National Differences in Value Consensus

This chapter examines how societal characteristics might be related to cross-national differences in value consensus. It considers social variables that might strongly influence the way value transmitting social institutions operate. The chapter focuses on two societal characteristics that are likely to relate to value consensus: degree of modernization, viewed in terms of socioeconomic development, and degree of democratization of the political and social system. One of the major theories linking modernization to values is convergence theory. Modernization and democratization are likly to suppress one another’s effects on value consensus. Political rights include the rights of citizens to participate in the determination of the nature of the law and its administration. Societal characteristics relate differently to the importance attributed to different value types. It is therefore possible that they also relate differently to consensus on the different value types.