ACSP-CPSA, LONDON 2005

Income and cultural identification in Europe:

the Unknown Soldier and the Che Guevara Syndromes

SÉBASTIEN DUBÉ ET RAUL MAGNI BERTON

***Draft : please do not cite without the authors’ agreement. Comments are welcome***

Paper presented at the Annual Congress of the Canadian Association of Political Science

London, Ontario June 2-4, 2005

1

Income and culture in Europe: the Unknown Soldier and the Che Guevara Syndromes

Introduction

The links between economy and political attitudes and behaviour have been a

major concern in the scientific literature. In the subfield of electoral studies, many

authors have explored the possible relation between macroeconomic indicators and

electoral choices (for a broad overview, see especially Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier 2000).

Although a lot of efforts have been put in looking for direct relations between income and

the economy on the one hand and political behaviour and vote preferences on the other

hand, the research has given few solid theoretical findings. Many relationships have been

discovered but the results provided by the various authors working on these issues have

given few elements useful in a comparative perspective. As Lewis-Beck argues in an

overview of the literature on economic voting, the economic indicator useful to predict

voters’ choices is not the same in all countries (2000: 211). The truth is that it may also

be different among the voters of the same country. Hence, the broad intuition is that there

is a strong and direct relation between economy and political behaviour. Referring to

Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier again, we may agree that “Among the issues on the typical

voter’s agenda, none is more consistently present, nor generally has a stronger impact,

than the economy” (2000: 211).

In opposition to the studies that assume the macroeconomy to be the major

determinant of electoral choices, other scholars have posited the idea that the

macroeconomy has an indirect effect because it influences people’s values. However, it

2

would be these values that would strongly influence political behaviour. Among those

who adopt the second perspective, Inglehart (1990, 1997) has pushed the argument a step

further. Comparing World Values Surveys data across time and space, he has concluded

that a “culture shift” was going on in Western countries as younger generations were

becoming more concerned by “postmaterialist issues” such as environment, human rights

and men/women equity than by traditional materialist issues like economic development.

Still, economy plays a central role in this cultural argument. For Inglehart, what

determines the kind of issues for which an individual will be concerned is directly related

to the level of economic and physical security experienced during her socialization

period. According to this idea, values evolve with the general development of a country,

and, in particular, with its national GDP per capita. Criticized among other things for the

indicators composing the post-materialist index (Clarke and Dutt 1991), Inglehart’s is

nevertheless one of the only theories to hypothesize a relationship between personal

economic situation and values.

Post-materialist theory also provided an alternative to Marxist theory, according

to which social class determines the individual’s vision of the world. For Marxist theory,

the individual economic situation (in opposition with country’s economic situation)

influences people’s values. More precisely, the influence of a country’s development on

values depends, in the Marxist view, on the type of development (capitalist, feudalist

etc.), but not on the degree of development (as, for instance, the wealthy). Following this

idea, in different capitalist societies, all proletarians should have the same values,

independently of the wealth of their country.

3

The objective of this paper is to demonstrate empirically how personal and

national economic contexts influence individuals’ social values and political opinions.

Our main hypothesis is that one’s position toward cultural identity is the result of a

combined effect of personal income and national GDP.

To test our model, we use data from two Eurobarometer surveys conducted in

Western and Eastern Europe countries respectively, during 2004. We therefore consider

28 countries culturally, institutionally and economically much diverse (Belgium,

Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain, France, Ireland, United Kingdom,

Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Finland, Sweden, Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech

Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia,

Slovenia, Turkey).

Section 1. Value and income: Theories and hypotheses

To demonstrate that both levels of analysis have an effect on Europeans’ values,

we are interested in the preferences identified by poor and rich individuals in both poor

and wealthy countries. It is possible to distinguish poor people living in rich countries

and rich people living in poor countries. As a complement, we will also look briefly at the

preferences and concerns of poor individuals living in poor countries and of rich

individuals living in wealthy countries. For each of these four categories, we expect

major differences in attitudes and issue concerns toward cultural identification.

Concretely, our intuition leads us to assess the following hypotheses:

4

1. Individuals’ political attitudes vary within one country, according to personal income.

2. Rich people and poor people respectively share some attitudes and concerns on a

variety of issues notwithstanding the level of economic development of their country.

The hypotheses that individual and national level incomes influence personal attitudes are

based on the following general psychological assumptions:

H: People value what validates them.

Several works have shown the relation between self-perception and beliefs

adoption. Concretely, individuals develop values coherent with the proposition “I’m a

good guy” (Bem, D. J. 1972). In continuity with this scholar, we suppose here that people

adopt normative beliefs coherent with the idea that they could be among the best persons.

Hence, different material conditions of living will cause different values, which brings us

back to the idea that income has a direct effect on values. Nevertheless, we also expect

that, at some point, all rich and poor individuals share the same concerns, no matter the

society they live in.

Looking especially at the attitudes of poor individuals in rich countries and of rich

individuals in poor countries, we base our set of hypotheses on the principle that citizens’

first value what they have and provides them a sentiment of pride and belonging. Even if

they are deeply attached to their nationality, individuals will attach importance to sub-

national or trans-national groups they think they belong to, and value their characteristics.

In the context of our European sample, we posit the following two hypotheses:

3. Poor individuals of rich countries value their nationality since it is a sense of pride

for them.

5

4. Rich people of poor countries don’t value their nationality as much and are therefore more attached to the community of European countries they think they belong to.

The implications of our hypotheses are theoretically important. Even though we

do not make voting predictions out of them, we will propose some theoretical

explanations to public opinion toward European Union enlargement or the support for

right-wing parties. In fact, if they were confirmed, our hypotheses should allow drafting

theories explaining the rationale of the discourse that attract voters on these issues. For

now, here is the rationale behind our model.

The poor among the rich

The poorest individuals living in developed, rich country should be, in general,

less happy with the way their life goes than richer individuals. These citizens are also in a

somewhat paradoxical situation. Individually, they are at the lower end of the social

hierarchy while, internationally, they are at its highest level. Incapable to find in their

immediate environment sources of pride, they transpose this sentiment at the national

level, taking advantage of the fact that their country performs well at the regional or the

international level. They also develop a certain attachment to their state since they rely

more than others on social programs and other services provided by their government.

Finally, their main competitors are the immigrants who move into their country and

compete with them for low-income and unqualified employment and as beneficiaries of

social programs. For these reasons, we should expect that the affluence of a country and

6

the poverty of the individual tend to favour the adoption of strong nationalistic and

identity values. Therefore, we expect these individuals to:

5. Be more proud of their nationality than their rich fellow citizens 6. Be more unfavourable to immigration than rich people 7. Be more concerned by issues related to social programs 8. Be favourable to the protection of their cultural identity

The rich among the poor

The situation of the rich individuals living in poor countries is quite different from

the one of the poor living in rich countries. Even though they are also numerically in a

minority situation, they usually occupy the political and economic higher posts in their

society. Since their country is poor, their nationality is not a major source of pride for

them. To the contrary, they identify with their social group and with Europe. They are

also more likely to travel, study or to work abroad. For them, the state is a tool that can

bolster their personal benefits and they maintain a strictly instrumental and non-

sentimental relation with it. For these reasons, we should expect that the poverty of a

country and the affluence of the individual tend to favour the promotion of the values of

cultural diversity and openness that attenuate the weight of national identity. Therefore,

their behaviour should be characterized in the following ways:

9. They value more than others the mobility provided by the European Union 10. They are less proud of their nationality 11. They have a greater sense of belonging to the European community 12. Immigration is a minor issue of concern for them 13. Security is a greater issue of concern for them 14. Cultural diversity is of great value for them and they believe it should be

amplified

7

To give a clear image of the two stereotypes of individuals depicted, we refer to

two mythical characters that, according to us, represent well the two values sets

presented. These are the Unknown Soldier and Che Guevara.

The Unknown Soldier is a frequent mythical image present in the countries that

participated in the World Wars of the Twentieth century. It depicts the image of a fearless

full-hearted heroic anonymous man who was ready to risk his life for his country. Rather

than a wealthy businessman wearing Italian suits, the image of the Unknown Soldier is

more compatible with the one of the hard-worker, whether in the factories or in the fields.

In spite of his difficult living conditions, this man gets the call from the battleground to

fight for what he cherishes: his country and his way of life.

The Che Guevara syndrome, as it says, refers to the Argentine “bourgeois” doctor

from a wealthy family who spends some of his leisure time to cross South America back

and forth on a motorcycle during his holidays. For Ernesto “Che” Guevara, there is no

such thing as nationalism and national pride or identity. The sense of belonging is to a

broader group. Cultural diversity is a good thing, relations and cooperation with “others”

are fundamental. Even though not all “bourgeois” pursue the same goals as Che

Guevara’s, the idea here is that for them, nationality is more an obstacle than a source of

pride and devotion.

It is worth highlighting that the reference to Che Guevara and the Unknown

Soldier places us in a different scheme than the traditional left-right axis. This comes

from the fact that internationalization is extolled not just by centrist and rightist

neoliberals but also by far-left Trotskyites, while national culture protection is promoted

by both the far-right and the leftist communitarian movements. Therefore, what attracts

8

our attention is not the left-right cleavage but which community of values individuals see

themselves belonging to. And, as the two syndromes modeled predict, the poor living in

rich countries identify themselves with the nation while the rich living in poor countries

identify themselves with the global community; to them borders are obstacles and

provide few advantages.

What about the poor among the poor and the rich among the rich ?

Though we mainly focus on the two preceding groups of citizens and the

hypotheses related to them, it is worth speculating, following the logic exposed, what we

should expect from the remaining two categories of individuals: the poor people living in

poor countries and the rich people living in rich countries.

As we said before, on the one hand, we expect individuals to value what gives

them pride and a sense of belonging. On the other hand, we expect them to base their

political attitudes on these sources of high self-esteem. Since the poor citizens living in

poor countries hardly find sources of pride in their personal environment and in their

country, we expect them to transpose their hope and belonging to supranational and non-

material levels. Having little reasons to hope that their life will improve, we expect them

to be more attached to religion and religious institutions. This is what we call the Mother

Theresa Syndrome1. But still, we expect the poor Europeans of the poorest countries of

1 Mother Theresa used to define herself like this : “ By my blood, I am Albanese. By nationality, I am Indian. By my faith, I am a religious Catholic. By my appeal, I belong to the world.” (Par mon sang, je suis albanaise. Par ma nationalité, indienne. Par ma foi, je suis une religieuse catholique. Pour ce qui est de mon appel, j’appartiens au monde.”) http://www.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/saints/ns_lit_doc_20031019_madre-teresa_fr.html

9

the continent to be attracted by entities such as the European Union since, as Europeans,

they would pertain to a community among the world’s top of the hierarchy.

In contrast, the rich who live in rich countries can find in their personal situation

and in their country a source of pride and satisfaction. Their main objectives are to

remain at their level of living with their material life and to improve what surrounds them

and that is non-material. Like Louis XIV, their basic needs are filled so they want their

environment to be beautiful, and clean. This is why the one who used to call himself the

“Sun King” represents the fourth category of individuals of our model. Table 1 resumes

the dominant aspects of each of the four categories of individuals that we have identified

and the name of the syndrome that describes their respective behaviour.

Table 1 : Individual categories and their concerns

Poor individuals Rich individuals Poor countries Religion – Mother

Theresa Cultural Diversity – Che

Guevara Rich countries Cultural identity

protection – The Unknown Soldier

Environnement – Louis XIV

In Table 1, we refer to some examples of values that are influenced by the

income, both at the national and the individual level. Nevertheless, among these

examples, we focus on a hot political issue in European countries, the question of identity

and cultural diversity. Broadly speaking, our assumption is that poor individuals develop

values of belonging to the nation if they live in a rich country or a broader community

(i.e. religion) if they live in a poor country. On the opposite side, the rich individuals tend

to prone more universal values such as cultural diversity and environment since their

10

basic needs are satisfied at the individual level. Moreover, our model predicts that the

citizens of poor countries tend to concede more importance to issues that transcend their

country and offer far-flung perspectives of amelioration of their level of living while the

citizens of rich countries seem willing to favour the status quo, oppose structural change

and support esthetical amelioration to their life.

Rather than the traditional left-right scheme, the two cleavages that we expect are

based on the opposition between “communitarianism” and universalism. They also

concern the influence of individual success and the preference between change and status

quo related to the GDP. About the religion factor, it should be stressed that rather than

look at it in the traditional perspective that relates it to conservatism, we retain the fact

that it promotes a better life, before and/or after death. The next section describes the

methodology we use to test our set of hypotheses.

Methodology The data used to test our model is provided by two Eurobarometer surveys

conducted respectively in West and East European countries. Hence, our sample is of

about 30 000 respondents of the 28 countries mentioned earlier. In many cases, both

surveys provide the opportunity to compare the results across the whole sample since

they contain many common questions, formulated and coded the same way. The model

we test is hierarchical and crosses per capita GDP with individual variables.

The dependent variables Our main goal is to explain attachment to four different values : identity, cultural

diversity, religion and environment.

11

Identity: Here we examine those who tended to answer that they fear that the construction of the EU means a loss of their identity and their national culture. The question listed a number of concerns that “some people are afraid of” and this reference to identity was among the elements cited. We treat it as a dummy variable, which means that it takes the value of (1) when mentioned and (0) when it is not mentioned by the respondents. Cultural diversity : Cultural diversity was mentioned into a list of potential meaning of the EU for the respondents. The way it is formulated tends to differentiate it from the loss of cultural identity, giving cultural diversity a positive image. We coded this variable as (1) when it was mentioned as a personal meaning of the EU and as (0) when it was not mentioned. Religion: For this variable, we look to a question designed to identify whether or not respondents have confidence in religious institutions. Unfortunately, this question is the only one related to religion and is less precise than one measuring the frequency of attendance to religious services. However, we use confidence as a proxy for validation and importance and code the answers as a dummy variable: (1) for having confidence; (0) for not having confidence in religion. Environment: This question is a little differently formulated since it asks respondents what issues the electoral campaign for the next European elections should focus on. We coded this variable as follows: (1) the mention of the environment and (0) an answer not mentioning this issue.

It is important to specify that we refer to different open questions to test our

model. We are aware that this may pose difficulties for the analysis since the formulation

may not always allow us to draw the line clearly between what is a value, what is a fear

and what is just an issue of concern. Nevertheless, using various open questions has a

major advantage since it does not invite the respondents to compare the values or to order

preferences. Therefore, we are convinced that in this context, when a respondent points to

her considerations, she is referring to the values that are among the most important for

her.

The independent variables

12

To test our model, we use the following sociological indicators as independent

variables : age, the level of education defined by the number of years of education, the

population size of the community where the respondent lives (1 for rural area; 2 for a

small town; 3 for a big city), and gender. For the income, we use the data provided by the

survey that classifies respondents in four categories (1 being the poorest; 4 the richest).

Finally, we created the national GDP variable by using macroeconomic statistics

provided by Eurostat.

Results

The following table includes the results taken from the verification of our

hypotheses.

Table 2: Our model tested NOUVEAUX RESULTATS Final estimation of fixed effects (with robust standard errors) -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Religion Identité cult. Diversité cult. Environnement (confiance) (crainte de perdre) (UE représente) (probleme)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Constant .4371***(.0836) .2918*** (.0623) .2402*** (.0562) .0201 (.0161) GDP -.0009 (.0006) .0013* (.0005) -.0011* (.0005) .0002* (.0001) INCOME -.0143** (.0047) -.0219*** (.0040) .0350*** (.0031) .0028 (.0020) AGE .0041***(.0003) .0018*** (.0004) -.0017*** (.0002) -.0002** (.0001) EDUC. -.0028***(.0006) -.0029*** (.0006) .0044*** (.0008) .0003 (.0002) SEX .0809***(.0110) .0384*** (.0072) .0110 (.0080) -.0030 (.0026) AGGLOM. -.0315** (.0087) -.0188* (.0077) .0359*** (.0085) .0020 (.0021) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As we can see, if we only consider the income variable, our hypotheses are,

globally, confirmed. The fear of losing one’s cultural identity is significantly more

present in the richer countries and among the poorest citizens. On the opposite side, those

who think that the EU represents cultural diversity tend to be the richest members of

poorest European countries. The Unknown Soldier and the Che Guevara syndromes as

13

we described them therefore seem to be really present in the public opinion of the

European countries.

The complementary two other hypotheses are less clearly verified. Religion seems

to attract the poorest but the relation with national level of development is weak

significant, though in the direction predicted (p = .13). Finally, environment seems to be a

preoccupation of rich individuals living in the richest countries but the influence of the

individual income is also poorly significant (p = .19).

Among the sociodemographic variables, we observe that environment and cultural

diversity have more attraction on the young, the more educated and urban citizens.

Interestingly, we also observe the exact opposite trend with religion and identity. This

tends to demonstrate that there truly exists a sociodemographic cleavage between the pair

environment/diversity and the pair religion/identity. This cleavage seems to indicate a

structural change: a shift of values from rural and low-educated people to urban and

highly-educated citizens. This trend corresponds to our model as it marks a difference

between rich and poor individuals but it does not follow the postulates of the post-

materialist model that supposes differences among rich and poor countries (Inglehart

1990, 1997). In fact, the citizens of the rich countries tend to believe in values of national

identity and environment while those of the poorest countries rather select religion and

cultural diversity. It is important to stress here that affluence is taken in relative and not

absolute terms. Finally, the results lead us to conclude that a growth of global wealth has

produced a change in individual values.

Section 2

14

Material preoccupations

Personal and national economic conditions certainly influence citizens’ material

preoccupations. Besides our model tested in the first part of this paper, we also claim that

non-material values influence the kind of material preoccupations that individuals have.

In fact, the way a person perceives the “norm”, or to say it otherwise “the way things

should be”, determines how she perceives the faults in her life (Rios and Magni Berton

2003). In the end, this means that economic conditions influence values and values

consolidate the influence of income on preoccupations. This scheme represents the

relations between income, non-material values and material preoccupations:

Income preoccupations Values

The first part of this paper was focused on the principle values that individuals

have according to their personal income and the level of development of the country they

live in. This second section is aimed at demonstrating the concrete political implications

that this value classification has on three classic preoccupations: (1) social protection; (2)

defence; and (3) inflation.

Theoretically, social protection should be an issue important for the citizens who

expect benefits from the state. Poverty should therefore be a cause of preoccupation for

social protection simply because the poorest individuals of a society are the first ones to

15

benefit from it. Also, the wealth of a country will have an effect on the attachment to

social protection because only the richest countries have the capacity to offer major social

programs. This is the first example of the relationship that our model predicts between

income, values and preoccupations.

Our second example, Defence is a collective good that concerns each and every

citizen of a country, poor or rich. We believe that rich individuals should be more

preoccupied by this issue because they are the ones that have the most to lose in living in

a non-secure society. Also, at the aggregate level, the populations that should care the

most about defence are the ones who experience insecurity the most and who estimate

that their country does not do enough to protect them. Therefore, we expect that both the

individual affluence and the poverty of the country to be factors explaining the

importance given to this issue. Nevertheless, they should not be the only relevant factors.

Attachment to the values of cultural diversity and boundary openness should also

influence the importance of the defence issue. While our model predicted identity values

to concentrate on national issues, diversity values lead individuals to concentrate on

international preoccupations like the opportunity to move to a secure area without risking

to lose its assets. Therefore, the belief in cultural diversity should be another factor

influencing attitudes toward the defence issue.

Finally, inflation concerns all the citizens of a polity but primarily the poorest

individuals since they are simply more vulnerable to inflation. Hence, poverty – whether

individual or collective – should explain the preoccupation for this issue. Table 3 resumes

the material preoccupation influenced by values as predicted by our model.

16

Table 3 : Income and material preoccupations

Countries Individuals Poor Rich Poor Inflation Defence Rich Social Advantages ***

We do not relate any material preoccupation to the situation of the rich citizens of

the rich countries. We believe that their preoccupations are essentially instrumental and

destined to preserve status quo. Since their material needs are satisfied and not really

threatened, their objective can be resumed to the preservation of the social and economic

system so that they could conserve what they have and have the possibility to increase

their assets.

In order to test these hypotheses about material preoccupations, we use the

previous hierarchical model and the same independent variables. In addition, we

transform the dependent variables of the first model (previous section) in independent

variables. As we have already explained it, the values of cultural diversity, identity,

religion and ecology should influence the material preoccupations.

To test the effect of our three independent variables, we have used the results to

the questions of Eurobarometer: on the fear of a loss of social advantages, and of the

importance of inflation and defence as main issue concerns. In all of the three cases, the

variables are dummy and equal to 1 if the respondent agrees with the proposition and 0 if

she disagrees.

17

Results

Table 4: Empirical verification of a relation between income, value, and material preoccupation

Final estimation of fixed effects (with robust standard errors) -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Avantages sociaux Défense Inflation (crainte) (enjeu) (problème)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Constant .2220***(.0505) .3369*** (.0532) .3529*** (.0479) PIBHAB .0016** (.0005) -.0016** (.0005) -.0010* (.0004) REVENU -.0289***(.0042) .0161*** (.0042) -.0143** (.0040) AGE .0004***(.0003) .0007** (.0003) -.0010*** (.0002) AGEETUDE .0009 (.0006) .0019** (.0007) .0001 (.0006) SEXE .0447***(.0069) -.0410*** (.0070) .0154* (.0056) VILLERUR -.0134* (.0061) .0039 (.0081) -.0093 (.0066) DIVCULT -.0686***(.0108) .1541*** (.0128) -.0170* (.0076) IDCULT .3931***(.0182) -.0214** (.0075) -.0084 (.0082) ENVIR -.0135 (.0157) -.0104 (.0200) -.0335 (.0227) RELIG -.0394***(.0086) .0106 (.0092) .0067 (.0063) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The results presented in Table 4 clearly confirm our hypotheses with respect to

social protection and defence. The fear of losing social advantages is, like the issue of

identity, influenced by the fact of having a lower income and living in a country with a

high GDP per capita. The socio-demographic profile of the respondents who are afraid to

lose social advantages is, as predicted, basically identical to the one of those who are

scared of losing their national identity. In fact, only the level of education is not

significant in the relation with social advantages.

When we look at non-material values, only the issue of cultural identity has a

significant, strong, and direct impact on social advantages preoccupations. Trust in

religion and cherishing cultural diversity influence negatively the preoccupation for

social advantages and the impact of the preoccupation for environment is not significant.

Hence, our hypothesis is confirmed: welfare state preoccupations are influenced by a

combination of individual income and national GDP and by a particular set of values

18

related to identity. However, as we have demonstrated, if income and values are related

to each other, identity values reinforce the influence of income on material values.

With respect to our second issue, the results show that both individual affluence

and collective poverty actuate preoccupations with defence. Also, the more a respondent

thinks that the construction of the Europe Union will bring cultural diversity, the more

she will be preoccupied by defence. The relation between the two elements is positive,

strong and significant. The impact of the other values on preoccupations about defence is,

nevertheless, not significant except for the cultural identity which has a negative, and

weaker, effect.

It is also interesting to stress that when we compare the population of individuals

attached to cultural diversity with those preoccupied with defence other findings stand

out. The young believe in diversity but defence preoccupies the old. This could be

interpreted as a culture shift similar as the one pointed to by Inglehart but if it really were

the case, we could not explain the strong relation between diversity and preoccupation for

defence. The results obtained rather point toward an individual interpretation. Our

intuition leads us to affirm that citizens attach importance to defence and to diversity and

that the former issue becomes more important as one gets older. Intuitively, we assess

that diversity brings more competition among individuals and that young, wealthy

individuals are confident enough to desire it. On the other hand, older individuals are less

ambitious and need more incentives making them feel well-protected.

Finally, like the importance of religion, we see that fear of inflation is more

present among the poorest citizens of the poorest countries. The socio-demographic

factors that influence the former usually have the same effect on the latter. Also, the

19

different values that we have considered all have a negative influence on the fear of

inflation except religion. The relation is, however, only weakly significant. Globally, the

results lead us to conclude that (1) material preoccupations are simultaneously influenced

by income and values and (2) values have a reinforcement effect on the preoccupations

that we had predicted in our model.

Discussion

What are the political consequences of our results? Our claim is that there are two

kinds of concrete implications that deserve to be stressed. The first concerns the mere

political impact it may have while the second focuses on the “quantitative” level of

impact it could possibly have in the future.

During the last few years, European politics have been marked by many political

events and phenomena that had been far from predicted. One of them was the rise of

extreme-right parties in some countries. The performance of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the

leader of the Front national at the French presidential election of 2002 was shocking for

some people but surprising for almost everyone (reference). A couple years before, Jorg

Haider had provoked a political earthquake in Austria with the performance of its party

and more recently, a similar kind of movement was rising in the Netherlands around the

person of Pim Fortuyn. It is important not to overvalue the support that these politicians

have gained and it is also true that the following elections, to speak for the Dutch and

Austrian cases especially, have shown that their movements seemed to have been

somewhat ephemeral. Nevertheless, it is fundamental to stress that these three examples

occurred in some of Europe’s richest countries, not among its poorest. Moreover, these

20

political parties gained importance in a period of rapid development for the European

Union institutions and talks of major enlargement toward the East. We would need to

push the research further to see if these events are really correlated but in our opinion, the

model we proposed might give some hints that help explain the performance at the polls

of extreme-right political parties. If our model was proven as a good tool to explain who

voted for far-right parties in the three countries cited, we could be able to predict which

countries are the most susceptible to a rise of extremist parties.

The second aspect of our contribution points to the weight of the impact just

mentioned. Off course, it would be wrong to say that there has been a wave of far-right

and radical parties in Europe during the last decade. But still, it is possible to predict that

in most European countries, EU enlargement and its institutions, cultural diversity and

immigration will stay among the major political issues and may get an increasing

importance. Linguistic and citizenship legislations in the Baltic states, the integration of

Turkey within the EU, and the place of religion and religious symbols in French society

are just a few of the national/international issues that are high on the political agenda of

the authorities concerned and are all issues directly related to the indicators of our model.

As Dalton (2000) and Cox (1997) have revealed, culture is still an important source of

cleavages in the polities and if it gained importance on issues like the economy in these

times of integration and enlargement, we may expect more reactions in the electorates in

the direction put forward by our model for the different categories of individuals. It is

precisely our intuition that culture will gain greater political importance in the years to

come, especially in Europe.

21

Conclusion

Our objective with this paper was to demonstrate empirically that both individual

income and national level of economic development directly influence individuals’

values. Rather than debating whether voters, for example, determine their preferences in

a pocketbook or a sociotropic perspective, we believe that scholars of public opinion

should reject the idea that the two approaches are mutually exclusive and look for the

specific effects of each of them. With our model, we also propose an alternative to post-

materialist index to explain the different value shifts observable and which are sometimes

translated in changes in individuals’ voting behaviour. Finally, we have proposed a model

that could explain empirically electoral phenomena and events such as the rise of far-

right parties and the support – or rejection – of the enlargement project of the European

Union.

Bibliography Bem, D. J. (1972). Self-perception theory. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, (Vol. 6, pp. 1-62). New York: Academic Press. Bem, D. J. (1967). Self-Perception: An alternative interpretation of cognitive dissonance phenomena. Psychological Review, 74, 183-200. Clarke, Harold and Nitish Dutt (1991). “Measuring Value Change in Western Industrialized Societies : The Impact of Unemployment”, APSR, Volume 85, No 3, September, p. 905-920. Cox, Gary W. (1997) Making Votes Count, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,. Dalton, Russell J. (2000) « Citizen Attitudes and Political Behavior », Comparative Political Studies, Vol 33, No 6-7, August-September. Inglehart, Ronald (1990). Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society, Princeton, Princeton University Press.

22

23

Inglehart, Ronald (1997). Modernization and postmodernization: cultural, economic, and political change in 43 societies, Princeton, Princeton University Press. Lewis-Beck, Michael S. and Mary Stegmaier (2000). “Economic Determinants of Electoral Outcomes”, Annual Review of Political Science, p. 183-219. Rios D. and Magni Berton R. (2003) La misere des intellectuels, Paris, L’harmattan.