Globalization was seen by many as a force that crushed differences. There is also evidence of this: large corporations and brands dominate the consumer behavior of people worldwide. And if everyone ends up carrying the same phones in their pockets, wearing the same shoes and the same clothes, eating at the same chain restaurants, streaming the same music, watching the same movies and connecting with each other on the same social media platforms – then The values of people around the world would have to adapt, right?
This idea is at least present in foreign policy concepts such as (failed) change through trade and the basic idea that economic interdependence almost inevitably brings freedom and democracy in its wake. However, the opposite may be the case: As an analysis of data from 76 countries shows, values have diverged worldwide in the years between 1981 and 2022. This is particularly true for views that have to do with tolerance and individual freedom.
The countries of the wealthy West are therefore becoming increasingly different from countries in Africa or South and East Asia. This is what Joshua Conrad Jackson and Danila Medvedev from the University of Chicago report in the specialist journal Nature Communications. The two social scientists evaluated data from the representative World Values Survey. To this end, 406,185 participants from 76 countries have regularly provided information about attitudes and values over the past 40 years. The aim of the analysis was to measure the cultural differences of a total of 40 relevant values, most of which have to do with openness, tolerance and obedience in a broader sense.
An example of how values diverge are ideas about raising children. In 1981, 39 percent of Australians and 32 percent of Pakistani respondents said that child obedience was important. In 2022, only 18 percent of Australians supported this view, while 49 percent of Pakistanis surveyed supported this view. Jackson and Medvedev observed similar developments on issues such as the acceptance of homosexuality, euthanasia, divorce, prostitution and abortion. In these areas, the values between the wealthy nations of the West and those in other countries diverged particularly sharply during the study period.
Globally, values are apparently drifting apart. Regionally, however, the opposite appears to be the case. Countries that are geographically and therefore culturally close to one another show greater overlap in values over time.
Does this speak for the thesis of a clash of civilizations?
If values increasingly diverge from one another, there is a risk of new international conflicts. In countries in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, for example, there is an increasingly negative, sometimes hostile attitude towards Western states – and probably associated with this, also towards the values of these countries. “Our study suggests that globalization and the associated contact between groups are not sufficient to bring social values closer together,” write Jackson and Medvedev. The view that growing prosperity promotes the spread of tolerance and emancipatory values may only apply to individual regions of the world and not to the entire globe.
The researchers cannot make any statements about why this is the case. However, Jackson and Medvedev draw one conclusion from their observations: they argue that the development of a kind of universal civilization on earth that one day shares democratic values and honors the freedom of the individual is rather unlikely. Rather, their results speak for the theses that Samuel Huntington put forward in his work “Clash of Civilizations” in the 1990s. In it, the American political scientist outlined the scenario according to which the 21st century would be dominated by conflicts between cultural areas, such as between the West and China and the Islamic world.
Whatever is true in the end, one thing is certain: economic development and cooperation alone do not necessarily allow freedom and democracy to flourish.