Haerpfer, Bernhagen, Welzel, and Inglehart

Haerpfer et al: Democratization

Chapter 9: Political Culture, Mass

Beliefs, and Value Change

© Oxford University Press 2018

 Overview
• The role of mass beliefs and value change in democratization.
• The congruence thesis: mass beliefs are of critical importance
for countries’ chances to become and remain Democratic. For
mass beliefs determine whether a political regime is accepted.
• Major thinkers claimed that whether or not a political system
emerges and survive in a country depends on the orientations
prevailing among its people. Whether a nation is constituted as
tyranny, monarchy, or democracy depends respectively on the
prevalence of anxious, honest, or civic orientation.
• According to Tocqueville, flourishing of democracy in the US
reflects the liberal and participatory orientations of American
people.
• Democracy is fragile when it is a democracy without Democrats.
Haerpfer, Bernhagen, Welzel, and Inglehart, Democratization 2e
 Overview
• Modernization changes mass orientations in ways that make
people supportive of such key Democratic principles as
ideological pluralism, peaceful opposition, separation of powers,
and popular control of government.
• Congruence claims that political regimes become stable only
insofar as their authority patterns meet population’s firmly
encultured authority beliefs, regardless of regime type.
• Authoritarian regimes are stable when the people idolize strong
leaders who exercise unchecked powers, as Democratic
regimes are stable when people believe that political authority
ought to be subject to horizontal checks and popular controls.

Haerpfer, Bernhagen, Welzel, and Inglehart, Democratization 2e

 The Role of Mass Beliefs—The Missing Link
between Structure and Action
• Most of the recent democratization literature has paid surprisingly little
attention to the role of mass beliefs in democratization
• Structure-focused approaches emphasize structural aspects of society Such
as modernization , income inequality , group divisions, religious composition,
etc. and specify no mechanism by which structures such as translate into
the collective action by which democratization is initiated.
• Action -focused approaches emphasize human action through the elite and
mass actions that make democratization happen but does not explain them .
How democratization happens, but not why it comes about.
• Both have a common blind-spot, how to get from structure to action
• Mass beliefs are needed to translate ‘structure into action’. Structures must
give rise to orientations that make people believe that democracy is
desirable goal.

Haerpfer, Bernhagen, Welzel, and Inglehart, Democratization 2e

 Mass Demands for Democracy

• There is a tendency to equate popular preferences for

democracy with actual mass demands for democracy, but
these are often superficial or purely instrumental
• If essential preferences for democracy are weak, the
actual level of democracy is low; but if basic preferences
for democracy are strong, the actual level of democracy is
generally high
• Congruence theory argues that in order to be stable, the
authority patterns characterizing a country’s political
system must be consistent with the people’s prevailing
authority beliefs

Haerpfer, Bernhagen, Welzel, and Inglehart, Democratization 2e

 Centrality of Emancipative Values
• Democracy is based on empowering human conditions in a society
• Emancipative values constitute the cultural component in the human
empowerment process
• They do not only help to undermine authoritarianism, they also help to
consolidate and deepen existing democracies
• Emancipative values motivate people to put pressure on elites to establish,
retain, or deepen democratic institutions
• Explicit preferences for democracy are no reliable indicator of people's
genuine demand for democracy because these preferences are often
detached from a firm belief in democracy defining qualities.
• Emancipated values are the single most reliable indicator of peoples
demand for democracy because people who emphasized these values
support democracy out of a genuine belief in its defining qualities, most
notably freedoms.

Haerpfer, Bernhagen, Welzel, and Inglehart, Democratization 2e

 Measuring Emancipative Values

• Based on data from the World Values Surveys, the

12-item index of emancipative values reliably and
validly measures people’s support of universal
freedoms
• Emancipative values vary massively across national
populations from different culture zones, and they
vary more between nations than over societal
cleavages within nations, thus representing a key
element of national mentalities

Haerpfer, Bernhagen, Welzel, and Inglehart, Democratization 2e

 The Role of Religion

• Religiosity, religious denomination, and a society’s

religious demography have all been identified as
important cultural factors in influencing democracy
• A demographic dominance of Protestants has been
said to favour democracy, whereas a Muslim
dominance has been claimed to be unfavourable
• However, when one takes into account a population’s
overall emphasis on emancipative values, the effect
of religious demography becomes weak

Haerpfer, Bernhagen, Welzel, and Inglehart, Democratization 2e

 The Importance of Regime Legitimacy
• Democratic freedoms are by no means valued to the same extent all over
the world. In culture zones in which authoritarian regimes prevail and
oppressed Democratic freedoms, the value that most people place on this
freedoms is low , which helps explain why authoritarian persists in these
societies.
• Some scholars assumed that autocracies are always illegitimate as far as
the general public is concerned, because overwhelming majorities of
ordinary people almost always prefer democracy to Autocracy primarily out
of an interest in material redistribution. but this economic theory of
democracy is flawed. Among hundred countries with 90% of humanity, there
is not a single society in which people define democracy primarily as a
means of economic redistribution.

Haerpfer, Bernhagen, Welzel, and Inglehart, Democratization 2e

 The importance of regime legitimacy:
• Outspoken supporters of democracy in authoritarian regimes frequently
misunderstand democracy in authoritarian ways and misperceived their
regimes as Democratic despite the fact that they are not. In these cases,
support for democracy means the exact opposite of what the intuition
suggests: support for authoritarian rule. After all, among the roughly 200
independent states recognized by the UN, very few do not describe
themselves as Democratic . Even people in non-Democratic countries are
exposed to abundant rhetoric about democracy.
• What really matters is how strongly this preference for democracy is linked
with emancipative values, because the strength of this link determines how
firmly people resist authoritarian re-definitions of democracy  
• Rising emancipated values make people immune against authoritarian
misunderstandings of democracy and against misperceiving non-
Democratic regimes as Democratic.

Haerpfer, Bernhagen, Welzel, and Inglehart, Democratization 2e

 The Emancipatory Impulse of Action
Resources
Action resources, which include material means (Food , shelter, household
equipment and monetary incomes), cognitive skills (Information, education, and
knowledge), and connective opportunities (Modernization in transportation and
communication), elevate ordinary people’s agency in pursuing purposes of their
choice
• Emancipative values rise on the basis of growing action resources among
large population segments.
• growing action resources in the hands of ordinary people infuses societies
with greater self coordinating capacities.
• Emancipated values are most widespread in western societies because
these societies have experienced the most massive growth of action
resources in the hands of ordinary people.

Haerpfer, Bernhagen, Welzel, and Inglehart, Democratization 2e

 Some Key Qualifications
• Several qualifications are required for action resources to give rise to emancipate the
values: 1- human mentalities shift naturally from preventive closure to promotive
opponents. No authoritarian regime and no totalitarian propaganda can prevent
emancipative values from rising. democracy itself does not need to be in place for
these values to emerge.
• 2- The utility logic that guides the emancipatory impulse of action resources is one of
socially shared utilities, rather than individually isolated utilities; Do not emphasize
one's own freedoms but equal freedoms for all.
• 3- The action resources that individuals currently command may not be as important
as the action resources during their upbringings
• 4- Emancipative values remain weak when their psychological counterforces remain
strong Such as religion and family.
• 5- Under certain conditions the emancipatory impulse of action resources can be
disrupted: The state can subsidize its loyal citizens with a greater action resources
(such as benefits with no taxes), when people's action resources depend on such
system, they are unlikely to instill emancipative values.

Haerpfer, Bernhagen, Welzel, and Inglehart, Democratization 2e

 The ‘Tectonic Model’ of Regime Change
• The link must be strong between the emancipative values (The mass side
demand ) and civic entitlements (The elite side supply of Democratic
freedoms).
• Between 1980 and 2010 , countries like Zimbabwe, Nigeria, and Venezuela
starting out with the freedom supplies largely exceeding freedom demands
in 1980, experienced a supply drop until 2010 . These are cases of
Democratic backsliding. Countries like Slovenia and Taiwan starting out with
the freedom supplies far short of demands in 1980, experienced a
corresponding supply jump until 2010 . Finally, countries with supplies
starting out at Equilibrium with demands in 1980, experienced little shift in
supply until 2010, which is typical for most Western countries with sustained
Democratic equilibrium and Middle Eastern countries with sustained and
non-Democratic equilibrium .
• The ‘Tectonic Model’ of Regime Change suggests that, in the congruent
relationship between cultures and regimes, culture is the driver
• Accordingly, regimes change in response to their misfit to culture, whereas
culture does not change in response to its misfit to regimes
Haerpfer, Bernhagen, Welzel, and Inglehart, Democratization 2e
 Updated Evidence
• Growing action resources, and rising emancipative values, an expanding
civic entitlements work together in enhancing ordinary people's agency in
pursuing purposes of their choice. Emancipative values rise in response to
growing action resources while civic entitlements expand in response to
reason emancipative values and growing action resources
• Updated evidence based on simulated data confirms the Tectonic Model of
Regime Change. The primary flaw of impact in the relationship between
emancipative values and civic entitlements runs from values to
entitlements , much more so than the other way around. thus, the direction
and scope of regime change operate largely as a function of the regime's
initial misfit with their surrounding culture.
• People’s values have mostly turned more emancipative, regardless of
whether they were not congruent to the regime’s civic entitlements a
generation ago
• Cultures and regimes co-evolve; regimes adjust to changing cultures much
more than the other way round
Haerpfer, Bernhagen, Welzel, and Inglehart, Democratization 2e
 Finally
• Emancipative values emerge as part of a broader process of a
human emancipation that evolves naturally as economic
development puts more resources into the hands of ordinary
people. These values provide the key selective force in the
evolution of political regimes and build the grassroots
motivations that Channel mass support toward pro Democratic
actors and away from anti Democratic ones.
• Democracy remains a fragile achievement that is in danger of
backsliding where these values are weak. Therefore, they are
the most important aspect of political culture concerning a
population's readiness for democracy.

Haerpfer, Bernhagen, Welzel, and Inglehart, Democratization 2e