EXAMPLE I: The Silent Revolution Beginning with his 1971 article, The Silent Revolution in Europe: Intergenerational Change in Post-Industrial Societies, Professor Ronald Inglehart has contended that a transformation is taking place in the political cultures of advanced industrial societies. Fading from people s basic value priorities are the materialist goals of economic and national security. In their wake is a growing wave of post-materialist values - values which emphasize such goals as protecting the freedom of speech and giving people more say in important political decisions. With this change in values, the theory continues, come changes in the salient political issue, changes in political cleavages, and changes in political participation. Inglehart s explanation for the transformation toward post-materialistic values relies heavily on Abraham Maslow s hierarchy of needs theory. This hierarchy consists of, in order,...physiological needs, safety needs, belongingness and love needs, and the need for self actualization. 1 According to Maslow, individuals must satisfy lower level needs before they can pursue goals pertaining to higher level needs. Inglehart contends that some groups in post-industrial societies, drawn primarily from the postwar generations of the middle class, have progressed so far along this hierarchy of needs that the accumulation of material goods is no longer their primary goal. For them, economic security may be taken for granted, as the supply of the water or the air we breathe once could. 2 As a result, their goals and values tend to be post-materialist, rather than materialist in nature. If the level of post-materialism depends so strongly on the level of economic security, it should follow that the wealthiest nations would have the highest proportions of post-materialists. To test this, Inglehart analyzed the data of an eleven country survey conducted in 1972 and 1973.
The expectation,... is borne out reasonably well. The two nations ranking highest in per capita income,... the United States and Switzerland, rank second and third highest in their proportion of Post-Materialistic.... Italy and Ireland are the two poorest nations and they rank relatively low. 3 If indeed the wealthiest countries have the highest proportion of post-materialists, one might expect that these same countries would place less emphasis on national security, a materialist value, than their poorer counterparts. To test this I analyzed an 86 country survey. Countries were placed in one of three economic categories, 1. High (developed), 2. Medium (transitional), and 3. Low (low). Assuming that each category represented a range of economic development rather than a fixed point, I used this economic cluster as the independent variable. Against this I regressed the number of military personnel per 10,000 adults (see data set 1). I obtained a p-value of.048 which allows me to reject the null hypothesis and to conclude that the number of military personnel is related to a country s economic cluster. Unfortunately, the relationship is the opposite of what is expected. As x, the country s economic cluster, gets larger, indicating a lower level of development, the proportion of military personnel should get larger. The obtained slope, however, is -40.10 which indicates that as x gets larger y gets smaller. In addition r² is only 4.6%, indicating that x explains little of the deviation in y - the proportion of military personnel. These findings, however, do not allow me to reject the hypothesis that wealthier nations are less materialistic than poorer ones. The low r² indicates that a whole host of factors may account for why lesser developed nations have lower proportions of military personnel. Perhaps their economic situation is so dire that they cannot afford a large military. Perhaps their relations with their neighbors are sufficiently stable. Perhaps they have a pacifist religious tradition, etc. A better test, perhaps, may be to look solely at the differences that exist between those countries
which make up the developed cluster. As noted above, Inglehart s theory does not stop at predicting the rise of post-materialist values. With increasing levels of post-materialism, Inglehart sees the potential for increased political participation. The political participation he envisions, however, does not manifest itself in traditional forms such as voting. Rather, he foresees an increased demand on the part of the public to actively play a role in making major decisions. To a great degree Inglehart s optimism in regard to participation stems not from the change toward post-materialism, but in something he terms cognitive mobilization. With rising cosmopolitanism and increasing rates of higher education, the public should gradually develop the skills needed to manipulate political abstractions. With increasing skills of this sort, the public should develop the ability to participate at a level beyond mere voting. Though cognitive mobilization and changing values are independent of one another, postmaterialist values do seem to affect political behavior. Looking at political action surveys conducted in the U.S. and West Germany in 1974 and 1980, Inglehart found that those who identified themselves as post-materialists in 1974 were considerably more likely to engage in unconventional political behavior in 1980. 4 By unconventional he means engaging in acts such as boycotts, unofficial strikes, and the occupation of buildings. From this it would be logical to conclude that countries with higher levels of postmaterialism should have higher instances of unconventional political participation. To test this, I turned to the 86 country survey cited above. Again, my x axis is the economic cluster of countries ranging from 1. High (developed) to 3. Low (low). With this as my regressor I am assuming that countries with higher levels of development have greater proportions of postmaterialists. Against x I first regressed the number of riots experienced from 1955 to 1960 and
then the number of demonstrations from 1955 to 1960 (see data sets 2 and 3). The results were mixed. When looking at the relationship between the number of riots and a country s economic development, I obtained a p-value of.286 thus not allowing me to discard the null hypothesis at the 95% confidence level. Turning to the number of demonstrations, my p-value was.005. In addition, the obtained slope was -9.05 and the value of r² was almost 9%. Not only can it be concluded that the number of demonstrations is related to a country s economic development, but we can see that as x gets larger, indicating a lower level of development, the number of demonstrations also tends to decline. This is exactly what we would have expected. Though an r² of 9% is not large, it does indicate that x does explain a good proportion of y s deviation. As with the relationship of military personnel to economic development, however, the data presented here does not allow me to discard or confirm Inglehart s hypothesis of increasing political participation. The tests I have devised are, at best, indirect. Given the role cognitive mobilization plays in Inglehart s theory, it may have been preferable to gauge the number of demonstrations and riots against the levels of education and the levels of cosmopolitanism. This data, however, was not readily available. The data set used here was admittedly flawed. As noted above, there are tests that I could imagine which would have been more appropriate. For Inglehart s theory of the Silent Revolution to hold up, however, it must be able to weather the types of tests that I have conducted. If post-materialists devalue national security and there is a rise in society s level of post-materialism, then you should see some decline in the emphasis the society places on the military. Such a decline would be characterized by lower levels of military spending and lower proportions of military personnel to adults. Similarly, if post-materialists are truly prone to
increasing levels of unconventional political participation, then the developed countries should witness increasing numbers of demonstrations, strikes, and boycotts. Only time and in-depth longitudinal studies will tell. Endnotes 1. Jan W. Van Deth, The persistence of Materialist and Post-Materialist Value Orientations, The European Journal of Political Research Vol. 11 1983:64. 2. Ronald Inglehart, The Silent Revolution in Europe: Intergenerational Change in Post-Industrial Societies, The American Political Science Review Vol. 65 1971:991. 3. Ronald Inglehart, The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles Among Western Publics (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1977) 39. 4. Ronald Inglehart, Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990) 310.