Original scientific paper
Was There a Silent Revolution? A Comparative Analysis of Party Manifestos in Ten European Countries
Anamarija Musa
; Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The Silent Revolution Theory argues that in the second part of
the 20th century, due to their socialization in an environment of
economic affluence and absence of war, the citizens of advanced
industrial democracies became more post-materialist in their value
orientation; placing a higher value on issues such as personal
freedom, self-actualisation, gender and racial equality or protection of
the environment. At the same time, they are expected to put less
emphasis on materialist values, such as high income or personal
security. A content analysis of party programmes in 10 European
countries was carried out in order to establish whether current
economic, security and democracy levels affect the distribution of
values and whether it is possible to make a distinction between
different subtypes of values. The research demonstrates that a
country’s better economic performance is associated with the rise of
post-materialism, and that a lower democracy level indicates a higher
proportion of the human rights dimension of post-materialism at the
expense of the lifestyle dimension. There was not enough evidence to
conclude that security problems affect the security dimension of
materialist values at the expense of the economic dimension.
Keywords
silent revolution; materialist values; post-materialist values; Inglehart
Hrčak ID:
20112
URI
Publication date:
31.5.2007.
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