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Are religion and politics sharing the same values or do they have different sets? Why? Provide examples? norris_and_inglehart_hgy.doc Unformatted Attachment Preview Part III Consequences Secularization of 7 Religion, the Protestant Ethic, and Moral Values SO FAR, THIS book has explained that the authority of established religion has been weakening among the publics of postindustrial societies (and especially among the more secure strata of these societies). The concluding section of the book shifts its focus from explaining secularization to examining the influence of religion on important social and political phenomena. What are the consequences of secularization? In particular, to what extent has this process eroded the social values, moral beliefs, and ethical teachings of the church; diminished the role of churches, faith-based organizations, and social capital in civic society; weakened the traditional base of electoral support for religious parties; and diluted the symbolic meaning of religious identities in situations of deep-seated ethnic conflict? If the process of secularization has occurred along the lines that we suggest, then we expect that religiosity will continue to exert a strong imprint on society and politics in developing nations, but that its power will have faded in many industrial and postindustrial societies. Sociologists, political scientists, and economists have long sought to understand how given belief systems produce enduring cross-national differences in cultural values. In Chapter 6 we demonstrated how religion helps shape attitudes toward gender roles, and attitudes toward abortion, divorce, and homosexuality.1 This chapter examines the impact of religion on orientations toward work and broader economic attitudes, starting with a seminal theory in the sociology of religion: Max Webers claim that the Protestant ethic generated the spirit of capitalism. We also analyze how religion shapes moral values, including ethical standards such as honesty and bribery, as well as beliefs about issues of life and death, including euthanasia, suicide, and abortion. The conclusion considers the implications of our findings and how they contribute toward understanding processes of value change. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism Thesis Webers argument about the origins of modern capitalism has been among the most influential in the history of the social sciences, attracting confirmation and refutation by sociologists, historians, psychologists, economists, and anthropologists throughout the twentieth century.2 The central puzzle he addressed concerned why the Industrial Revolution, economic modernization, and bourgeois capitalism arose first in the West, and specifically in Protestant rather than Catholic Western societies, rather than elsewhere. Weber argued that legal and commercial changes, institutional developments, and technological innovations in Europe were insufficient by themselves to provide an adequate explanation; other societies had developed banking, credit institutions, and legal systems, as well as the foundations of science, mathematics, and technology. He notes that the material conditions for capitalism existed in many earlier civilizations, including the rise of the merchant class engaged in trade and commerce in China, Egypt, India, and the classical world, well before the Protestant Reformation.3 What they lacked, however, he believed, was a particular and distinctive cultural ethos. For Weber, it was the particular values associated with the Protestant Reformation and Calvinist doctrine that gave birth to the spirit of Western capitalism.4 Ascetic Protestantism preached that people have a duty to work diligently, to pursue financial rewards, and to invest prudently. The aim of working and accumulating resources was not just to meet minimal material needs, still less to dissipate profits on material display and hedonistic and worldly pleasures in the enjoyment of life, but rather work was regarded as a moral duty pursued for its own sake: “Labour must, on the contrary, be performed as if it were an absolute end in itself, a calling.”5 The Protestant ethic interpreted ethical activities, not as monastic asceticism renouncing this life, but rather as the fulfillment of worldly obligations. In turn, the virtues of hard work, enterprise, and diligence, Weber argued, were the underlying cultural foundation for capitalist markets and investment: “Honesty is useful, because it assures credit; so are punctuality, industry, frugality, and that is the reason they are virtues.”6 The Protestant ethic was therefore understood by Weber as a unique set of moral beliefs about the virtues of hard work and economic acquisition, the need for individual entrepreneurial initiative, and the rewards of a just God. Its specific values emphasized self-discipline, hard work, the prudent reinvestment of savings, personal honesty, individualism, and independence, all of which were thought to generate the cultural conditions most conducive to market economies, private enterprise, and bourgeois capitalism in the West. It should be stressed that Weber did not claim that the restless go-getting entrepreneurial class of merchants and bankers, shopkeepers and industrial barons were also the most devout ascetic Protestants; on the contrary, he argued that “those most filled with the spirit of capitalism tend to be indifferent, if not hostile, to the Church.”7 He therefore did not expect an individual-level relationship to exist between personal piety, churchgoing habits, and adherence to the Protestant work ethic. Instead, this cultural ethos was thought to be pervasive, influencing devout and atheists alike, within Protestant societies. Any attempt to analyze the Weberian theory should therefore be tested at the macro-level, not the individual level. This Weberian thesis, like any classic in the literature, has attracted widespread debate and criticism during the last century.8 Much of the work has focused on understanding the historical relationship between Protestantism and the subsequent rise of capitalism; for example Tawney, and later Samuelson, questioned the direction of causality in this relationship, arguing that the early growth of capitalism in late-Medieval Europe preceded and encouraged subsequent cultural shifts, such as greater individualism and more acquisitive attitudes that were conducive to the adoption and spread of Protestantism.9 Historians have disputed whether economic activities actually flourished most, as Weber claimed, where Calvinism was predominant in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic.10 Economists have examined whether contemporary religion generates cultural attitudes that are conducive to economic development and growth; for example Guiso, Sapienza, and Zingales provide some limited evidence in support of this argument, finding that religiosity was linked to attitudes such as social trust, that were conducive to the working of free markets and institutions; but when comparing specific economic attitudes within Christian denominations, in both Protestant and Catholic cultures, they found mixed results.11 Political sociology has also studied these issues; previous work by Granato and Inglehart showed a strong linkage between macro-level economic growth rates and some of the core values of the Weberian Protestant ethic (which are not unique to Protestant societies today) – including an emphasis on the values of individual autonomy and economic achievement.12 We lack historical evidence that could examine cultural conditions at the time when capitalism was burgeoning in the West. But if Webers thesis is correct, we might expect that the culture of Protestantism would have left an enduring legacy in values that still remain visible today. To develop these arguments further, we will focus here on the core Weberian hypothesis, namely that, compared with those living in all other religious cultures (especially Catholic societies), Protestant societies should display the strongest work ethic conducive to modern capitalism, exemplified by valuing the virtues of work as a duty, as well as favoring markets over the state. Moreover, Weber stresses that an important aspect of Protestantism concerns the teaching of broader ethical standards, including those of honesty, willingness to obey the law, and trustworthiness, which serve as the foundation of business confidence, good faith dealings, and voluntary contract compliance. Since Webers claim concerned societal-level cultural effects, we focus on analyzing macro-level values when classifying societies by their predominant religious culture, using the categories developed in Table 2.2.13 We describe the mean distribution of attitudes by religious culture, then use multivariate models to control for the factors that we have already demonstrated are closely related to the strength of religious values and practices. This includes the level of human development; we suspect that societies sharing a common Protestant heritage still display an affinity in basic values, but that the forces of development have subsequently transformed the cultural legacy of religious traditions. Thus, Inglehart argued: In Western history, the rise of the Protestant Ethic – a materialistic value system that not only tolerated economic accumulation but encouraged it as something laudable and heroic – was a key cultural change that opened the way for capitalism and industrialization. But precisely because they attained high levels of economic security, the Western societies that were the first to industrialize, have gradually come to emphasize Postmaterialist values, giving higher priority to the quality of life than to economic growth. In this respect, the rise of Postmaterialist values reverses the rise of the Protestant Ethic. Today, the functional equivalent of the Protestant Ethic is most vigorous in East Asia and is fading away in Protestant Europe, as technological development and cultural change become global.14 If true, we would interpret the Protestant ethic as a set of values that are most common in societies of scarcity; they may be conducive to an emphasis on economic growth, but insofar as they reflect an environment of scarcity, they would tend to fade away under conditions of affluence. Evidence for the Protestant Ethic Work Ethic What values are intrinsic to capitalism and how can the Protestant work ethos best be measured? Social psychological studies have used detailed multi-item scales to gauge orientations toward work, although a systematic meta-review of the literature found that they have generally been tested on small groups, rather than on nationally representative random samples of the general population.15 These studies suggest that the most suitable scales measuring attitudes toward work need to be multidimensional, since the Weberian thesis predicted that the Protestant ethic involved a range of personal values conducive to early capitalism.16 Table 7.1 shows the items from the World Value Survey selected to examine work values in this chapter. Factor analysis using principle component analysis revealed that these fell into three main dimensions. (1) The intrinsic benefits of work included items such as the priority that people gave to the opportunities in their work to use initiative, to achieve something, to gain respect, and to have interesting employment. (2) The second dimension concerned the material rewards of work, indicating that people who valued good hours and generous holidays also gave high priority to good pay, little work pressure, and job security. (3) The third dimension concerned broader attitudes toward work as a duty, which lie at the heart of ascetic forms of Protestantism, where people were asked to express agreement or disagreement with statements such as “people who dont work turn lazy,” “work is a duty to society,” and “it is humiliating to receive money without work.” The scales were recoded where necessary, so that a high score was consistent with more positive attitudes toward work values and the capitalist economy, summed across the items. The scores were then standardized to 0–100 point scales, for consistent comparison across the different dimensions. Table 7.1. Factor Analysis of Work Ethic Factor analysis using Principal Component Analysis with varimax rotation and Kaiser normalization. Work values: Q: “Here are some more aspects of a job that people say are important. Please look at them and tell me which ones you personally think are important in a job.” Source: World Values Survey/European Values Survey, Waves III and IV (1995–2001). NOTE: Table 7.2 examines whether Protestant societies differ from other religious cultures in the priority given to the intrinsic and material rewards of work, as well as attitudes toward work as a duty. The results are striking and consistent across all three measures: contrary to the Weberian thesis, compared with all other religious cultures, those living in Protestant societies today display the weakest work ethic. The contrasts between Protestant and the other religious cultures are consistent across scales, although they are usually very modest in size, with the important exception of Muslim cultures, which display by far the strongest work ethic. An important reason for this pattern comes from the comparison of the same scales by the type of society; postindustrial economies today have the weakest work ethic, because rich nations place the greatest importance on the values of leisure, relaxation, and self-fulfillment outside of employment. Industrial societies are moderate in the value they place on the rewards of employment. But in the poorer developing nations, where work is essential for life, often with long hours and minimal leisure time, and an inadequate welfare safety net, people place by far the highest emphasis on the value of work. The contrasts between rich and poor societies in attitudes toward work as a duty were greater than those generated by religious culture. Table 7.2. Mean Scores on the Work Ethic Scales For the classification of societies see Table 2.2. For items in the scales see Table 7.1. All scales have been standardized to 100 points. The significance of the difference between group means is measured by ANOVA (Eta) without any controls. Significance: ***P = .000. Work values: Q: “Here are some more aspects of a job that people say are important. Please look at them and tell me which ones you personally think are important in a job.” (Code all mentioned.) Intrinsic rewards: “An opportunity to use initiative; A job in which you feel you can achieve something; A responsible job; A job meeting ones abilities; A job respected by people in general; A job that is interesting.” Material rewards: “Good hours; Generous holidays; Good pay; Not too much pressure; Good job security.” Work as a duty: Agrees or agrees strongly: “People who dont work turn lazy; Work is a duty to society; It is humiliating to receive money without work; Work should always comes first.” Source: World Values Survey/European Values Survey, Waves III and IV (1995–2001). NOTE: If we limit the comparison to Catholic and Protestant societies – the main focus of attention in Webers work – some modest differences do emerge on individual items within the composite scales; Catholic societies, for example, place slightly greater weight on the value of pay and holidays. Protestant cultures give greater priority to jobs requiring initiative, as well as those generating interest and a sense of achievement. But overall, Protestant societies score slightly lower on the summary work scales than Catholic cultures, not higher, as the Weberian thesis originally predicted. Yet these results could always prove spurious if there is some other characteristic about Protestant societies that could influence these patterns, such as greater levels of higher education or the older age profile of the populations in these nations. To test for this, regression analysis was used at individual-level in Table 7.3, where the predominant religious culture in each society was coded as a dummy variable, with the Protestant culture representing the reference category. The coefficients can be understood to represent the result of living in each type of religious culture compared with the effects of living in Protestant societies, controlling for the other factors in the model. The results confirm the significance of the observed cultural patterns, even after controlling for levels of human and political development and the social background of respondents. Overall the work ethic weakened by levels of human development, as well as by the education and income of individuals, as expected. Growing affluence, and the development of the welfare state in richer countries, mean that work is no longer such an essential necessity of life, and people turn increasingly toward other opportunities for individual self-fulfillment. But even after entering these factors, all other religious cultures proved significantly more work-oriented than Protestant societies, and the strongest coefficients were in Muslim nations. Table 7.3. Work Ethic by Type of Predominant Religious Culture, with Controls Ordinary least squares regression models with blockwise entry with the value scales as the dependent variables. See Table 7.2 for the items contained in the value scales. The full model is illustrated in the Technical Appendix at the end of this chapter, Table A7.1. Block 1 in all models macro-level controls for the level of human development (Human Development Index 1998) and the level of political development (Freedom House 7-point index [reversed] of political rights and civil liberties 1999– 2000). Block 2 adds micro-level controls for age (years), gender (male = 1), education (3 categories from low to high), income (10 categories), and religiosity. Block 3 then enters the type of predominant religious culture, based on Table 2.2, coded as dummy variables. Protestant societies represent the (omitted) reference category. The coefficients can be understood to represent the effect of living in each type of religious culture compared with living in Protestant societies, net of all prior controls. Value scales: Significance (Sig.): ***P = .001; **P = .01; *P = .05. N/s = Not NOTE: significant. s.e. = standard error. B = unstandardized beta coefficients. Beta = standardized beta. Source: World Values Survey/European Values Survey (WVS), pooled sample 1981–2001. To examine the consistency of this pattern among particular countries, as well as systematic variations among richer and poorer Protestant societies, the scatter plot in Figure 7.1 illustrates the distribution in more detail. Societies that emphasize the intrinsic value of work most strongly also place the greatest importance on the material rewards as well (there is a strong and significant correlation between the two scales R = .618). The Protestant societies are scattered across the graph but are mostly located in the bottom-left quadrant, indicating nations that are consistently low on both the intrinsic and the material work scales. This includes the more affluent Protestant societies such as Finland and Denmark, but also Latvia and Zimbabwe. The United States is relatively high among Protestant societies in its work ethic, although moderate in comparison with all countries of the world. The Orthodox and Catholic societies are also scattered around the middle of the distribution, whereas by contrast most (not all) of the Muslim societies are high in both dimensions of the work ethic, including Jordan, Morocco, Indonesia, Turkey, and Nigeria, as well as Egypt and Bangladesh. Figure 7.1. Work values by Religious Culture. Source: World Values Survey/European Values Survey (WVS), pooled sample 1981–2000. Our conclusion is reinforced by Figure 7.2, which compares how far people believe t ... Purchase answer to see full attachment