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Does Latin America Exist? (And Is There a Confucian Culture?): A Global

Analysis of Cross-Cultural Differences

Ronald Inglehart; Marita Carballo

PS: Political Science and Politics, Vol. 30, No. 1. (Mar., 1997), pp. 34-47.

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Featuresgood to say for war, ideas abou t warwere very different less than a cen-tury ago, even among artists and hu-manists. However strong th e rationalcase against war, we can not be con-fident that some of the romanticfeelings about war, once so common,will not come back. Intellectuals areespecially prone to radical changesin thinking. While the experiencewith Nazism and Communism hasgiven radical ideologies a bad name,this experience will gradually fadefrom memory and become a muchweaker protection from new forms ofideological idealism than it is today.But the other forces workingagainst war among developed powersare inherently linked to the natureof modern life. They will not changeeven if ideas change. It is hard toimagine how these factors could bedecisively weakene d. It seem s veryunlikely that starting a war against amod ern d emocracy will ever mak esense for an advanced country. Andon major issues like war and peace,demo cratic countries will decide onthe basis of what makes sense forthe country, not for the rulers.Basically, the links between mo-dernity, democracy, and peace arevery simple. Democracy means th atnations will not go in to a major warunless a solid majority of the people

consent. It means that opponents ofthe war will have a chance to beheard. It means that lead ers will findit very difficult to start wars that aregood for them but not for the coun-try. Modernity means that major waris not useful, and probably not ap-pealing in any way.onclusion Number : We can ex-pect tha t wars between democracieswill be so rare as to remove majorwar and its threat as the dominantshapers of international politics andof people's expectations of life. Theresult may be that major war willbecome as unthinkable as duelingand slavery have recently become.

ConclusionTh e natural idea is that history ison e piece, with civilizations rising

and falling from the Gree k citystates and the great kingdoms of theMiddle East and China five or sixthousand years ago until today, andinto the future. The message of thispape r is that we a re living in themiddle of a break in history that be-gan about two hundred years agoand will take about another two cen-turies to complete. Before the break,human life was dominated by pov-erty, tyranny, an d war. After th ebreak, that domination will be gone,

and there will be a new phase ofhistory in which people will be en-gaged in meeting different chal-lenges.Knowing about this break in his-tory does not tell us what to do to-morrow. But it does have some im-plications. First, a world go vernmen tmight not ultimately be necessary topreserve peace. Second, the case forradical measures to improve the situ-ation is weak, because measures t hatrisk upsetting the applecart are notrequired for ultimate success. (Al-though the case for working to speedthe current process is strengthened.)Third, we owe it to ourselves to havea better understanding of the forcesthat are shaping our world so we canface them with the ap propriate de-gree of awe and humility. Finally, asGordo n Teale said, How sad No-vember would be if we did not knowof the Spring.

ReferenceChurchill, Winston S. 1923 The World CnsisVol. 1 New York: Scribners.

About the AuthorMax inger 1s founder and former Pre s~ den tof the Hudson Institute. He is currently anindependent policy analyst in Washington, DC.

Does Latin America Exist? (And s There a Confucian Culture?):A Global Analysis o Cross-Cultural Differences'Ronald Inglehart, University of M ichiganMarita Carb allo, Catholic University of ArgentinaD oes Latin America exist?Latin American studies centers(like African, or Middle Eastern orWest Euro pean studies centers) arebased on the assumption that LatinAmerica (and Africa, the MiddleEast, etc.) are more than arbitarygeographic expressions: they definecoherent cultural regions, havingpeople with distinctive values andworldviews that make them thinkdifferently and behave differentlyfrom people of other cultures.The most powerful challenge to

this view currently comes from therational choice school, whose practi-tioners occasionally mention the im-portance of cultural differences butwhose m odels almost always ignorethem, implicitly assuming that in agiven situation all people will makethe same rational7' choices regard-less of cultural perspectives. But ifmajor differences exist between theworldviews and motivations of peo-ple in different cultural zones, a ra-tional choice model that applies tothe United States may not accurately

describe the behavior of people inothe r cultures.The existence of meaningful cul-tural areas has been challenged onother grounds as well. Moderniza-tion theory focuses on the differ-ences between traditional andmo dern societies, each of whichare characterized by distinctive eco-nomic, political, social, and culturalinstitutions. This perspective tend s toattribu te any differences betweenLatin Am erican and highly industri-alized societies to differences in their1 s: Political Science Politics4

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Does Latin America Exist?: A Global Analysis o Cross-Cultural Differenceslevels of economic development:with economic development, thesedifferences will tend to disappear.Differences between various tradi-tional cultures tend to be ignored.Th e usefulness of Latin Am ericaas a meaningful cultural boundarycould also be disputed on variousother grounds. Geographically, LatinAmerica extends over an enorm ousrange. On e could argue that i ts co-herence depends on the persistinginfluence of its Hispanic culturalheritage, which is the m ain thingthese diverse societies have in com-mon. But this implies that Spain andPortugal-the sourc e of this com -mo n heritage-should also be in-cluded. Instead of focusing on LatinAmerica, the meaningful culturalentity should be the Hispanic cul-tural zone.

Still another influential school ofthought would argue that it is nottheir linguistic h eritage so m uch astheir Roman Catholic religious heri-tage that has shaped the societies ofLatin A merica most decisively. Thisimplies that the crucial culturalboundary really is that between thehistorically Catholic societies and therest of the world.Yet a nother interpretation wouldstress the fact that certain LatinAm erican societies such as Mexicoand Peru, have been heavily influ-enced by indigenous American cul-tures; while othe rs such as Argentinahave been less influenced by them,but have had relatively large amo untsof recent European immigration. Ifthese are decisive influences, onemight expect to find such countriesas Argentina to be culturally closerto Southern Europe including Italy,than to their Latin American neigh-bors.

The W orld Values SurveysD o coh erent cultural patterns existin given regions such as Latin Amer-ica? And if so, do they mainly reflectthat region's level of economic de-velopment? Or do they reflect itslinguistic, religious, or historical her-itage? The World Values Surveys(WVS) enab le us to answer thesequestions for the first time, on thebasis of data from representativenational surveys covering most

(70% ) of the world's population.2The WVS provides an unprecedent-edly rich cross-cultural data baseexploring orientations toward reli-gion, politics, work, economicgrowth, family values, sexual norms,and gender roles. These surveyscover the full range of variation,from societies with per capita in-comes as low as $300 per year, tosocieties with per capita incomes upto $30,000 per year; and from long-established democracies with marketeconomies, to a uthoritarian statesand communist societies.Because the World Values Surveysprovide data from nearly 50 societ-ies, the characteristics of the societyitself can be used as variables in theanalysis, making it possible to per-form statistically significant analysesthat move from the individual levelto t he societal level. This article ex-amines linkages between the valuesystems of given societies and theireconomic, linguistic, religious, geo-graphical, and political characteris-tics. Does the evidence reveal dis-tinct and coherent cultural zones?

Do Constrained Belief SystemsCharacterize Given CulturalZones? If so Why?The first question we must answeris: do coh erent cultural pa tterns existamong these peoples? It would notbe surprising to find that the variousLatin America peoples had relativelysimilar views on some topic or other,but it would not be very meaningful.The concept of a common cultureimplies that a given group tends toshare an entire worldview, manifest-ing a coherent and distinctive pat-tern of values across a wide range oftopics.It is not self-evident that a given

group does share a comm on world-view. A generation ago, Converse(1963) demonstrated that the beliefsystems of mass publics do not showmuch constraint: mass attitudes to-ward various issues are only weaklyrelated to each other. Knowing agiven individual's attitude towardone issue does not enable us to pre-dict his or h er position o n ot her is-sues. This finding was controversial,but has held up fairly well duringsucceeding decades. If mass attitudes

don't show much constraint, howcould the people of a given culturalzone such as Latin America showconstrained worldviews that distin-guish them from th e people of othercultural zones?In fact, they do, as we will see.Survey data from scores of societiesreveal an astonishingly high degre eof constraint between the basic val-ues held by peoples of different soci-eties. Furthermore, we find hugedifferences between the basic valuesof peoples in different culturalgroups. Th ough individual-level con-straint is relatively low, given societ-ies have highly constrained andhighly distinctive worldviews. Webelieve that this is true because, in agiven economic and technologicalenvironment, certain cultural compo-nents tend to go together. They doso because they are mutually sup-porting and conducive to the survivalof the given society (see Inglehart,forthcoming).This interpretation is based on arevised version of mod ernizationtheory. The World Values Surveywas designed to test the hypothesisthat economic development leads tospecific, functionally re lated changesin mass values and belief systems.We do not assume that all elementsof culture will change, leading to auniform global culture. We see noreason to expect that the C hinesewill stop using chopsticks in theforeseeable future, o r that Brazilianswill learn to polka. But certain cul-tural and polit ical changes do seemto b e logically linked with the dy-namics of a modernization processinvolving urbanization, industrializa-tion, occupational specialization, andthe sprea d of mass literacy.This implies that economic devel-opm ent, cultural change, and polit i-cal change go together in coherentand even, to som e extent, predict-able patterns. This is a controversialclaim. It means that some trajecto-ries of socio-economic change aremo re likely than others-and conse-quently, that certain changes areforeseeable. Once a society has em-barked on industrialization, a wholesyndrome of related changes, frommass mobilization to diminishingdifferences in gend er roles, a re likelyto occur.Though any simplistic version of

March 997

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Featuresmodernization theory has long sincebeen exploded, we do endorse theidea that some scenarios of socialchange are far more probable thanothers-and we will pres ent emp iri-cal evidence that supports this prop-osition. Modernization theory im-~ l i e s :1.) That various cultural elementstend to go together in coherent pat-terns. For example, do societies thatplace relatively strong emphasis onreligion, also tend to favor largefamilies (or respect for authority, orother distinctive attitudes)? If eachculture goes its own way, elementssuch as these would be uncorrelated,and one would find no consistentpatterns of constraint.2.) Coh erent cultural patterns ex-ist, and they are linked with economicand technological development.

Postmodernization ChangingValues and a ChangingPolitical AgendaAt the same time, it seems clearto us that modernization is not lin-ear. In advanced industrial societies,the prevailing direction of develop-ment has changed in the last quartercentury and the change in what ishappening is so fundamental that i t

seems appropriate to describe it aspostmodernization, rathe r thanmodernization. For modernizationis not the final stage of history. Therise of advanced industrial societyhas led to another fundamental shif tin basic values-one that de-em pha-sizes the instrumental rationality thatcharac terized industrial society.When postmodern values becomeprevalent, they bring a variety of so-cietal changes, from equal rights forwom en to dem ocratic political insti-tutions and the decline of state so-cialist regimes.The rise of postmodern valueschanges the political agendathroughout advanced industrial soci-ety, moving it away from an em pha-sis on econ omic growth at any price,toward increasing conce rn for itsenvironmental costs. It has alsobrought a shift from political cleav-ages based on social class conflict,toward cleavages based on culturalissues and quality-of-life concerns.

FIGUREVariation in the values emphasized by different societies: Traditional authorityvs. Rational-legal authority and Survival values vs. Well-being values.

SECULAR-RATIONALAUTHORITY

- Not smwmployn Homcaaxvaihappy mn.gHn*nt20 Hard RATIONAL-LEGAL Toknma ~ tSURVIVAL :{: .hdwO Mon.y0 - ehlldrsn~z p . t n b SURVIVAL WELL-BEING Wo,.~* P ' ~ ~ ~ ~

R t T.shnolopy movemmt