Cultural Evolution: People’s Motivations are Changing, and Reshaping the World

Abstract

The growing appeal of right-wing politics around the world, in particular with Donald Trump’s election, Brexit, and France’s National Front successes, has confounded both popular and sociological preconceptions of the direction global politics are headed. Among sociologists, these recent developments have challenged not only classic assumptions about the transition to modernity and the supposed movement toward rationality it entails. They have also challenged the wave of cosmopolitan optimism sociologists of the 1990s—especially figures like Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens, and John Urry—have expressed about the demise of national boundaries and the transition to global cultural openness. Ronald Inglehart’s Cultural Evolution: People’s Motivations are Changing, and Reshaping the World makes a timely contribution to existing conversations on political culture, not only by providing a parsimonious explanation for the recent rise of the Right but also by reassessing modernization theory in light of these new developments. The book applies a revised modernization model to cases such as secularization, gender equality, democratic values, human happiness, and numerous others. The work uses World Values Survey and European Values Study country-level data from 1981 to 2014, covering more than 100 countries. The book is a compelling read and provides rich insight on the key cultural transitions that occurred across these countries over the last decades.