The dialectics of universalism and particularism: World society,religious traditions,and women’s political representation,1960

Abstract

Spanish

French

This study develops a model of macro-cultural identity inspired by the work of George Herbert Mead. The model puts world society theory, which emphasizes the homogenizing effects of ‘world culture,’ into conversation with civilization-analytic perspectives, which contend that religious and civilizational differences grow increasingly salient over time. The author regards these approaches as dialectically co-implicated. To test the model, the article analyzes cross-cultural heterogeneity in the effects of world society linkages on women’s share of parliamentary seats between 1960 and 2013. Countries are grouped into cultural zones based primarily on religious composition and secondarily on geographical region. The results generally support world society theory. Contrary to civilization-analytic perspectives, cultural resistance to women’s representation is most pronounced early but fades over time. Despite overall increases in women’s representation, there is little cross-cultural convergence, giving rise to improvement without isomorphism. The study concludes with a refined model of world society effects.

Keywords

Civilizations culture INGOs Mead women’s rights

This study uses women’s representation in national parliaments as an empirical touchstone for developing and testing a model of cultural dynamics in a globalizing world. The model proposes that distinct and at times countervailing macro-cultural forces are at work in shaping outcomes such as women’s political empowerment.

Gender equality has become a highly institutionalized global norm that influences national policies and practices around the globe. World society theory draws attention to the worldwide diffusion of women’s rights standards, which produces cross-national convergence in women’s economic, political, and social outcomes (Berkovitch, 1999; Cole, 2013; Ramirez et al., 1997). World society theorists expect women’s rights standards to diffuse widely despite cultural and religious divisions (Meyer et al., 1997).

Nevertheless, cross-cultural differences in support for gender equality and women’s rights persist (Cole and Geist, 2018; Inglehart and Norris, 2003; Okin, 1999). Traditional cultural norms, especially those anchored in religion, pose formidable obstacles that impede women’s empowerment. Patriarchal understandings of gender roles and relations arise out of ‘exceptionally deep-rooted cultural norms that . . . showed little change for many centuries’ (Inglehart, 2018: 91). Such firmly entrenched norms are unlikely to change rapidly or capitulate easily to international discourses.

Empirical evidence supports both sets of conclusions, sometimes in the very same studies. Paxton et al. (2006), for example, demonstrate that world society linkages increase the rate at which countries achieve milestones for women’s parliamentary representation, but they also conclude that religious legacies continue to matter. Research has yet to consider how these forces might interact. To what extent do religious or ‘civilizational’ identities condition world-cultural influences? Might extended contact with globalizing agents spark reactionary counter-movements in countries dominated by traditional cultures? Alternatively, does long-term exposure to world society erode cultural differences over time, resulting in isomorphic outcomes?

To address these questions, I put world society theory into conversation with civilization-analytic approaches in sociology. World society theory stresses the homogenizing effects of cultural globalization, whereas civilization-analytic perspectives recognize the sui generis individuality of civilizational cultures (Durkheim and Mauss, 1971) and the enduring influence of religious ethics, even in secular societies (Weber, 1991 [1922]). Using the work of George Herbert Mead, I develop a model that views global and civilizational cultural forces as dialectically co-implicated in the formation of national identities. I use this model to hypothesize variation in women’s parliamentary representation for 139 countries between 1960 and 2013, classifying countries into a dozen cultural zones based primarily on religious composition and secondarily on geographical region. Regression analyses then explore the culturally heterogeneous effects of world society linkages on women’s political representation.

Overall, the results support predictions advanced by world society theorists, although the processes involved are more dynamic and less uniform than typically acknowledged. Before 1991, world society linkages reduced women’s parliamentary representation in large parts of the world. From 1991 onward, however, world society ties increased women’s share of parliamentary seats in several cultural zones. This temporal pattern contradicts predictions advanced by many civilization-analytic approaches, which expect cultural contestation to increase over time as non-Western countries develop, globalization intensifies, or Western cultural hegemony wanes. Instead, the results suggest that cultural resistance to world society is strongest early on but fades with time.

The findings also modify basic tenets of world society theory. Despite nearly universal improvement in women’s parliamentary representation over time, there is little cross-cultural convergence; rather, I find improvement without isomorphism, with trajectories varying based on deep-seated religious and cultural legacies. I conclude by advancing a refined model of world society effects.

Universalism, particularism, and national identities

Social scientists often take the existence of unitary ‘actors,’ whether individuals or nation-states, for granted. This tendency ignores the externally constructed and internally fragmented nature of selves and states (Meyer and Jepperson, 2000; Meyer et al., 1997). National identities, like individual personalities, are multidimensional. Drawing on Mead’s theory of selfhoold (2015 [1934]), I theorize the nature and consequences of national identity in a globalizing world. Mead contends that selves develop out of an ongoing dialogical and dialectical relationship between social conformity and individual distinctiveness. He took a similar approach to the development of nations within international society (Mead, 1915, 1929, 2015 [1934]).

Mead’s theory of the individual distinguishes the ‘me’ from the ‘I.’ The ‘me’ is the part of one’s self constituted by society; it assimilates the attitudes and expectations of others, including the ‘generalized other’ as an organized set of societal norms, expectations, and assumptions (Mead, 2015 [1934]). In contrast, the ‘I’ is one’s uniquely spontaneous and innovative self, which responds and reacts to the attitudes of others. In so responding and reacting, the ‘I’ has a choice: it can adjust to its social environment, or it can resist and ‘fight it out’ (Mead, 2015 [1934]: 193).

In Mead’s formulation, the ‘me’ becomes isomorphic with other ‘me-selves’ interacting within a shared social context,¹ whereas the ‘I’ is different from all other ‘I-selves.’ Nevertheless, the ability of each ‘I’ to take a reflexive stance toward itself presupposes the existence of a socially constituted ‘me,’ as ‘we cannot realize ourselves except in so far as we can recognize the other in his relationship to us’ (Mead, 2015 [1934]: 194).

Mead suggested that national identity – what he called ‘national-mindedness’ – emerges from a similar tension between commonality and individuality (Mead, 1929).² The process begins when nations engage in an ongoing ‘intercourse of ideas’ with one another (Mead, 1915: 605). Some of these ideas become ‘internationalized’ and even ‘universal,’ laying the foundations of an international society. At the same time, nations become conscious of their distinctiveness in interaction with each other. Social interchange among nations therefore produces both shared meanings and heightened awareness of salient differences. These twin processes of universalization and relativization are inextricably linked, because ‘no nation could come to consciousness as a nation except within international society’ (Mead, 1915: 605).

Thus, nation-states possess identities analogous to Mead’s ‘me’ and ‘I.’ A state is both an externally constituted ‘us’ that incorporates the common attitudes and expectations of international society and a distinctive ‘we’ that differentiates it from other nations. For world society theorists, an exogenous world culture supplies the constitutive building blocks and institutional blueprints that give shape to the ontological ‘us’ of nation-statehood. Conversely, for scholars in the civilization-analytic tradition, deeply entrenched civilizational and religious legacies undergird the culturally expressive ‘we’ of national identities.

Constituting the ‘us’ of states: World society theory

World society theorists posit the existence of a world culture that defines the core structures and purposes of nation-states (Meyer et al., 1997). A relatively standardized set of organizational models, policy templates, and behavioral scripts inform the basic architectures, agendas, and actions of states worldwide. At first, many countries enact world-cultural precepts in rote or disingenuous fashion, as a means of signaling their legitimacy to one another. Over time, however, these precepts undergo institutionalization, becoming part and parcel of what it means to be a ‘modern’ nation-state. Once institutionalized, alternative ways of organizing or acting are considered deviant or, in extreme cases, rendered unthinkable.

Despite cultural, economic, and political differences across countries, the world society perspective expects their policies to converge around recognizable patterns and practices to drift toward similar outcomes. Several mechanisms produce cross-national isomorphism. Borrowing directly from Mead’s theory, Meyer (1994, 2009) emphasizes the role of generalized or ‘rationalized others’ in the construction of national identities and action programs. These ‘others’ command little by way of formal power or material resources that would enable them to coerce or induce fidelity to the models they propagate. Instead, they serve as culturally authoritative advisors and consultants. ‘Exactly as Mead suggests, they provide identities, structures, and recipes for activity routines that make sense in terms of some larger (nowadays universalized and rationalistic) community’ (Meyer, 1994: 47).

International nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) represent an important category of rationalized others in world society. INGOs embody collective world-cultural principles such as progress, justice, equality, and rights (Boli, 1999). They advise nation-states in these matters and, when necessary, help conventionally powerful ‘others’ hold aberrant states accountable (Keck and Sikkink, 1998).

Although world culture postures as relevant and applicable everywhere in the world, it is far from universal in provenance or substance. It is, rather, a universalized particularism (Robertson, 1992), an outgrowth of the ‘Western cultural account’ (Meyer et al., 1987). World society and its attendant culture is often described as initially Western but now worldwide. Proponents nevertheless insist that as world culture radiated outward from its European geographical base, its ‘Western origins lost much of its salience’ (Frank and Gabler, 2006: 21). World culture is above all the culture of modernity, and the West just happened to modernize first.

Emphasizing the ‘we’ of nations: Civilization-analytic perspectives

Many perspectives challenge the universality of the ‘cultural program of modernity’ (Eisenstadt, 2000: 1), precisely because of its Western genesis. Eisenstadt (2000, 2001), for example, posits the existence of ‘multiple modernities’ that reflect distinct macro-cultural – particularly religious or civilizational – legacies. Non-Western elites and publics adopt some elements of Western modernity while ‘rejecting many of its aspects’ (Eisenstadt, 2000: 14). Societies can modernize ‘without necessarily giving up either specific components of their traditional identities . . . or their negative attitude towards the West’ (Eisenstadt, 2001: 330).

Some commentators even suggest that modernization can revitalize local cultures, strengthen traditional values, and awaken nativist impulses in non-Western countries (Berger, 2014; Berger et al., 1973; Huntington, 1996). According to Huntington (1996: 72–78), modernization disrupts a nation’s traditional norms and social bonds while enhancing its economic, political, and military power. In the midst of large-scale social changes, individuals seek out traditions as a source of comfort and meaning. At the same time, as a nation’s strength grows, so too does its sense of cultural pride and assertiveness. The result is ‘de-Westernization and the resurgence of indigenous culture’ (Huntington, 1996: 76).

As with modernization, global integration can also reinvigorate national or civilizational cultures, producing ‘many globalizations’ (Berger and Huntington, 2002). Although globalization is often thought to generate facile cultural homogenization such as ‘McDonaldization,’ others view it as a culturally relativizing force. Far from homogenizing societies, globalization – the growing consciousness of the world as a whole – heightens awareness of cultural diversity. ‘In an increasingly globalized world,’ Robertson (1992: 131) says, ‘there is an exacerbation of civilizational, societal and ethnic self-consciousness.’ Civilizational consciousness can in turn motivate rejection of the very global processes that enliven it (Robertson, 1992: 79–80).

Berger (2014) sees modernization and globalization as pluralizing forces that intensify cognizance of and contact with diverse cultural identities, normative frameworks, and meaning systems. Pluralization challenges the erstwhile hegemony of traditional and especially religious worldviews, uprooting the sense of certainty and security they once provided. The resulting sense of ‘homelessness’ and anxiety engenders nostalgia for the past, whether real or imagined, and triggers a search for tradition, whether authentic or invented (Berger et al., 1973). Fundamentalism represents one effort to restore ‘the taken-for-granted quality of worldviews which pluralism has undermined’ (Berger, 2014: 65). For Berger, relativism and fundamentalism represent two sides of the same coin.

The same mechanisms thought by world society theorists to promote cross-national isomorphism are decried in other quarters as culturally foreign and hence something to resist. Instead of viewing INGOs as carriers of legitimate world-cultural models and norms, many scholars assail them for being complicit in Western hegemony (Wright, 2012). The INGO sector is largely dominated by Western agendas, financed with Western dollars, and immersed in Western ideologies. Critics denounce INGOs as modern-day ‘saviors’ that seek to spread enlightened norms to benighted ‘savages’ (Mutua, 2002) or ‘Trojan horses’ that infiltrate and reshape societies in unwanted ways (Wallace, 2004).

Some INGOs adopt confrontational ‘shock’ tactics that risk alienating non-Western observers, ‘leading organizations to be labeled as outsiders to existing cultural norms’ (Murdie and Peksen, 2015: 2). Because they lack coercive power, many INGOs orchestrate naming, blaming, and shaming campaigns designed to embarrass targeted governments (Keck and Sikkink, 1998). These encounters can backfire, inciting hostility and retrenchment instead of acquiescence and reform.

Thus, world society theory and civilization-analytic approaches expect the encounter between global and civilizational cultures to produce markedly different outcomes. The former assumes that world-cultural models will become more influential over time as they diffuse around the globe. The latter imply that distinctive cultures and identities will grow increasingly salient, and perhaps become reactionary, as modernization and globalization unfold.

Macro-cultural forces and women’s political representation

To test these alternative models, I analyze cross-cultural differences in women’s political representation, focusing on the share of seats women hold in national parliaments. Although many studies estimate the independent effects of global and civilizational cultural influences on women’s representation (e.g., Cherif, 2015; Fallon et al., 2012; Paxton et al., 2006), work has yet to consider their joint or interactive effects.

World conferences illustrate the dynamic I have in mind. In the world society perspective, these meetings serve as global rituals that promote the institutionalization and diffusion of ‘sacred’ global norms (Boli and Lechner, 2005). United Nations conferences on human and women’s rights, for example, encouraged countries to ratify women’s rights treaties (Wotipka and Ramirez, 2008) and establish government ministries for women (True and Mintrom, 2001).

Yet conferences also mobilize opposition to the very principles they seek to promote. Consider the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995, where an alliance of conservative Catholic and Muslim delegations contested several agenda items – including the fundamental meaning of equal rights for women (Bayes and Tohidi, 2001). These countries asserted that women’s roles as wives and mothers distinguish them from men, a view at odds with the rhetoric of ‘sameness’ in world-cultural women’s rights discourses (Berkovitch, 1999).

I consider whether a similar dynamic operates for INGO linkages. INGOs may spread globally legitimated norms, models, and practices around the world, but they can also be perceived as irrelevant, foreign, or even imperialistic, especially when the ideas they embody conflict with dominant cultural norms and assumptions.

World society theory: Globalization increases women’s representation

INGO linkages have been shown to promote the worldwide diffusion and implementation of gender equality norms in employment, education, and politics (Berkovitch, 1999; Murdie and Peksen, 2015; Paxton et al., 2006; Swiss, 2009; True and Mintrom, 2001). These linkages may become more influential over time as the norms in question institutionalize, as illustrated by the diffusion of women’s suffrage. Before the mid-nineteenth century, the idea that women should have the right to vote was ‘inconceivable,’ but by 1948, it was all but ‘inevitable’ (Przeworski, 2008: 314). Early in the diffusion process, domestic characteristics – including a country’s Western status – were decisive in determining when women gained suffrage rights. As more countries enfranchised women, a gender-egalitarian model of citizenship crystallized and was adopted by countries irrespective of local traditions or circumstances (Ramirez et al., 1997).

Today, equal suffrage for men and women is not merely desirable or appropriate but a necessary and constitutive element of statehood. The focus has now shifted to women’s equitable representation in politics. It is no longer enough that countries grant women the right to vote or stand for election; new targets aim for gender balance in politics (Paxton et al., 2006). These trends point to a stepwise ratchet effect in global norms.

Past research suggests that INGO ties increase women’s representation in national parliaments (Cherif, 2015; Cole, 2013; Paxton et al., 2006; Swiss, 2009). INGOs are also associated with expanded political rights for women, including the rights to stand for election, to hold public office, to join political parties, and to petition the government (Murdie and Peksen, 2015). These findings are consistent with world society theory and motivate the first hypothesis.

Hypothesis 1a: As the number of INGO linkages increases, women’s share of parliamentary seats will also increase.

World society effects may also be historically contingent. World-cultural influences strengthen over time as global norms spread, institutionalize, and become more stringent. Similar to the extension of suffrage to women (Ramirez et al., 1997), a country’s specific political, social, and cultural profile likely matters more early in the diffusion process, but exogenous world-cultural forces perhaps assume greater prominence in later stages.

Hypothesis 1b: The positive effect of INGO linkages on women’s share of parliamentary seats will increase over time.

The end of the Cold War, which marked the transition from ‘high modernity’ to ‘hyper-modernity’ in world society (Frank and Meyer, 2020: 16), is hypothesized as a crucial turning point in this dynamic. The collapse of global communism reinforced, at least temporarily, the hegemonic power and geographic reach of liberal world-cultural models.³ It also consolidated and deepened the global focus on women’s rights, as exemplified by the proclamation that ‘women’s rights are human rights’ at the World Conference on Women in 1995.

Civilization-analytic approaches: Heterogeneous responses to globalization

Others remain less sanguine about the global women’s rights project. Hopgood (2013), for one, expects the cultural influence of human rights to wane as Western hegemony declines. He surmises that women’s rights will be one of the first casualties.

To be sure, world society mechanisms do not improve women’s outcomes universally or inexorably. Studies report no effect of INGO linkages on women’s employment (Simmons, 2009), legislative quotas for women (Bush, 2011), abortion liberalization (Boyle et al., 2015), or even women’s legislative representation in developing countries (Fallon et al., 2012).

The norms INGOs embody may be more resonant in some cultural contexts than in others. Because most world-cultural norms arise out of the Western cultural account (Meyer et al., 1987), their impact is perhaps strongest in Western countries and their cultural cognates. Indeed, respect for women’s rights tends to be greatest in Western, Latin American, and Orthodox Christian countries and weakest in Islamic, sub-Saharan African, and Sinic or East Asian countries (Richards, 2003).

Cultural differences also shape popular attitudes toward women. Although ‘striking similarities’ characterize support for democracy among Muslims and Westerners (Norris and Inglehart, 2002: 235), they remain deeply divided on the issue of gender equality. Inglehart and Norris (2003: 8) conclude that ‘culture matters, and indeed it matters a lot’ when it comes to opinions about women’s rights (original emphasis).

Traditional attitudes impinge directly on women’s political participation and representation (Inglehart and Norris, 2003; Paxton and Kunovich, 2003). Women’s inclusion in politics lags behind their gains in education, employment, and health (Norris and Inglehart, 2001). Compared to the Christian West, women’s share of parliamentary seats is significantly lower in Buddhist, Islamic, and Orthodox Christian countries (Reynolds, 1999). Catholicism also suppresses women’s representation, even among Western nations (Kenworthy and Malami, 1999; Paxton et al., 2006). For these reasons, Okin (1999: 14) warns against uncritical celebrations of multiculturalism, owing to the ‘quite distinctly patriarchal’ character of non-Western cultures.

Clearly, gender norms and women’s outcomes vary across cultures, despite modernization and globalization. What happens when world-cultural influences encounter these cultural differences? We know that INGO ties are unevenly distributed around the world, concentrating in affluent Western countries (Beckfield, 2003; Hughes et al., 2009), but we do not yet know whether INGO effects vary across cultural contexts.

It is possible that INGOs are simply unassociated with women’s political representation. INGO ties have failed to empower women in related domains, as previously noted. INGOs are perhaps least effective in non-Western societies, where global discourses on women’s rights may be perceived as irrelevant to or incompatible with prevailing gender norms.

Hypothesis 2a: INGO linkages will have no effect on women’s share of parliamentary seats, especially in non-Western countries.

A stronger hypothesis suggests that INGOs are not merely ineffective but counterproductive. Non-Westerners may interpret world culture as a threat to ‘indigenous’ cultural norms, stoking fears of Westernization and inciting opposition in the form of religious revivals, resurgent fundamentalisms, or anti-Western ideologies. Governments in these situations may react negatively to or ‘recoil’ from global pressures, especially in highly contested issue areas such as women’s rights (Hughes et al., 2015). Cultural backlashes might even strengthen as exposure to world culture increases.

Hypothesis 2b: Women’s share of parliamentary seats in non-Western countries will decline as INGO linkages increase.

These hypotheses do not specify which non-Western cultures may be most impervious or hostile to world-cultural influences. For Huntington (1996), the main line of demarcation separates the ‘West’ from the ‘rest,’ whereas Inglehart and Norris (2003: 49) single out ‘Islamic religious heritage [as] one of the most powerful barriers to the rising tide of gender equality.’ Still others contend that neo-Confucian ‘Asian values’ ascribe subordinate roles to women in private and public life (Barr, 2002).

One might expect outcomes to improve in countries where Western Christianity predominates. As Jenkins (2006: 182) notes, however, ‘the lived Christianity of Africa and Asia shares many assumptions with Islam, and in some matters, can be closer to Islam than to the Christianity of the advanced West.’ There is no a priori reason to expect any specific patterns. I consequently remain agnostic, allowing the analyses to determine which – if any – civilizational identities or religious traditions emerge as the most (or least) reactionary.

Many civilization-analytic approaches do make specific predictions about temporal effects. Huntington (1996) claims that civilizational identities became more salient after the Cold War, when culture replaced ideology as the primary site of geopolitical contention. Banchoff (2011: 33) concurs: ‘With the collapse of bipolarity’ following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, ‘religion emerged as a more important marker of identity in world politics.’ Inglehart (2018: 58) likewise argues that ‘religion and nationalism moved in to fill the ideological vacuum left by the collapse of a communist belief system.’ The disintegration of global communism can therefore be hypothesized to strengthen reactionary backlashes in non-Western countries.

Hypothesis 2c: The negative effect of INGO linkages on women’s share of parliamentary seats in non-Western countries will increase over time.

Materials and method

I test these hypotheses using data for an unbalanced panel of 139 countries between 1960 and 2013, with data measured annually. The average record length per country is 38 years. Analyses restricted to the years immediately following parliamentary elections yielded similar results (not reported but available upon request).

Dependent variable and estimator

The dependent variable is the proportion of seats in a country’s lower or unicameral chamber of parliament held by women, from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) and World Development Indicators databases (Coppedge et al., 2019; World Bank, 2019). I conduct analyses using fractional logit generalized linear regression models appropriate to proportional outcomes, with clustered standard errors that are robust to arbitrary heteroskedasticity, autocorrelation, and model misspecification (Hoechle, 2007). A pooled ordinary least-squares estimator with Driscoll–Kraay standard errors produced similar results. To assess the historically contingent effects of INGO linkages (Hypotheses 1b and 2c), I estimate models on subsamples split at the end of the Cold War: 1960–1990 and 1991–2013.

Independent variables

The independent variables gauge world-cultural influences on and cross-cultural variation in women’s share of parliamentary seats.

INGO linkages, defined as the number of international nongovernmental organizations tied to a country through individual or organizational memberships, is a standard measure of world-cultural effects. Given my focus on women’s parliamentary representation, I measure country ties to women’s INGOs (or ‘WINGOs’), which focus explicitly on serving women and/or girls or for which women represent the primary membership base (Hughes et al., 2017). The number of WINGO linkages varies from 0 and 152 in my sample, with a mean of 35; I log it to reduce skew (after adding a constant of 1 to account for country-years without WINGO linkages).

Not all WINGOs directly advocate for women’s political representation, just as most WINGOs do not specifically encourage countries to enact equal employment legislation (Berkovitch, 1999), adopt legislative quotas for women (Hughes et al., 2015), or liberalize abortion policies (Boyle et al., 2015). Rather, WINGOs emphasize broad principles such as gender equality and women’s inclusion. Incorporating more women into government is one highly visible way countries can demonstrate fidelity to these principles.

Besides, INGO linkages may not function as direct conduits for the transmission of discrete policy templates or action scripts so much as they index a country’s overall exposure to world-cultural trends and discourses. The more linkages a country has, the more receptive it will be to all sorts of world-cultural norms – including those regarding women’s inclusion, equality, and rights.

In contested domains such as women’s rights, analysts recommend measuring world-cultural effects using linkages to substantive organizations such as WINGOs rather than to INGOs in general (see, e.g., Paxton et al., 2006: 904). But too great a focus on controversial issues might also heighten perceptions of cultural threat and trigger opposition. Compared to activist INGOs that explicitly seek to change their targets, non-activist INGOs may be seen as less aggressive and threatening, with the ironic consequence that they might also be more effective (Hughes et al., 2015).

I consider the related possibility that linkages to all INGOs, regardless of substantive focus, will be more effective than WINGOs in fostering women’s political inclusion. Similar to the difference between activist and non-activist INGOs, generic INGOs may provoke less resistance compared to issue-oriented organizations. To test this idea, I also conduct analyses using country ties to total INGOs, which range from 11 to 4424 in my sample.⁴ As with WINGO linkages, I log this variable to reduce skew.

Another set of independent variables allocates countries into mutually exclusive and exhaustive cultural zones. There is no standard protocol for classifying countries in this manner, but most analysts agree that religion plays a defining role. I identify predominant religious traditions using the Religious Characteristics of States dataset (Brown and James, 2018), which provides annual estimates for the percentage of people in a country adhering to Christianity (Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox), Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sinic or ‘East Asian complex’ traditions (Confucianism, Taoism, Shintoism, and Chinese folk religion), and Indigenous religions (primarily Animism in sub-Saharan Africa). To assign countries to different zones, and in accordance with past research (Cole and Geist, 2018; Kenworthy and Malami, 1999; Paxton, 1997; Reynolds, 1999), I averaged these percentages over the observation period and coded the plurality faith as predominant.

Christianity shapes values differently inside and outside of the West (Jenkins, 2006), and Islam’s effect on a variety of social and political outcomes – including women’s rights – differs in the Middle East and elsewhere (Donno and Russett, 2004; Rizzo et al., 2007). I therefore subdivide Protestantism, Catholicism, and Islam by geographical region. The resulting framework yields 12 cultural zones: Western Protestant, Western Catholic, Latin American Catholic, Other Catholic, Non-Western Protestant, Orthodox Christian, Middle Eastern Islamic, Other Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, Sinic/East Asian, and Indigenous.

This framework improves upon previous classifications in two respects. First, it eschews subjective judgments in favor of using empirical data on religious composition to identify cultural zones. Second, it accounts for meaningful cultural differences within regions (e.g., Protestantism and Catholicism in the West) and salient regional differences within world religions (e.g., Islam inside and outside of the Middle East).

To check the validity of this framework against an established alternative, I also conduct analyses using Huntington’s (1996) ‘civilizations’ framework, which carves the world into 10 civilizational groupings: African, Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic, Japanese, Latin American, Orthodox, Sinic, Western, and a residual category. I use this framework not only because it is well established (if roundly criticized) in the literature, but also because the cultural backlash hypothesis is premised in part on Huntington’s work.

Control variables

The analyses include several control variables. The first, democracy, is measured using the electoral democracy or ‘polyarchy’ index from the V-Dem dataset (Coppedge et al., 2019). Alternative variables such as V-Dem’s liberal democracy index and the Polity IV revised polity score produced similar results. Many studies find no linear effect of democracy on women’s political representation (Bjarnegård, 2013; Kenworthy and Malami, 1999; Paxton and Kunovich, 2003; Paxton et al., 2006; Reynolds, 1999). I follow Bjarnegård (2013), Fallon et al. (2012), and Viterna et al. (2008) in modeling a curvilinear specification. A dummy variable for communist regimes (Cruz et al., 2018) accounts for women’s nominally greater political representation in these countries (Paxton et al., 2006), and a related indicator identifies post-communist countries. Proportional representation electoral systems also boost women’s parliamentary representation (Kenworthy and Malami, 1999; McAllister and Studlar, 2002; Paxton, 1997; Paxton et al., 2006; Reynolds, 1999; Rosen, 2013; Viterna et al., 2008). Data for this indicator come from Teorell et al. (2019).

Years of female suffrage (Ramirez et al., 1997) and legislative gender quotas (Coppedge et al., 2019) tap gender-specific political opportunity structures. Early women’s enfranchisement is associated with greater representation for women (McAllister and Studlar, 2002), but the effect of gender quotas is inconclusive (Hughes, 2009; McAllister and Studlar, 2002; Rosen, 2013). Educational parity between men and women may also engender political equality (Kenworthy and Malami, 1999). I compute a ratio of female-to-male educational attainment using the average years of schooling for men and women aged 25 and older (Teorell et al., 2019).

Gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, rendered in constant 2010 US dollars and logged (World Bank, 2019), is a standard measure of economic development. A variable for religious fractionalization gives the probability that two randomly selected people in a country will not belong to the same religious group (Teorell et al., 2019), and accounts for diverse or ‘cleft’ societies (Huntington, 1996). Finally, a linear time counter adjusts for secular trends. I lag all time-varying independent and control variables by one year.

Results

Independent effects of culture and world society on women’s representation

Table 1 examines cross-cultural heterogeneity in women’s share of parliamentary seats from 1960 to 1990 and 1991 to 2013. For each period, the first model estimates baseline cultural differences by including only the set of cultural zone indicators. Western Protestant countries serve as the omitted reference category. The second model adds WINGO linkages and control variables. To facilitate interpretation, the table reports marginal effects rather than raw coefficients.

Table 1.

Estimated marginal effects of cultural zones, WINGO linkages, and control variables on women’s share of parliamentary seats, 1960–1990 and 1991–2013.

	1960–1990^a				1991–2013^b
	Model 1		Model 2		Model 3		Model 4
	dy/dx	(SE)	dy/dx	(SE)	dy/dx	(SE)	dy/dx	(SE)
Cultural zone (Western Protestant = ref.)
Western Catholic	−.024	(.035)	−.076***	(.021)	−.099***	(.029)	−.116***	(.029)
Latin American Catholic	−.060*	(.025)	−.088***	(.026)	−.114***	(.030)	−.130***	(.038)
Other Catholic	−.073**	(.024)	−.097***	(.028)	−.131***	(.030)	−.119*	(.053)
Non-Western Protestant	−.056	(.031)	−.031	(.051)	−.098*	(.048)	−.026	(.051)
Orthodox Christian	.028	(.046)	−.074**	(.028)	−.152***	(.028)	−.133**	(.042)
Middle Eastern Islamic	−.091***	(.025)	−.115***	(.026)	−.205***	(.028)	−.194***	(.039)
Other Islamic	−.030	(.036)	−.068*	(.028)	−.155***	(.026)	−.129**	(.043)
Buddhist	−.089***	(.024)	−.109***	(.026)	−.177***	(.033)	−.163***	(.040)
Hindu	−.063**	(.024)	−.036	(.037)	−.166***	(.027)	−.139***	(.041)
Sinic/East Asian	.038	(.055)	−.092**	(.028)	−.141***	(.037)	−.146**	(.049)
Indigenous	−.060*	(.025)	−.056	(.034)	−.144***	(.029)	−.095*	(.044)
WINGO linkages (ln)			−.019*	(.008)			.011	(.009)
Electoral democracy index			−.165*	(.071)			−.401***	(.119)
Electoral democracy index, squared			.145*	(.068)			.335**	(.115)
GDP per capita (ln)			.004	(.005)			.003	(.007)
Communist regime			.068***	(.017)			.090**	(.030)
Post-communist country			−.014	(.028)			.009	(.019)
Female-to-male education ratio			.001	(.000)			.000	(.000)
Lower chamber gender quota			.051***	(.010)			.057***	(.012)
Years of female suffrage			.001*	(.000)			−.000	(.000)
Proportional representation system			.019*	(.009)			.047***	(.011)
Religious fractionalization			−.078***	(.020)			−.038	(.029)
Linear time			.002***	(.000)			.005***	(.001)
Chi-squared	68.096***		538.972***		88.060***		738.987***
Degrees of freedom	11		23		11		23
R-squared	.215		.691		.271		.574

N country-years = 2215; N countries = 107.

N country-years = 2811; N countries = 138.

p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001 (two-tailed).

Cluster-robust standard errors in parentheses. Time-varying independent and control variables lagged by 1 year. dy/dx = marginal effect; SE = standard error estimate; WINGO = women’s international nongovernmental organization; GDP = gross domestic product.

Between 1960 and 1990, women accounted for 11.6% of parliamentarians in Western Protestant countries, on average. Model 1 shows that women’s share in parliamentary representation was significantly lower than this in six cultural zones: Latin American and Other Catholic, Middle Eastern Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, and Indigenous. Each marginal effect gives the discrete change for the corresponding zone, relative to the Protestant West. For example, the estimate for Latin American Catholic countries (dy/dx = −.060) indicates that the share of parliamentary seats held by women was 6 percentage points lower in comparison to the Protestant West; in other words, women accounted for 5.6% of parliamentarians, on average, in Latin America between 1960 and 1990. Cross-cultural heterogeneity alone explains 21.5% of the variation in women’s parliamentary representation.

With the addition of control variables in Model 2, negative estimates for four additional zones – Western Catholic, Orthodox Christian, Other Islamic, and Sinic/East Asian – become statistically significant, whereas those for the Hindu and Indigenous zones revert to non-significance. WINGO linkages were negatively associated with women’s parliamentary representation prior to 1991. Across the range of logged WINGO linkages, the estimate translates into an 8-percentage-point decrease.

Several control variables also affected women’s share of parliament in the early period. Consistent with past research, women’s representation varied as a curvilinear U-shaped function of electoral democracy. The proportion of female parliamentarians declined with increasing democracy scores until a threshold of .57 was reached (on a scale ranging from .03 to .95 in the sample), at which point the relationship reversed and became positive.⁵ Communist regimes had more women in parliament compared to non-communist countries, in the order of 5.5 percentage points. Legislative gender quotas, years of female suffrage, and proportional representation election systems all boosted women’s representation, which also increased over time. Conversely, women’s share of parliament declined with religious fractionalization. Cultural zones, WINGO linkages, and control variables together explain 69% of the variation in women’s representation.

Models 3 and 4 repeat these analyses for the post-1990 period. Cultural heterogeneity in female representation grew over time, as shown in Model 3. Women’s share of parliamentary seats rose to 27.5% among Western Protestant countries, significantly higher than all other cultural zones. The percentage of variation attributable solely to cultural zones increased to 27% between 1991 and 2013.

Adding WINGO linkages and control variables in Model 4 does little to disrupt these cross-cultural differences, with one exception: the negative effect of non-Western Protestant countries becomes statistically insignificant in the fully specified model. As in the earlier period, women’s share of parliamentary seats is lower in semi-democracies than in consolidated autocratic or democratic regimes, and it is greater in communist regimes, proportional representation electoral systems, and countries with legislative quotas. Women’s representation also continues to increase over time. In a departure from the Cold War period, the coefficient on WINGO linkages reverses polarity after 1990, becoming positive, but is statistically insignificant. Religious fractionalization also no longer reliably predicts women’s representation. Model 4 explains roughly 57% of the cross-national variation in women’s share of parliament.

Figure 1 gives a clearer sense of cross-cultural differences in women’s parliamentary representation. Using results from Models 2 and 4 in Table 1, this figure plots the regression-adjusted and period-specific shares of female parliamentarians for each cultural zone, with control variables evaluated at their means. Women’s share of parliament increased significantly over time in all but four zones: Sinic, Hindu, non-Western Protestant, and Western Protestant. Confidence intervals around most estimates also grow larger over time, suggesting increased heterogeneity across countries within zones. Note, for example, the wide confidence interval around the post-Cold War estimate for Western Protestant countries. Between 1991 and 2013, the average share of female parliamentarians in this zone ranged from 14% in the United States to 43% in Sweden.

Figure 1.

Regression-adjusted cultural heterogeneity in women’s share of parliamentary seats.

Despite widespread improvement in women’s representation over time, cross-cultural variation also increased, as gains were larger for some zones (e.g., Latin American Catholic) than for others (e.g., Middle Eastern Islamic), resulting in divergent cross-cultural trends.

To assess the robustness of these findings, I re-estimated the models in Table 1 after replacing the cultural zone indicators with Huntington’s (1996) ‘civilizational’ classifications. The right portion of Figure 1 uses these results to plot regression-adjusted variation in women’s parliamentary representation. The patterns are broadly similar to those from the previous analysis. Women’s share of parliamentary seats increased significantly over time in 6 of 10 civilizations, including the West. Nevertheless, these results also conceal important intra-civilizational distinctions. For instance, comparing the two sets of trends shows that the increase in women’s representation among Islamic countries was driven primarily by improvements outside of the Middle East.

Figure 2 turns attention to the net effect of WINGO linkages. The left panel depicts trends using Models 2 and 4 in Table 1; the right panel is based on regression models that replace the cultural zone indicators with Huntington’s civilizational categories. For both analyses, I vary the WINGO linkage measure between its 10th and 90th percentile scores while holding control variables at their means. Regardless of the framework for classifying countries, women’s share of parliamentary seats declined as WINGO linkages increased between 1960 and 1990. From 1991 onward, the net effect of WINGOs was slightly positive but not statistically significant.⁶

Figure 2.

Net effect of WINGO linkages on women’s share of parliamentary seats.

Culturally contingent effects of world society

The preceding analyses considered the independent effects of WINGO linkages and cultural zones on women’s representation. As hypothesized, WINGO effects might also vary across cultural zones. I consider this possibility by adding interaction terms between WINGO linkages and each cultural zone indicator to the fully specified models in Table 1. Figure 3 presents marginal effects from these analyses (the associated regression models are not reported but available upon request). The top panel displays the effects of WINGO linkages for each cultural zone during and after the Cold War. The bottom panel does the same using Huntington’s civilizational framework. Vertical lines delimit 95% confidence intervals around each marginal effect; intervals overlapping with zero indicate that the associated WINGO effect is not statistically significant.

Figure 3.

Marginal effects of WINGO linkages on women’s share of parliamentary seats, by time, cultural zone, and civilizational membership.

Prior to 1991, the estimated effect of WINGOs was significantly negative in the Sinic, non-Western Protestant, Orthodox Christian, Western Catholic, and Indigenous zones. Estimates were negative but insignificant in five additional zones, with two of these – for Western Protestant and Other Islamic countries – approaching statistical significance (p < .10). Only two zone-specific estimates before 1991 were positive, but neither was statistically significant.

Culturally contingent WINGO effects changed dramatically in the later period. After 1990, estimates for 8 of 12 cultural zones become positive. Two of these estimates (Other Catholic and non-Western Protestant) are statistically significant; two others (Sinic and Indigenous) come very close. None of the four negative estimates is statistically significant.

Interacting WINGO linkages with Huntington’s civilizational indicators produces similar results. Between 1960 and 1990, the marginal effect of WINGO linkages was significantly negative in five civilizations (Japanese, Orthodox, Sinic, Islamic, and Buddhist) and negative but marginally significant in two others (Hindu and Other). WINGO effects became appreciably more positive after the Cold War. Marginal effects for the Sinic, Western, and Japanese civilizations are now significantly positive, and the estimate for African countries is nearly so.

The impact of total INGO linkages

A final set of analyses, reported in Table 2, considers the effect of total INGO linkages on women’s share of parliament. These analyses are based on a slightly larger sample and longer observation period than before, due to differences in data availability. For brevity, I report the results of fully specified models only.

Table 2.

Estimated marginal effects of cultural zones, total INGO linkages, and control variables on women’s share of parliamentary seats, 1960–1990 and 1991–2015.

	Model 5:1960–1990^a		Model 6:1991–2015^b
	dy/dx	(SE)	dy/dx	(SE)
Cultural zone (Western Protestant = ref.)
Western Catholic	−.064***	(.019)	−.115***	(.026)
Latin American Catholic	−.068*	(.027)	−.118***	(.035)
Other Catholic	−.081**	(.028)	−.091	(.047)
Non-Western Protestant	.012	(.050)	−.042	(.046)
Orthodox Christian	−.058*	(.026)	−.130***	(.037)
Middle Eastern Islamic	−.081**	(.027)	−.179***	(.038)
Other Islamic	−.023	(.034)	−.117**	(.041)
Buddhist	−.082**	(.027)	−.148***	(.039)
Hindu	−.011	(.036)	−.123**	(.041)
Sinic/East Asian	−.051	(.032)	−.130**	(.049)
Indigenous	−.022	(.040)	−.072	(.045)
INGO linkages (ln)	.008	(.008)	.021**	(.008)
Electoral democracy index	−.244***	(.073)	−.406**	(.124)
Electoral democracy index, squared	.209**	(.068)	.332**	(.119)
GDP per capita (ln)	−.002	(.006)	−.002	(.007)
Communist regime	.091***	(.015)	.094**	(.030)
Post-communist country	.034	(.026)	.011	(.018)
Female-to-male education ratio	.001**	(.000)	.001	(.000)
Lower chamber gender quota	.045***	(.009)	.060***	(.011)
Years of female suffrage	.000	(.000)	−.000	(.000)
Proportional representation system	.023*	(.011)	.052***	(.012)
Religious fractionalization	−.068***	(.020)	−.035	(.026)
Linear time	.001*	(.001)	.005***	(.001)
Chi-squared	601.544***		858.782***
Degrees of freedom	23		23
R-squared	.631		.571

N country-years = 2429; N countries = 121.

N country-years = 3437; N countries = 155.

p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001 (two-tailed).

Cluster-robust standard errors in parentheses. Time-varying independent and control variables lagged by 1 year. dy/dx = marginal effect; SE = standard error estimate; INGO = international nongovernmental organization; GDP = gross domestic product.

INGOs appear to provoke less backlash than WINGOs during the earlier period and are more effective than WINGOs during the later period. The net effect of total INGO linkages on women’s share of parliament between 1960 and 1990 was positive but statistically insignificant (Model 5), contrasting with the significantly negative effect of WINGOs during the same period. Between 1991 and 2015, the generic INGO effect remains positive but becomes robustly significant (Model 6), whereas the corresponding WINGO effect was positive but insignificant. The overall INGO effect is quite substantial: across the range of INGO linkages and for an otherwise ‘average’ country, women’s share of parliamentary seats increases from 6.5 to 15.5%. The effects of most control variables and cultural zone indicators remain as before.

Generic INGOs linkages may be more effective than ties to WINGOs for several reasons. First, there are simply far more INGOs than WINGOs, which perhaps creates a stronger signal of world-cultural influence. In a contested domain such as gender equality, generic INGOs might also incite less opposition than substantive organizations do, much as non-activist INGOs provoke less backlash than their activist counterparts (Hughes et al., 2015). Finally, the imagery of INGOs as conveyor belts that transmit concrete world-cultural principles, models, and standards might be misguided. INGOs linkages do not function as direct conduits of diffusion so much as they tap a country’s overall embeddedness in and exposure to world culture. All INGO linkages, regardless of substantive focus, increase a country’s susceptibility to a variety of world-cultural trends and discourses.

Whatever the reason, these findings suggest that researchers should not dismiss total INGO linkages tout court, even – and perhaps especially – when the outcomes under investigation are culturally sensitive or highly contested.

Discussions and conclusions

On balance, the results support civilization-analytic perspectives before 1991 and world society theory thereafter. In the earlier period, the relationship between world society linkages and women’s political representation was nonexistent at best and negative at worst. Before 1991, WINGOs decreased women’s share of parliamentary seats in several cultural zones – including, unexpectedly, in Western countries. These findings lend some credence to Hypothesis 2b, which predicted that women’s share of parliamentary seats would decline as INGO ties increased. Consistent with Hypothesis 2a, linkages to INGOs in general had no significant effect on women’s parliamentary representation during the Cold War.

These findings shift after 1990, in ways that lend partial support to world society theory. Between 1991 and 2013, estimated WINGO effects became positive for most cultural zones, and several achieved statistical significance. The effect of total INGO linkages, irrespective of substantive content, also boosted women’s parliamentary representation in the later period. These findings align with Hypotheses 1a and 1b, which predicted a positive effect of INGO ties on women’s share of parliamentary seats.

Each theoretical perspective therefore finds historically contingent support. Nevertheless, the temporal pattern of INGO effects contradicts the backlash dynamic (Berger, 2014; Huntington, 1996; Robertson, 1992). Contrary to Hypothesis 2c, insofar as INGO linkages provoke opposition, it occurs early in the globalization process, not later. Cultural resistance to world society does not build over time; rather, it is most pronounced early and then dissipates. World-cultural norms and models are most contentious when they are new, but resistance fades as they institutionalize. This pattern suggests a long-term shift in nation-state identities: the culturally inflected ‘we’ of religious and civilizational identities is most salient early in the process of global institutionalization and diffusion, whereas the externally constituted ‘us’ of modern state identities assumes greater prominence over time.

World society effects may unfold in stepwise fashion. Figure 4 illustrates the theorized process. A ‘reactionary backlash’ dynamic, if one occurs at all, happens in the emergence phase, when norms and models are novel. During this contested period, average world-cultural effects may well be negative, as they were for WINGOs before 1991. A second ‘counter-balancing’ phase begins once some countries adopt the new model while others continue to reject it. World-cultural effects may be positive for some countries or cultural zones but negative for others, such that they cancel out overall. A third phase is marked by increasingly tight coupling between world-cultural linkages and country outcomes. As more countries adopt a model, policy, or practice, it gains legitimacy and world society ties begin to exert an overall positive effect. This process describes the effect of total INGO linkages after the Cold War. Finally, ‘diffuse diffusion’ might occur once a diffusant assumes a taken-for-granted quality, becomes a constituent part of the nation-state identity, and is adopted independently of organizational linkages (Strang and Meyer, 1993).

Figure 4.

Proposed model for world-cultural effects over time.

One prediction associated with world society theory does not hold, however. Despite nearly universal growth in women’s share of parliament over time, female representation does not converge across zones. We instead find improvement without isomorphism, as gains occurred at discrepant rates in countries with different cultural legacies and religious traditions. Rather than harmonizing differential rates of improvement, world society linkages may sometimes serve to exacerbate them.

The Meadian framework of national identity developed and tested here can be extended to other more or less controversial domains, including women’s access to employment, education, and reproductive health services. Abortion rights, for example, remain extremely contentious (Boyle et al., 2015), whereas support for women’s education is greater and transcends macro-cultural divides (Cole and Geist, 2018). Instead of treating world society theory and civilization-analytic perspectives as competing frameworks, scholars might usefully integrate them into a dynamic theoretical model.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Wade M Cole

Notes

Author biography

Wade Cole is Professor of Sociology at the University of Utah. His current research focuses on cross-cultural variation in respect for different categories of human rights. Recent studies examine patterns of respect for various women’s rights provisions and the effect of societal religiosity on states’ human rights practices. He is also interested in the extent to which global human rights ideology functions as a secular or civil religion in world society.

References

Banchoff

(2011) The international human rights regime. In: Banchoff

Wuthnow

(eds) Religion and the Global Politics of Human Rights. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 23–35.

Barr

(2002) Cultural Politics and Asian Values. London: Routledge.

Bayes

Tohidi

(2001) Globalization, Gender, and Religion: The Politics of Women’s Rights in Catholic and Muslim Countries. New York: Palgrave.

Beckfield

(2003) Inequality in the world polity: The structure of international organization. American Sociological Review 68(3): 401–424.

Berger

(2014) The Many Alters of Modernity: Toward A Paradigm for Religion in a Pluralist Age. Boston: De Gruyter.

Berger

Huntington

(2002) Many Globalizations: Cultural Diversity in the Contemporary World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Berger

Kellner

(1973) The Homeless Mind: Modernization and Consciousness. New York: Random House.

Berkovitch

(1999) From Motherhood to Citizenship: Women’s Rights and International Organizations. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Bjarnegård

(2013) Gender, Informal Institutions and Political Recruitment: Explaining Male Dominance in Parliamentary Representation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

10.

Boli

(1999) World authority structures and legitimations. In: Boli

Thomas

(eds) Constructing World Culture: International Nongovernmental Organizations since 1875. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, pp. 267–300.

11.

Boli

Lechner

(2005) World Culture: Origins and Consequences. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

12.

Boyle

Longhofer

Kim

(2015) Abortion liberalization in world society. American Journal of Sociology 121(3): 882–913.

13.

Bromley

Schofer

Longhofer

(2020) Contentions over world culture: The rise of legal restrictions on foreign funding to NGOs. Social Forces 99(1): 281–304.

14.

Brown

James

(2018) The religious characteristics of states: Classic themes and new evidence for international relations and comparative politics. Journal of Conflict Resolution 62(6): 1340–1376.

15.

Bush

(2011) International politics and the spread of quotas for women in legislatures. International Organization 65: 103–137.

16.

Cherif

(2015) Myths about Women’s Rights: How, Where, and Why Rights Advance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

17.

Cole

(2013) Government respect for gendered rights: The effect of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women on women’s rights outcomes. International Studies Quarterly 57: 233–249.

18.

Cole

Geist

(2018) Progress without progressives? The effects of development on women’s educational and political equality in cultural context. Sociology of Development 4(1): 1–69.

19.

Coppedge

Gerring

Knutsen

, et al. (2019) V-Dem Country-Year Dataset v9. Available at: https://doi.org/10.23696/vdemcy19 (accessed 16 November 2020).

20.

Cruz

Keefer

Scartascini

(2018) Database of Political Institutions 2017. Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank Research Department.

21.

Donno

Russett

(2004) Islam, authoritarianism, and female empowerment: What are the linkages? World Politics 56(4): 582–607.

22.

Durkheim

Mauss

(1971) Note on the notion of civilization. Social Research 38(4): 808–813.

23.

Eisenstadt

(2000) Multiple modernities. Daedalus 129(1): 1–29.

24.

Eisenstadt

(2001) The civilizational dimension of modernity: Modernity as a distinct civilization. International Sociology 16(3): 320–340.

25.

Fallon

Swiss

Viterna

(2012) Resolving the democracy paradox: Democratization and women’s legislative representation in developing nations. American Sociological Review 77(3): 380–408.

26.

Frank

Gabler

(2006) Reconstructing the University: Worldwide Shifts in Academia in the 20th Century. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

27.

Frank

Meyer

(2020) The University and the Global Knowledge Society. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

28.

Hoechle

(2007) Robust standard errors for panel regressions with cross-sectional dependence. Stata Journal 7(3): 281–312.

29.

Hopgood

(2013) The Endtimes of Human Rights. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

30.

Hughes

(2009) Armed conflict, international linkages, and women’s parliamentary representation in developing nations. Social Problems 56(1): 174–204.

31.

Hughes

Krook

Paxton

(2015) Transnational women’s activism and the global diffusion of gender quotas. International Studies Quarterly 59(2): 357–372.

32.

Hughes

Paxton

Quinsaat

Reith

(2017) Women’s International Nongovernmental Organizations, 1950–2013. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3886/E100514V1 (accessed 5 November 2017).

33.

Hughes

Peterson

Harrison

Paxton

(2009) Power and relation in the world polity: The INGO network country score. Social Forces 87(4): 1711–1742.

34.

Huntington

(1996) The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon & Schuster.

35.

Inglehart

(2018) Cultural Evolution: People’s Motivations are Changing, and Reshaping the World. New York: Cambridge University Press.

36.

Inglehart

Norris

(2003) Rising Tide: Gender Equality and Cultural Change around the World. New York: Cambridge University Press.

37.

Jenkins

(2006) The New Faces of Christianity. New York: Oxford University Press.

38.

Keck

Sikkink

(1998) Activists beyond Borders. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

39.

Kenworthy

Malami

(1999) Gender inequality in political representation: A worldwide comparative analysis. Social Forces 78(1): 235–268.

40.

McAllister

Studlar

(2002) Electoral systems and women’s representation: A long-term perspective. Representation 39(1): 3–14.

41.

Mead

(1915) The psychological bases for internationalism. Survey 33: 604–607.

42.

Mead

(1929) National-mindedness and international-mindedness. International Journal of Ethics 39(4): 385–407.

43.

Mead

(2015 [1934]) Mind, Self, and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

44.

Meyer

(1994) Rationalized environments. In: Scott

Meyer

(eds) Institutional Environments and Organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp. 28–54.

45.

Meyer

(2009) Institutional theory and world society. In: Krücken

Drori

(eds) World Society: The Writings of John W. Meyer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 36–63.

46.

Meyer

Jepperson

(2000) The ‘actors’ of modern society: The cultural construction of social agency. Sociological Theory 18(1): 100–120.

47.

Meyer

Boli

Thomas

(1987) Ontology and rationalization in the Western cultural account. In: Thomas

Meyer

Ramirez

Boli

(eds) Institutional Structure: Constituting State, Society, and the Individual. Newbury Park, CA; Sage, pp. 12–37.

48.

Meyer

Boli

Thomas

Ramirez

(1997) World society and the nation-state. American Journal of Sociology 103: 144–181.

49.

Murdie

Peksen

(2015) Women’s rights INGO shaming and the government respect for women’s rights. Review of International Organizations 10: 1–22.

50.

Mutua

(2002) Human Rights: A Political and Cultural Critique. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

51.

Norris

Inglehart (2001) Cultural obstacles to equal representation. Journal of Democracy 12(3): 126–140.

52.

Norris

Inglehart

(2002) Islamic culture and democracy: Testing the ‘Clash of Civilizations’ thesis. Comparative Sociology 1(3-4): 235–263.

53.

Okin

(1999) Is multiculturalism bad for women? In: Cohen

Howard

Nussbaum

(eds) Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 7–24.

54.

Paxton

(1997) Women in national legislatures: A cross-national analysis. Social Science Research 26(4): 442–464.

55.

Paxton

Kunovich

(2003) Women’s political representation: The importance of ideology. Social Forces 82(1): 87–113.

56.

Paxton

Hughes

Green

(2006) The international women’s movement and women’s political representation. American Sociological Review 71(6): 898–920.

57.

Przeworski

(2008) Conquered or granted? A history of suffrage extensions. British Journal of Political Science 39(2): 291–321.

58.

Ramirez

Soysal

Shanahan

(1997) The changing logic of political citizenship: Cross-national acquisition of women’s suffrage rights. American Sociological Review 62: 735–745.

59.

Reynolds

(1999) Women in legislatures and executives of the world: Knocking at the highest glass ceiling. World Politics 51(4): 547–572.

60.

Richards

(2003) The civilizational geography of government respect for human rights. In: Forsythe

McMahon

(eds) Human Rights and Diversity: Area Studies Revisited. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, pp. 25–58.

61.

Rizzo

Abdel-Latif

A-H

Meyer

(2007) The relationship between gender equality and democracy: A comparison of Arab versus non-Arab Muslim societies. Sociology 41(6): 1151–1170.

62.

Robertson

(1992) Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture. London: Sage.

63.

Rosen

(2013) The effects of political institutions on women’s political representation. Political Research Quarterly 66(2): 306–321.

64.

Simmons

(2009) Mobilizing for Human Rights. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

65.

Strang

Meyer

(1993) Institutional conditions for diffusion. Theory and Society 22(4): 487–511.

66.

Swiss

(2009) Decoupling values from action: An event history analysis of the election of women to parliament in the developing world. International Journal of Comparative Sociology 50(1): 69–95.

67.

Teorell

Dahlberg

Holmberg

, et al. (2019) The Quality of Government Standard Dataset, version Jan19. Available at: https://doi.org/10.18157/qogstdjan19 (accessed 16 November 2020).

68.

True

Mintrom

(2001) Transnational networks and policy diffusion: The case of gender mainstreaming. International Studies Quarterly 45(1): 27–57.

69.

Viterna

Fallon

Beckfield

(2008) How development matters: The relationship between development, democracy and women’s political representation. International Journal of Comparative Sociology 49(6): 455–477.

70.

Wallace

(2004) NGO dilemmas: Trojan horses for global neoliberalism? Socialist Register 40: 202–219.

71.

Weber

(1991 [1922]) The Sociology of Religion. Boston: Beacon.

72.

World Bank (2019) World Development Indicators. Washington, DC: World Bank.

73.

Wotipka

Ramirez

(2008) World society and human rights: An event history analysis of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. In: Simmons

Dobbin

Garrett

(eds) The Global Diffusion of Markets and Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 303–343.

74.

Wright

(2012) NGOs and Western hegemony: Causes for concern and ideas for change. Development in Practice 22(1): 123–134.

The dialectics of universalism and particularism: World society,religious traditions,and women’s political representation,1960–2013

Abstract

Keywords

Universalism, particularism, and national identities

Constituting the ‘us’ of states: World society theory

Emphasizing the ‘we’ of nations: Civilization-analytic perspectives

Macro-cultural forces and women’s political representation

World society theory: Globalization increases women’s representation

Civilization-analytic approaches: Heterogeneous responses to globalization

Materials and method

Dependent variable and estimator

Independent variables

Control variables

Results

Independent effects of culture and world society on women’s representation

Culturally contingent effects of world society

The impact of total INGO linkages

Discussions and conclusions

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

Funding

ORCID iD

Notes

Author biography

References