quality of life. Those changes contribute to a generation of post-materialist values. Inglehart believes that those who hold post-materialist values emphasize the quality of life, self-expression, and self-realization. Post-materialists stress on the protection of one’s political rights and struggle to realize these rights. Thus they seek more equal and varied approaches to have their voice in political issues. Changes in individual values have a significant impact on the political life:mass politics are increasingly apt to be elite-challenging rather than elite-directed; Political issues are no longer based on economic interests and the distribution of material wealth; on the contrary, issues based on people’s daily lives are becoming more and more important; authorities are challenged much more than before; confidence in established political and societal institutions is declining; Political party modes become more complicated and multi-dimensional. Inglehart said,"Changes in people’s values are a potential drive for long-term political change." Also Inglehart figures out that economic changes, self-expression and democratic institutions can be summarized by the human development. He pointed out that human liberation is the central theme of democracy. The emergence of self-expression values made the human development turns our society into a more humane one.