Hofstede, Inglehart and beyond. New directions in empirical global value research

However much we appreciate the enormous scientific contribution by Professor Ronald Inglehart, who initiated the international data collection of the World Values Survey, our re-analysis of the very World Values Survey data [“roll-outs” of the World Values Survey data wvs1981_2008_v20090914.sav] brought us to question Inglehart’s theories, with which he and his associates interpret the mass of the World Values Survey data. Their theoretical approach does not use a sufficiently number of hard-core indicators how global publics view central issues of economic policy, and their theories overemphasize a secularistic view of the religious phenomenon in modern society. Their theories predict the gradual waning of the religious phenomena in parallel with the increase of human security, and even cherish at times the tendencies brought about by such a waning of the religious element in advanced democracies. Inglehart spells them out: higher levels of tolerance for abortion, divorce, homosexuality; the erosion of parental authority, the decrease of the importance of family life et cetera. Is that really something to cherish? Today, societal and economic development is discontinuous; regional centers of the world economy shift at an enormous speed; and above all, religion and family values can be an important assett in the stability of capitalist development. Economic growth inexorably shifts away from the North Atlantic arena towards new centers of gravitation of the world economy. Alberto Alesina’s and Paola Giuliano’s new maps of global values (Alesina and Giuliano, 2013) present a real break with the hitherto existing secularistic consensus of global value research. Their maps of family ties, respect for parents et cetera coincide with the global map of economic growth today. Leading representatives of the global economics profession now start to take up the challenge to interpret the mass of the data from the World Values Survey project on their own. The essay by Barro and McCleary (2003) was an important beginning ...