Comparative Political Studies

We examine data from the World Values Survey regarding the existence of two consistent orientations in mass values, traditional versus secular/rational and survival versus self-expression. We also evaluate the empirical validity of Welzel’s revised value orientations: secular and emancipative. Over the years, a large body of work has presumed the stability and comparability of these value orientations across time and space. Our findings uncover little evidence of the existence of traditional–secular/rational or survival–self-expression values. Welzel’s two dimensions of value orientations—secular and emancipative—seem more reflective of latent value orientations in mass publics but are still imperfectly capturing these orientations. More importantly, these value orientations do not seem very comparable except among a small number of advanced post-industrial democracies. We call attention to the use of value measurements to explain important macro-level phenomena.

Structural equation modelers judge multi-item constructs against three requirements: (a) multiple items converge in a single dimension; (b) individual-level patterns of item convergence are invariant across countries; (c) aggregate-level patterns of item convergence replicate those at the individual level. This approach involves two premises: Measurement validity hinges solely on a construct’s internal convergence, and convergence patterns at the individual level have priority over those at the aggregate level. We question both premises (a) because convergence patterns at the aggregate-level exist in their own right and (b) because only a construct’s external linkages reveal its reality outreach. In support of these claims, we use the example of “emancipative values” to show that constructs can entirely lack convergence at the individual level and nevertheless exhibit powerful and important linkages at the aggregate level. Consequently, we advocate a paradigm shift from internal convergence toward external linkage as the prime criterion of validity.

Historical institutionalist theories of endogenous change have enhanced our understanding of institutional development by providing a theoretical vocabulary for analyzing how institutions may be renegotiated over the long run by social and political actors. In these theories, however, the causal impact of institutions themselves on political outcomes, including their own change and reform, is less developed—a significant problem for an institutional research program. This article addresses this problem by proposing strategies that integrate historical institutionalism’s insights into endogenous institutional change with a systematic analysis of the institutional conditions under which “bottom-up” processes of gradual change are likely to be counteracted. In particular, the institutionalization of cultural categories and the allocation of power over the timing of reform within institutional and policy configurations are important variables for understanding how preexisting institutions may enable institutional incumbents to channel, delay, or prevent institutional change altogether.

Sartori’s strictures on conceptual stretching may have distracted the comparative discipline’s attention from a deeper second theme in his work, the shift from top-down, variable-centered analysis to bottom-up (ab imis) political analysis based on individual persons’ decision making and their concrete interactions, a kind of model that has only recently become practical with computer assistance, and which is peculiarly appropriate for a comparative research that seeks to combine case studies and scientific inference. A classic ethnography by Clifford Geertz, based on thick description, is respectfully re-evaluated to show that a bottom-up ontology can provide insights into enduring questions of political science that may elude conventional variable-centered methods. Bottom-up models may add an important dimension to comparative research, bridging old divisions between ethnography, case studies, processes, and mechanisms on one hand, and formalized scientific models on the other.

Helbling, M., & Traunmüller, R. (2016). How state support of religion shapes attitudes toward Muslim immigrants: New evidence from a sub-national comparison. Comparative Political Studies, 49, 391-424. (Original DOI: 10.1177/0010414015612388)