The role of values for social cohesion: Theoretical explication and empirical exploration

Nowack, Daniel; Schoderer, Sophia Working Paper The role of values for social cohesion: Theoretical explication and empirical exploration Discussion Paper, No. 6/2020 Provided in Cooperation with: German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS), Bonn Suggested Citation: Nowack, Daniel; Schoderer, Sophia (2020) : The role of values for social cohesion: Theoretical explication and empirical exploration, Discussion Paper, No. 6/2020, ISBN 978-3-96021-117-4, Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE), Bonn, https://doi.org/10.23661/dp6.2020 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/215548 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. 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If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Discussion Paper 6/2020 The Role of Values for Social Cohesion: Daniel Nowack Sophia Schoderer Theoretical Explication and Empirical Exploration The role of values for social cohesion: Theoretical explication and empirical exploration Daniel Nowack Sophia Schoderer Bonn, 2020 Discussion Paper / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik ISSN (Print) 1860-0441 ISSN (Online) 2512-8698 Except as otherwise noted this publication is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0). You are free to copy, communicate and adapt this work, as long as you attribute the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) and the author. Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. ISBN 978-3-96021-117-4 (printed edition) DOI:10.23661/dp6.2020 Printed on eco-friendly, certified paper Daniel Nowack is a researcher with the research programme “Transformation of Political (Dis-)order” at the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE). Email: [email protected] Sophia Schoderer is a development cooperation trainee with a background in Cultural Psychology currently working in the Programme for basic and technical education and vocational training by the German State Development Agency/ Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) in Mozambique. Email: [email protected] Published with financial support from the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) © Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik gGmbH Tulpenfeld 6, 53113 Bonn  +49 (0)228 94927-0  +49 (0)228 94927-130 Email: [email protected] www.die-gdi.de Preface This Discussion Paper is part of DIE’s research project “Preconditions for Sustainable Development: Social Cohesion in Africa”. Social cohesion – or social solidarity – within societies is a key success factor for sustainable development in Africa. However, social cohesion is also particularly under pressure in African societies and other world regions. The DIE team aims at identifying patterns of social cohesion in Africa, analyses factors that influence the degree of social cohesion (or its absence) and identifies domestic and international policies that contribute to the creation and consolidation of social cohesion. The team addresses five issue areas: 1. Measuring social cohesion in African societies across countries; 2. Effects of tax systems and social policy on strengthening social cohesion in Africa; 3. Interdependence of financial systems design (small and medium-sized enterprises) and social cohesion 4. Relevance of values, democracy and political institutions for social cohesion 5. Influence of external peacebuilding, political institutions and individual attitudes on societal peace and social cohesion. This research is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). We hope that DIE research will help to better understand the drivers of social cohesion and to formulate policies that contribute to cohesive societies worldwide. Bonn, 05 February 2020 Julia Leininger Programme Director “Transformation of political (dis-)order” and co-lead of the research project „Social cohesion in Africa“ Armin von Schiller Co-lead of the research project „Social cohesion in Africa“ and senior researcher in the programme “Transformation of political (dis-)order” Acknowledgements While writing this Discussion Paper we received a lot of helpful and welcome advice. We would like to thank our colleagues at the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut fu r Entwicklungspolitik (DIE), especially Julia Leininger, Christoph Strupat and Maximilian Högl. Abstract Shared values are deemed necessary as a solid foundation for social cohesion by commentators and observers in many countries. However, when examining what kind of values this is based on, answers often come down to platitudes and national clichés. This discussion paper offers some clarification through both a theoretical explication and an empirical exploration concerning the general role of values for social cohesion. Values are notions about desirable, trans-situational end-states and behaviours. They fall into two categories, individual and societal values. We provide a critical discussion of the most prominent conceptualisations and their operationalisation in the social sciences. Values affect social cohesion in three possible pathways: First, when they are shared; second, when they promote behaviour per se conducive to social cohesion and third, through their effect on policy choice and institutional design. We review evidence provided by the research literature for each of these pathways. We further explore the third pathway by deriving from the research literature the conjecture that a cultural value emphasis on egalitarianism makes a universalistic scope of welfare institutions more likely, which in turn increases social and political trust. We first examine this conjecture with a series of regression models, and then run a mediation analysis. The results show that (1.) egalitarian values are moderately strongly and positively linked to universalistic welfare institutions, but that (2.) welfare institutions mediate the association of egalitarian values with social trust only to a small extent and that (3.) more universalistic welfare institutions counteract a negative association between egalitarian values and institutional trust. Contents Preface Acknowledgements Abstract Abbreviations 1. Introduction 1 2. Theoretical explication 3 2.1 What is social cohesion? 3 2.2 What are values? 5 2.2.1 Individual values 7 2.2.2 Societal values 10 2.2.3 Universality of values 12 2.3 How might values affect social cohesion? The three pathways 14 2.3.1 The intrinsic pathway: sharing values 15 2.3.2 The extrinsic pathway I: value content 16 2.3.3 The extrinsic pathway II: value content mediated 17 3 Empirical exploration 19 3.1 A conjecture: Welfare institutions mediate the effect of egalitarian values on social cohesion 19 3.2 Data and operationalisation 21 3.3 Methodology 23 3.4 Results 25 3.5 Discussion 29 3.5.1 Summary of findings 29 3.5.2 Implications of main results 30 3.5.3 Limitations 31 4 Conclusion 32 References 35 Appendix 43 Figures Figure 1: Effects of values on social cohesion 15 Figure 2: Conjectured relationship between egalitarian values, welfare institutions and trust 21 Figure 3: Path coefficients for mediation model 1 28 Figure 4: Path coefficients for mediation model 2 29 Tables Table 1: Overview of value concepts 7 Table 2: Determinants of universalistic vs. means-tested socialwelfare programmes 25 Table 3: Determinants of institutional trust 26 Table 4: Determinants of social trust 27 Appendix Tables Table A1: Overview of variables and sources 43 Table A2: Descriptive statistics 44 Table A3: Overview of countries, SVS sample size, year of SVS data collection and Egalitarianism score 45 Daniel Nowack / Sophia Schoderer 6 German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) in a hierarchically ordered cognitive value structure, which may sometimes give rise to value ambivalence (Jacoby, 2006). Although they share many commonalities, there are two approaches to measuring values across social science disciplines. They differ substantially only regarding the conceptual terms employed in items measuring respondents’ values. However, this choice in wording can create a crucial difference (Sokolov, 2018). First, the literature on cross-cultural and social psychology predominantly follows the measurement technique as pioneered by Rokeach (Rohan, 2000). Values are measured by stating an abstract, trans-situational term that represents a value, adding a brief description for clarification, and then asking the respondent to indicate how important this value is as a guiding principle in their life. In order to minimise the abstractness inherent in measuring values like this, Schwartz (2011) modified Rokeach’s technique and constructed written portraits of persons in line with different values. Respondents were then asked to indicate how much they resemble the portrayed persons on a Likert scale. The portrait for the value achievement, for instance, reads as “It is very important to her to show her abilities. She wants people to admire what she does” (Schwartz, 2011, p. 191). Note that despite specifying the value through a description, it remains an abstract, trans-situational notion. This contrasts with the second value measurement approach which is often used in the political science and sociology literature. Here, respondents are commonly asked to indicate their agreement with a specific, less abstract and less trans-situational statement. One item for the widely used Emancipative Values Index1, for instance, reads as “When jobs are scarce, men should have more right to a job than women” (Welzel, 2013). The content validity of such items, in other words to what extent they measure the theoretical concept they are intended to measure, is debatable. If values are defined as abstract notions of trans-situational, desirable actions and end-states, it may well be argued that this item is too specific in describing a particular situation. Although attitudes may serve the function of expressing and applying values with reference to specific ‘attitude objects’, such as persons, places, things or events, they may still build upon multiple values. Inferring values inductively from a survey battery of attitudinal items risks arriving at loose and not clearly defined or distinct values (Schwartz, 2006, p. 144). Regardless of the wording of items, the construction of value indices from a number of single survey items follows a general common approach. Data from various items are bundled into broader value categories via statistical techniques, such as factor analysis or multidimensional scaling. While this statistical approach is in accordance with the theoretical conceptualisation of values, it also inflates the number of conceptual value variants that circulate in the literature. This inflation has led to conceptual stretching (Sartori, 1970) in which sometimes distinct, sometimes overlapping, sometimes more abstract, sometimes more specific value concepts are occasionally specified under the same or similar names within different social science disciplines. Nevertheless, a major fault line exists between those values that belong to individuals and those that are located at the societal level. To provide some orientation in this “forest of values” (Haidt & Kesebir, 2007), this section gives an overview of different value concepts that are used in the literature (see Table 1 for an overview). 1 The Emancipative Value Index builds upon earlier work by Ronald Inglehart and Wayne Baker and describes to what degree people „claim authority over their lives for themselves“ (Welzel, 2013, p. 59), that is how strongly they desire a life free from subjection and control. The role of values for social cohesion: theoretical explication and empirical exploration German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) 7 2.2.1 Individual values This section provides an overview of different individual-level value concepts and theories. It starts with less well-established and less clearly conceptualised frameworks, and proceeds towards more prominent and well-developed theories. Individual-level values are those values which are thought to be latent characteristics exclusively applicable to individuals. Political and democratic values are an example for particularly fuzzy conceptualisations, despite their prominence in the research literature. They are usually simply conceptualised as any values with content pertaining to political questions and issues (e.g. Halman, 2007; Sleat, 2016). Among them, democratic values are of special interest in the political science Table 1: Overview of value concepts Author(s) Value conceptualisation Personal values Democratic values/value orientations Sack (2017) Liberal vs. socialist Thomassen (2007; 1998) Liberty vs. equality Community values Breidahl et al. (2018) Conservative nationalism vs. liberal nationalism vs. multiculturalism vs. liberal citizenship Core political values Feldman (1988) Equality of opportunity; economic individualism; free enterprise McCann (1997) Egalitarianism vs. moral traditionalism Heath, Jowell, and Curtice (1985) Libertarian vs. authoritarian; socialist vs. laissez-faire Goren (2005) Traditional family values; equal opportunity; moral tolerance; limited government Jacoby (2006) Liberty; equality; economic security; social order Ashton et al. (2005) Moral regulation vs. individual freedom; compassion vs. competition Schwartz, Caprara, and Vecchione (2010) Law and order; traditional morality; equality; free enterprise; civil liberties; blind patriotism Basic values Schwartz (2012) Universalism; benevolence; conformity; tradition; security; power; achievement; hedonism; stimulation; self-direction Inglehart and Welzel (2005) Self-expression vs. survival; secular-rational vs. traditional Societal values Cultural dimensions theory Hofstede (2003) Power distance; uncertainty avoidance; individualism vs. collectivism; masculinity vs. femininity; long term vs. short term orientation; indulgence vs. restraint Schwartz (2014a) Cultural values Embeddedness; hierarchy; mastery; affective autonomy; intellectual autonomy; egalitarianism; harmony Source: Authors Daniel Nowack / Sophia Schoderer 8 German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) literature, as they are central to the hypothesis that democracy can only hold ground in a society that holds democratic values. However, the definitions of democratic values remain particularly vague. Since their measurement procedure is based on a limited number of attitudinal survey items concerning democracy, democratic values do not emerge as strictly distinct concepts in the literature. As such, they tend to remain in the stage of attitudinal dimensions towards different aspects of democracy. Fuchs (2007), however, argues that democratic values are distinct from attitudes that provide support for a particular type of democracy. Sack (2017) follows him on this but acknowledges that he cannot measure democratic values. He therefore argues to measure “value orientations” based on attitudinal data, hence, individual orientations towards democratic values. But the value orientations he measures still only differentiate between support for two different styles of democracy, the liberal and the socialist model of democracy. Hence, his measurement is still closer to what Fuchs (2007) argues are attitudes in support of different democratic regime types rather than democratic values per se. Thomassen (1998, 2007) constitutes a similar case; he claims to measure support for democratic values but ultimately his measurement is closer to attitudes towards the role of state intervention and welfare institutions in democracies. The general conundrum that values cannot be measured directly – but only indirectly through attitudes – certainly complicates the issue. However, the bottom line of our critique is that the literature investigates attitudes towards varieties of democracies rather than democratic values themselves. Consequently, the concept of democratic values remains elusive as long as we do not compare it with its informative antagonist. To really grasp what constitutes democratic values, we need to contrast them with their non-democratic equivalent: autocratic values2. Besides democratic values, the research literature has advanced additional kinds of political values. Breidahl, Holtug and Kongshøj (2018) for instance, investigate “community values”. According to them, these are values concerning who legitimately belongs to the state community. To measure such values, they extract four indices from survey data on attitudes about citizenship and cultural heterogeneity. As a result, their value indices provide information on attitudinal dimensions towards what constitutes a national identity, such as conservative nationalism or multiculturalism. Similar to democratic values, the question arises again whether what they measure fulfils the criteria for values, specifically whether it denotes notions about some desirable and trans-situational behaviour or end-state that is latent to attitudes, or whether it is still closer to an attitudinal index that simply aggregates attitudes according to topic. A comparable criticism, albeit to a lesser degree, can be extended to the concept of ‘core political values’. This concept originated in the social and political psychology literature and denotes “overarching normative principles and belief assumptions about government, citizenship, and society”3 (McCann, 1997). Besides having a strong focus on American 2 To date, there is no such concept as autocratic values. The next closest thing is provided with the concepts of right wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO). These concepts emerged in psychological research after World War Two inspired by Adorno’s concept of the authoritarian personality. Right wing authoritarianism broadly captures readiness of submission, while social dominance orientation largely describes an attitudinal preferences for either equal or hierarchical intergroup relations (Caprara & Vecchione, 2013). 3 Note that in this sense, Breidahl et al.’s concept of ‘community values’ would qualify as a core political value. The role of values for social cohesion: theoretical explication and empirical exploration German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) 9 politics, a major deficit of this concept is that its delineation to political attitudes is blurry. Researchers often use the terms ‘core political attitudes’ or ‘beliefs’ interchangeably (Caprara & Vecchione, 2013, p. 16). Core political values are also often conceptually conflated with attitudes and beliefs. Attitudes on more specific questions are frequently conceptualised as core political values together with less specific and more abstract notions. According to Goren (2005), for instance, both the more abstract traditional family values and moral tolerance as well as the more specific attitudes towards limited government and equal opportunity fall under core political values. In his operationalisation of core political values, Feldman (1988) also includes attitudes towards free enterprise in his operationalisation of core political values, just like Schwartz, Caprara, and Vecchione (2010) who also include blind patriotism. In contrast, McCann (1997) sticks with the more abstract concepts of egalitarianism and moral traditionalism. However, despite the blurry delineation between core political values on the one hand, and beliefs and attitudes on the other, there is some general notion in the social and political psychology literature, that core political values are one layer of less foundational and more flexible values that are informed by underlying personal values (Caprara & Vecchione, 2013; Feldman, 2013). One likely candidate for more foundational personal values that inform core political values is given by Schwartz’ influential and prominent theory of basic values (Schwartz, 1992; 2011; 2012). Based on considering what goals lie in the biological and social nature of human beings, Schwartz deductively conceptualised ten basic personal values that are supposed to be universal among all people (Schwartz, 2011). To test this, he developed two cross-cultural value surveys, the Schwartz Value Survey and the Portrait Values Questionnaire. Based on these data sets, Schwartz explored the complementary and opposing relationships between the ten basic values, and showed that they order along two dimensions. The first dimension contrasts values of openness, such as stimulation and hedonism, against values of conservation, such as security and conformity; the second dimension contrasts values that put the focus on benefits for oneself, such as power and achievement, with values that put the focus on the well-being of others, such as universalism and benevolence. An important limitation of conceptualising values deductively instead of inferring them inductively from attitudinal items, is that it might miss values that exist, but were not conceptually deduced beforehand. Compared to the concepts of political values, and core political values, Schwartz’ basic personal values are much more trans-situational and general, often described by a highly abstract notion, such as ‘achievement’, ‘conformity’ or ‘universalism’ (see Table 1). Hence, they are generally thought to underlie behaviour, attitudes, beliefs and less foundational values, such as core political values (Feldman, 2013). Caprara, Schwartz, Capanna, Vecchione and Barbaranelli (2006) and Schwartz et al. (2010), for instance, find that the impact of Schwartz’ basic personal values on voting behaviour was fully mediated by core political values. Similarly, Caprara et al. (2017) find that basic personal values predict to which political ideology people adhere. Inglehart and Welzel (2005) put forth another influential and prominent theory of individual values. Based on data collected by the extensive World Values Survey, they constructed value indices measuring two basic value dimensions using factor analysis. Self-expression values on the one end and survival values on the other end constitute the first dimension. Daniel Nowack / Sophia Schoderer 10 German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) For instance, tolerance is a self-expression value, while security is a survival value. The second dimension is between secular-rational values, such as separation of religion and authority, and traditional values, such as deference to authority, as its dimensional opposite. Inglehart and Welzel’s theory of values and value change is complemented by Inglehart’s (1971) earlier work on the rise of postmaterialist values. In his work, Inglehart documented a value shift among the younger generations in Western industrialised countries. This shift was characterised by de-emphasising values relating to economic security, i.e. materialist values, towards emphasising postmaterialist values, such as self-fulfilment. Inglehart and Welzel argue that this shift towards postmaterialist values is part of a greater value change in human history and the development sequence of individual societies. As part of this shift, on the one hand, traditional values transform into secular-rational values, while, on the other hand, survival values transform into self-expression values (Inglehart, 2007; Inglehart & Welzel, 2005). According to Inglehart and Welzel, another important development in this broader survival/self-expression and traditional/secular-rational value change is a shift towards emancipative values. Emancipative values put a strong emphasis on the decisionmaking freedom of individuals and correlate strongly with democracy (Welzel, Inglehart, & Deutsch, 2005). According to their theory, the shift to emancipative values thus is an important predictor and stabiliser for democratisation and democracy (Welzel, 2007, 2014). Despite the centrality of values and value change, Inglehart and Welzel’s theory nevertheless is a revitalisation of modernisation theory, which proposes socio-economic change to be a major driver of political institutional change. They argue that “economic development tends to transform people’s basic values” (2005, p. 5) from which political institutional change then follows. They hence leave little room for endogenous value change. Scholars of other disciplines have picked up this theory. Morris (2015), for instance, provides a historical narrative from a point of view of modernisation theory. According to his narrative, the entire human history can be broadly characterised by the three distinct value sets of hunter-gatherer values, farmer values and values of fossil fuel-based societies. Which values prevail at what time largely depends on the socio-economic conditions within each historical period. The research literature largely agrees on the conceptualisation and definition of personal values. However, the practice of measuring personal values might still not meet this conceptualisation. Some researchers make heavy use of a limited number of attitudinal items in which the ‘attitudinal object’ often is a specifically described situation that might not differ much from item to item. These attitudes are then inductively aggregated into values. This approach comes with the risk of creating index scores of similar or related attitudes rather than measuring values. Other researchers present respondents with deductively conceptualised abstract notions and ask them whether these notions serve as a guiding principles in their life. This approach minimises the risk of creating attitudinal indices rather than measuring values, but it might not measure existing values because they were not deductively conceptualised beforehand. Value researchers need to find a way which minimises both risks and reconciles the advantages of both approaches. 2.2.2 Societal values It is a straightforward and a consensual assumption within value research that personal values are cognitive properties of individual people. However, most researchers agree that The role of values for social cohesion: theoretical explication and empirical exploration German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) 11 values exist conceptually not only on the individual micro level, but that groups and societies can also be characterised by specific value sets. The nature of such societal values is a more complicated issue in which the literature has not yet settled on a common conceptualisation. Early work in value research did not explicitly differentiate between values at the individual and societal level. While social psychologists early on clearly focused on values at the individual micro level, researchers in anthropology focused more on societal values that made human communities distinct. As different disciplinary research communities did not explicitly address levels of conceptualisation for decades, this led to some confusion within the literature (Rohan, 2000; Schwartz, 2011). However, more recent work has begun to clear up this confusion. One of the most prominent conceptualisations of society-level values stems from Hofstede (2003) and his theory of cultural dimensions. Being a researcher with the IBM corporation, Hofstede developed and conducted a survey among IBM employees in a number of different countries. From his data, he distilled six different value dimensions that characterise cultures around the world (see Table 1). The most prominent of the six value dimensions is probably the individualism-collectivism dimension. It broadly distinguishes between societies where an orientation towards oneself and an emphasis on rights over duties dominates, versus societies in which a ‘We’-orientation and conformity to group norms and the common good prevail. Schwartz (2014a) developed another influential and commonly used conceptualisation of societal values. Based on his theory of personal basic values, Schwartz expounded his cultural values theory that argues that societies around the world can be distinguished by their relative emphasis on one of seven cultural value dimensions (Schwartz, 2006). Just as in his theory of basic personal values, Schwartz’ cultural values are ordered in a dimensional spectrum in which two opposing values roughly characterise the dimension. The masteryharmony dimension, for instance, is defined by the opposition of the following values: Mastery describes the self-assertion to be able to direct and change one’s social and natural environment; the value of harmony in contrast emphasises being and staying part of the world as it is without changing it. A salient and much researched dimension in Schwartz’ cultural values concerns the embeddedness-autonomy dimension in which autonomy is subdivided into affective and intellectual autonomy. Embeddedness describes a worldview that predominantly sees and treats people as belonging to a human collective, while autonomy refers to a worldview that rather perceives people as bounded entities that emphasise their own preferences and opinions. In its meaning and conceptualisation, Schwartz’ embeddedness-autonomy dimension is very close to Hofstede’s collectivismindividualism dimension. How to conceptualise societal values is an important question. This is still a point of debate in the literature (Schwartz, 2014b). According to Hofstede’s (2003, p. 9) conceptualisation, societal-level values are the “collective programming of the mind”. He thus implies that societal-level data somehow also resides within individual minds and can be inferred from individual survey results. However, he does not explicitly expound on whether he thinks that societal-level data are internal or external to individuals. Schwartz, in contrast, argues that culture is “the latent, normative value system, external to the individual, which underlies and justifies the functioning of societal institutions” (Schwartz, 2014b, p. 6). He Daniel Nowack / Sophia Schoderer 12 German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) argues that, as the underlying value system shapes and gives rise to societal institutions, individual society members are ‘imprinted’ by the cultural values of their society. Accordingly, cultural values can be deduced as an aggregate from survey data on individual society members. The large variation within a given society that such survey data reveal is just a residual to these aggregate cultural values caused by differences in personal basic values (Fischer & Schwartz, 2011). The conceptualisation of societal values is important because it is intricately linked to their measurement. Most conceptualisations of societal values assume that societal values can be derived from individual-level data. Both Schwartz and Hofstede use survey data to measure societal values. Rohan (2000), however, stresses that the operationalisation and measurement of societal-level data is still an open question. He suggests that they might also be measured through analysing the presentation of ideal and prototypes. Content analysis, for example, could measure under which headings and using which key words issues of public debate are discussed within the media to infer the societal ideals and goals, and hence, ultimately, the values of a society. Even though both Hofstede’s and Schwartz’ conceptualisations are close enough to each other to justify measuring societal-level values through survey data, at least Schwartz’ conceptualisation also justifies measuring societallevel data through content or discourse analysis as suggested by Rohan (2000). To the extent that public discourse and similar societal-level processes are what Hofstede implies with the “programming of the mind”, his conceptualisation does so as well. 2.2.3 Universality of values Are the values identified by the literature universal for all people across time and space? Almost all value theories presented so far assume this. Discussing this assumption is highly relevant for two reasons. First, by building upon an assumption of universality, value theories rule out endogenous cultural change, that is to say self-motivated cultural change. This means in consequence that people and human societies cannot evolve new values. The plausibility of this conclusion is questionable. Second, it is well known that social science has suffered from a euro-centric bias in the past, and universalism is a particular form of eurocentrism in the social sciences (Wallerstein, 1997). Any claim to universality thus needs to be evaluated carefully. But as Rohan (2000) points out, value research rarely makes this assumption explicit, let alone discusses it. The following paragraphs investigate whether the universality assumption is justified. They start by exploring neuroscientific foundations of how values are represented in the mind, and how the capacity for having values probably is a universal product of human evolution. They then show that most value theories assume, contrary to this, that the actual content of values, not only the capacity for having values, are universal. Finally, we discuss why this assumption might be wrong, and how it might constrain future research. Although often perceived as abstract, research on how values and general morality are cognitively represented in the mind suggests that they are not entirely part of pure abstract reasoning. Recent neuroscientific research has investigated the areas of the brain where neurons are activated when individuals reflect on values. These studies have shown that value reflection is connected to neuronal activities between and within the superior temporal lobe (a region connected to abstract reasoning), the prefrontal cortex (connected to action The role of values for social cohesion: theoretical explication and empirical exploration German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) 13 planning), but also to basal forebrain regions, such as the hypothalamus, which are responsible for generating emotions (Zahn et al., 2008). This indicates that values are not purely abstract cognitive concepts but in some way have an emotional association in the human brain. Other studies additionally found that value reflection stimulates areas of the brain that activate during economic reasoning, such as when people compare prices (Brosch & Sander, 2013). Overall, this suggests that the capacity for cognitive evaluation is an essential product of human evolution and that at least this capacity must be universal among people (Evers & Changeux, 2016). As our closest living relatives, the great apes, also exhibit forms of morality, it is likely that human morality evolved for seven to eight million years since the split from the last common ancestor shared by humans and great apes (Langergraber et al., 2012; Tomasello & Vaish, 2013). Based on a review of morality research, Haidt and Joseph (2004) put forth the argument that during this time, humans evolved innate “moral intuitions” that form the basis of human values4. They suggest that these moral intuitions are universal for all people, but leave sufficient space for the emergence of differing value variants across and within human societies. This is contrary to the conceptualisations of individual and societal values introduced here so far, almost all of which assume universality of values across human societies. Schwartz, for instance, argues that both his conceptualisation of basic and of cultural values are based on universal problems that human societies have always had and always will have to deal with. Hence, he concludes that the resulting types and dimensions of values are also universal, although different individuals and different societies may emphasise them differently. Even though their choices may be different and distinct, they all choose from the same never changing set of universal values. Schwartz formulates it most explicitly in his value theory, but almost all other value concepts imply the same (e.g. Hofstede, 2003; Inglehart & Welzel, 2005). Many of the values and value dimensions identified by the literature do indeed overlap or are at least similar to one another. The conceptual similarity between Hofstede’s individualism-collectivism dimension and Schwartz’ autonomy-embeddedness dimension has already been noted. Inglehart (2018, pp. 50-51) argues that there even is a value superdimension. Putting forth strong correlations between his and Welzel’s measure of survival and self-expression values, Hofstede’s individualism-collectivism value dimension, and Schwartz’ autonomy-embeddedness dimension, he argues that they “all tap a common underlying dimension”. This super-dimension reflects “variation to the extent to which given societies allow people a narrow or broad range of free choice” (Inglehart, 2018, p. 52). Because all three dimensions were conceptualised and measured separately, this could indicate their universality across human societies, but it could also indicate that values simply converge across societies. Additional research supports the idea that certain values are universal to all people. Research by Fischer and Schwartz (2011) shows that variation in values within countries is larger than between countries. This suggests that the effect of societal culture on individual values 4 In their original paper, Haidt and Joseph (2004) do not speak of values, but of “virtues”. However, what they cite as ‘virtues’ comes close to what other authors call values, and in a later paper Haidt and Kesebir (2007) use ‘virtues’ and ‘values’ interchangeably. Daniel Nowack / Sophia Schoderer 14 German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) is weaker than thought so far, and that the individual value set conceptualised by Schwartz is at least to some degree and for some values universal. Despite these research findings, the assumption of value universality is open to debate. Methodologically, it is doubtful to assume that the values that research has identified so far are universal across all human societies. First, the results are all based on data, in which the scope for responses of respondents was conceptually limited beforehand. Respondents can only choose from the value items that the surveys offer as responses, ipso facto they could not provide alternative values if they wanted to. Second, universality implies that the understanding of the survey items used to measure values does not vary between societies. Only conditional on this assumption would value surveys measure the same concept in different societies, a property which is called measurement equivalence in cross-national research (Davidov, Meuleman, Cieciuch, Schmidt, & Billiet, 2014). Recent studies show that this measurement equivalence is not given for many value theories proposed so far. The Portrait Value Questionnaire of Schwartz’ basic values theory was reformed after such findings, and suggestions for changes are now also being proposed for Welzel’s Index of Emancipative Values (Cieciuch, Davidov, Algesheimer, & Schmidt, 2018; Sokolov, 2018). However, the important implication is that the universality assumption, at least for some value concepts, does not hold in the face of a lack of measurement equivalence. An additional important implication of the universality assumption is that it restricts the focus of future research. There are tendencies to include the notion of cultural evolution into the research of values, e.g. Inglehart (2018), Morris (2015) and Welzel (2014). Cultural evolution is the transmission of social facts, such as ideas, attitudes, beliefs, but also technologies, within and between generations (Richerson & Boyd, 2001). In short, it describes cultural change. The theoretical framework of cultural evolution might thus aid to explain value change. However, the idea of a universal pre-determined set of individual and societal values is irreconcilable with the dynamics of evolution. For methodological and theoretical reasons, the assumption that certain values are universal thus needs to be critically investigated and tested. In addition, besides focusing on the aggregation of values into broader value indices and dimensions in order to subsume societies into the same, research needs to examine more of the cultural dynamics of values. More research is needed that investigates value change and the formation of new values within human societies. 2.3 How might values affect social cohesion? The three pathways As briefly outlined before, many theorists regard values as central to social cohesion. In discussing the role of values, it makes sense to differentiate between two distinct pathways: the intrinsic and the extrinsic pathway (Holtug, 2017). Based on the literature on values and institutions, we further suggest that the extrinsic pathway branches into a direct nonmediated effect, and an indirect effect in which institutions mediate the effect of values on social cohesion (see Figure 1). The role of values for social cohesion: theoretical explication and empirical exploration German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) 15 Figure 1: Effects of values on social cohesion Source: Authors 2.3.1 The intrinsic pathway: sharing values The intrinsic pathway describes the possible effect of value consensus on social cohesion. In this pathway, the content of a particular value, such as egalitarianism, is only of minor interest. Rather, it is of interest whether members of a society agree on and share the same values, that is, whether there is value consensus within a society. The premise behind this pathway is that “the real threat to the moral order is not ethnic diversity, it is moral diversity – a lack of consensus on basic values” (Haidt & Kesebir, 2007, p. 226). It is based on the idea that shared values forge a common identity, and, thus, “imagined communities” (Anderson, 1983; Holtug, 2017). So far, empirical evidence for this positive effect of shared values is scarce and inconclusive. Concerning identity, qualitative analyses suggest that shared values at least play some role in discourses on national identity, but these studies seldom also shed light on their ultimate effect on social cohesion (Henderson & McEwen, 2005). Most quantitative studies on the effect of shared values focus on trust. A cross-national analysis undertaken by Beugelsdijk and Klasing (2016) finds that higher polarisation in terms of values is moderately associated with less generalised trust. However, the value measure they construct from the World Values Survey is based on a range of attitudinal survey items, concerning attitudes towards, for instance, government intervention and prostitution, which clearly presents not a transsituational context. It thus captures attitudes towards political ideology and so-called morally debateable behaviour rather than values as defined by Hofstede (2003), Rohan (2000) or Schwartz (2006). Contrary to their finding, other studies do not find the same moderately robust effect. Breidahl et al. (2018) explored whether the perception that others agree with their community values influences Danish respondents’ trust levels. They only find a weak negative correlation that did not prove to be robust or consistent across different Daniel Nowack / Sophia Schoderer 22 German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) institutions), all individual data were aggregated at a country level. In total, data on all variables was available for 63 countries across all inhabited continents of the world. An overview of the countries can be found in the Appendix. In our empirical exploration, we chose to examine two potentially important country-level antecedents of social cohesion: the countries’ cultural value emphasis on egalitarianism and the ratio of universalistic to means-tested social welfare institutions. In order to keep confounding effects as small as possible, we included multiple control variables, including the pervasiveness of political corruption, level of democracy and economic development. Political corruption and democracy have been found to be strong determinants of social and institutional trust (Rothstein & Uslaner, 2005) and were thus included as control variables. We also controlled for educational equality and freedom of discussion, as social trust is likely to be fostered in environments where information can flow freely (Fisman & Khanna, 1999), and where equality of opportunity in areas such as education prevails (Rothstein & Uslaner, 2005). Since ethnic heterogeneity might influence the sense of belonging to a larger social order (Licht et al., 2007), it was also integrated as a control variable. Lastly, we added economic development and government revenue to rule out differences between countries in terms of economic strength, which is usually associated with a more benign social policy framework and affects how extensively governments engage in distributive expenditures (Muinelo-Gallo & Roca-Sagalés, 2011)5. An overview of all variables and their measurement is provided in the Appendix. We retrieved data on egalitarianism from the Schwartz Value Survey (SVS)6. In the SVS, participants are asked to rate the importance of different values as guiding principles for their lives on a Likert scale ranging from -1 (opposed to my values), 0 (not important) to 7 (of supreme importance). Importance ratings on six values (equality, social justice, loyalty, honesty, welfare and responsibility) are used for determining a country’s cultural value emphasis on egalitarianism (Schwartz, 2014a). Since individuals and cultural groups might use the value scales differently, the individual-level raw scores were corrected for scale use before aggregation for the cross-country analyses. In this we followed the instructions provided in the SVS. Recall that our mediating variable is the ratio of universalistic to means-tested social welfare policies. For this, we used the means-tested vs. universalistic policy indicator from the database Varieties of Democracy (Coppedge et al., 2019), which measures the quality of the welfare state on an interval scale ranging from 0 to 5. A score of 0 implies that there are no, or extremely limited, welfare state policies, whereas a score of 5 means that almost all welfare state policies are universal in character (V-Dem, 2019). More fine-scaled indicators on social welfare programmes are rare and would have necessitated a major data collection effort. Because of this and due to its broad coverage in terms of countries and time, this indicator was deemed most suitable for the purposes of our explorative analysis. 5 Intercorrelations between the covariates ranged from -0.73 to 0.79. However, in all cases, multicollinearity did not occur (VIF< 10). 6 The SVS data set was compiled between 1985 and 2005 by Schwartz and over 100 collaborators worldwide. The data set was accessed via the Israel Social Sciences Data Center (Israel Social Sciences Data Center, 2019). The role of values for social cohesion: theoretical explication and empirical exploration German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) 23 With regard to the outcome variables, social trust was measured by the binary ‘mostpeople’-question (“Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or you can’t be too careful in dealing with people?”). This question has been included as an item in all waves of the World Value Survey (WVS), as well as other regional surveys7. In their review of trust measurement, Bauer and Freitag (2018) conclude that the dichotomous most-people measure is still mainly used to assess social trust in spite of several shortcomings. These include limited scale length and interpersonal comparability, as people from different cultures may interpret the most-people question differently. Since more nuanced data are not available for a broad range of countries, we decided to stick with the binary most-people question to approximate countries’ levels of social trust. Reversing the scores from the WVS and European Value Survey (EVS), ensured that for all countries a higher social trust score indicates that people trust each other more. In order to gauge institutional trust at the country level, we calculated an additive individuallevel index based on the measurement of trust in the police, the courts and the parliament on a Likert scale from 1 to 4, which was then aggregated at the national level as a simple average. The scores of the WVS and EVS were reversed, so that for all countries a higher institutional trust index translates into more trust in the respective institutions. Availability of the data posed a major challenge. The SVS data are available only until 2005, and the WVS and EVS often provided no data earlier than 2005. Hence, checking for the time difference between the SVS data and the data from the other surveys was especially important. Even though cultural values are thought to be quite stable (Schwartz, 2011), some authors found them to change inter-generationally (Inglehart & Abramson, 1994). Therefore, we compiled data only for those countries where the data collection of all surveys took place within a one-generation period of approximately 20 years, that is to say 10 years before and 10 years after the cultural value measurement. Countries to which this did not apply (Ethiopia, Indonesia, Singapore and Zimbabwe) were given an additional dummy variable in order to control for periods between data collection exceeding a one-generational time span. The analysis revealed that, in fact, the longer periods between data collection have no significant effect on the outcome variables social trust and institutional trust. Hence, there is no statistical support for excluding the four countries mentioned above from the analyses. They were thus kept in the sample for all analyses. 3.3 Methodology For our quantitative exploration, we employed two different types of data analysis strategies: multiple regression and mediation analyses. First, we used multiple regression analyses to indicate the strength and direction of the relationship between egalitarian values and the proportion of universalistic vs. means-tested social welfare programmes. Similarly, we ran regressions to test the relationships between the proportion of universalistic vs. means-tested social welfare programmes and social trust (see Figure 2: upper path), as well as institutional trust (see Figure 2: lower path). 7 These include the Afrobarometer, Arab Barometer, European Value Survey and the Latinobarómetro. Daniel Nowack / Sophia Schoderer 24 German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) Second, we ran mediation analyses to further investigate the triangular relationship between values, institutions and trust. A mediation model seeks to identify and explain the mechanism underlying the relationship between an independent and a dependent variable via the inclusion of a third variable, the so-called mediator (Hayes, 2009). The utility of mediation analyses8 stems from their ability to clarify the nature of the relationship between an independent and dependent variable by assessing the extent to which the effect of the independent on the dependent variable is direct or indirect through the mediator (Iacobucci et al., 2007). In their review of statistical methods for mediation analysis, Iacobucci et al. (2007) underline the superiority of Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) for determining mediation effects. SEM makes it possible to examine how well a process model linking a predictor variable to an outcome variable through one or more intervening pathways fits the observed data (Hayes, 2009). In a traditional mediation analysis, the model would be fit by a series of linear regression analyses as outlined in Baron & Kenny (1986). The advantage of using SEM is that it fits a single model and provides estimations of the indirect and total effects. However, it should be noted that a non-correlation of the variables’ error terms is assumed when using SEM as a tool for mediation analyses. Before we proceed to the interpretation of our results, we want to issue a cautionary note on statistical analysis. Statistical analysis testing has recently been criticised in some parts of the social science literature. Within psychology, for example, this debate has been prominent, and was accompanied by a general ‘replication crisis’ (for an overview, see: Earp and Trafimow (2015); Aarts and Lin (2015)). The major thrust of the critique on statistical significance and p-values is that they are falsely understood as reporting the odds at which a statistical result is true, whereas they actually report “the probability of obtaining the results in hand, assuming that the statistical null hypothesis is true in the population” (Lambdin, 2012, p. 74). One consequence of this is, that p-values are often presented in a definitive manner even for non-randomly drawn samples or for whole-population samples. However, for such samples the meaning of statistical significance is restricted, as the first case does not allow inferences on the entire population and the obtained coefficients are already those of the entire population in the second case. Some therefore argue that statistical significance testing should not be done for whole-population samples or nonrandom samples (Figueiredo Filho et al., 2013; Frick, 1998). Others, like Gigerenzer, Krauss and Vitouch (2004) propose a more informed and transparent use and presentation of statistical significance. We want to stress that we also do not have a randomly taken sample, but run our explorative analysis based on the totality of the available data. We further discuss the nature of our data below in a section on the limitations of our analysis. For now, we want to stress that the interpretation of our results refers to our sampled countries, and inferences beyond our availability-sample are indicative at best. For maximum transparency, we nevertheless follow Gigerenzer et al.’s (2004) best-practice suggestion and present exact p-values accompanied by confidence intervals. 8 For a more comprehensive discussion of mediation analyses and methodological considerations, see Iacobucci, Saldanha and Deng (2007). The role of values for social cohesion: theoretical explication and empirical exploration German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) 25 3.4 Results The multiple regression analyses revealed that egalitarian values positively relate to the proportion of universalistic vs. means-tested social welfare programmes, even if other explanatory variables are taken into account (β=0.235, p=0.111, see Table 2). In other words, with every increase of one standard deviation in the cultural value emphasis on egalitarianism, the proportion of universalistic vs. means-tested social welfare programmes increases by almost a quarter standard deviation if the other variables are held constant. Surprisingly, the multiple regression analysis revealed that out of all variables, only freedom of discussion is statistically significantly linked to the proportion of universalistic vs. means-tested social welfare programmes (β=0.53, p=0.013). This implies that countries with more freedom of discussion have a larger proportion of universalistic vs. means-tested social welfare programmes. With regard to the relationship between the scope of social welfare programmes and institutional trust, the results of the multiple regression confirm that the proportion of universalistic vs. means-tested social welfare programmes is significantly positively related to institutional trust (β=0.296, p=0.021, see Table 3). This implies that countries with a larger proportion of universalistic social welfare programmes experience significantly higher levels of institutional trust even if other explanatory factors are controlled for. Additionally, the results reveal significant negative relations between institutional trust and political corruption (β=-0.738, p<0.01) as well as electoral democracy (β=-0.6, p=0.014). Table 2: Determinants of universalistic vs. means-tested social welfare programmes Universalistic vs. means-tested social welfare programmes Coef. Std. Err. 95% Conf. Interval P>|t| β Egalitarianism 0.498 0.307 [-0.118, 1.114] 0.111 0.235 Educational equality 0.286 0.144 [-0.001, 0.574] 0.051 0.321 Freedom of discussion 2.221 0.86 [0.497, 3.945] 0.013* 0.53 Political corruption 0.447 0.653 [-0.863, 1.756] 0.497 0.143 Electoral democracy -0.981 1.026 [-3.038, 1.076] 0.343 -0.241 Ethnic heterogeneity 0.077 0.428 [-0.781, 0.934] 0.858 0.023 Economic development 0.000 0.000 [-0.001, 0.001] 0.904 0.021 Government revenue 1.202 1.479 [-1.763, 4.168] 0.420 0.112 Note: N=63. R²=0.428. F(8,54)=5.04. *p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001. The dependent variable is universalistic vs. means-tested social welfare programmes. Source: Authors Daniel Nowack / Sophia Schoderer 26 German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) These results suggest that countries with a high pervasiveness of political corruption and high levels of electoral democracy, experience lower levels of institutional trust. Contrary to the statistically significant positive association between the scope of social welfare programmes and institutional trust, the multiple regression analysis showed that a country’s proportion of universalistic vs. means-tested social welfare programmes is not connected to its degree of social trust (β=0.083, p=0.533, see Table 4). In other words, if all covariates are held constant, the social trust level rises by merely one tenth standard deviation with every increase of one standard deviation in the proportion of universalistic vs. means-tested social welfare programmes. Hence, the results of the multiple regression suggest that countries with more universalistic social welfare programmes do not experience either statistically significantly or substantially higher levels of social trust. In fact, the analysis revealed that out of all variables, only electoral democracy (β=-0.368, p=0.14), government revenue (β=0.345, p=0.017), GDP per capita (β=0.316, p=0.054), and freedom of discussion (β=0.291, p=0.175) are moderately strongly connected to social trust, with effect sizes of about one third of a standard deviation in social trust for every one standard deviation change in the independent variable. Table 3: Determinants of institutional trust Institutional trust Coef. Std. Err. 95% Conf. Interval P>|t| β Universalistic vs. means-tested social welfare programmes 0.087 0.036 [0.014, 0.161] 0.021* 0.296 Educational equality -0.069 0.041 [-0.15, 0.013] 0.096 -0.261 Freedom of discussion -0.049 0.251 [-0.552, 0.454] 0.845 -0.039 Political corruption -0.679 0.178 [-1.036, -0.321] 0.000*** -0.738 Electoral democracy -0.72 0.284 [-1.289, -0.152] 0.014* -0.6 Ethnic heterogeneity 0.198 0.115 [-0.032, 0.427] 0.091 0.197 Economic development 0.000 0.000 [-0.001, 0.001] 0.181 0.204 Government revenue 0.627 0.242 [-0.195, 1.45] 0.132 0.198 Note: N=63. R²=0.5. F(8,54)=6.76. *p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001. The dependent variable is institutional trust. Source: Authors The role of values for social cohesion: theoretical explication and empirical exploration German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) 27 Table 4: Determinants of social trust Social trust Coef. Std. Err. 95% Conf. Interval P>|t| β Universalistic vs. means-tested social welfare programmes 0.013 0.02 [-0.027, 0.052] 0.533 0.083 Educational equality -0.021 0.022 [-0.065, 0.024] 0.353 -0.155 Freedom of discussion 0.187 0.136 [-0.086, 0.459] 0.175 0.291 Political corruption -0.109 0.096 [-0.302, 0.084] 0.263 -0.232 Electoral democracy -0.231 0.155 [-0.541, 0.079] 0.14 -0.368 Ethnic heterogeneity -0.058 0.063 [-0.184, 0.069] 0.366 -0.112 Economic development 0.000 0.000 [-0.001, 0.001] 0.054 0.316 Government revenue 0.552 0.224 [0.102, 1.002] 0.017* 0.345 Note: N=62. R²=0.442. F(8,53)=5.24. *p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001. The dependent variable is Social trust. Source: Authors To test for mediating pathways in the relationship between egalitarian values and the different types of trust, we conducted Structural Equation Modelling, and subsequently, assessed the indirect effects and their statistical significance. Based on the results of the multiple regression reported in the preceding paragraph, it was likely that a statistically significant indirect effect might not occur due to the lack of a statistically significant relationship between the independent variable (egalitarianism) and the suggested mediator (proportion of universalistic vs. means-tested social welfare programmes). However, some researchers have argued that the use of mediation analyses should not be preconditioned on significant paths linking X to M or M to Y (Hayes, 2009). Daniel Nowack / Sophia Schoderer 28 German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) Figure 3: Path coefficients for mediation model 1 Note: N=62. Coefficients are standardised. x<0.1, *p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001. Total effect of egalitarianism on the dependent measure social trust, after including the proportion of universal vs. means-tested social welfare programmes, is in parenthesis. Mediation model includes all previous covariates. Source: Authors The first part of the mediation analysis examined the triangular relationship between egalitarian values, the scope of social welfare programmes and institutional trust. Structural Equation Modelling indicated that the model sufficiently fits the data,9 but reveals no significant indirect effect (βindirect effect=0.075, SE=0.032, p=0.141). Interestingly, the direct and indirect effect have opposite directions, so that, ultimately, the total effect is smaller in size than the direct and indirect effects. The indirect effect counters the direct effect, and is almost two thirds as large. Hence, the negative relationship between egalitarian values and institutional trust is largely, although not significantly, reversed by the positive indirect effect that goes via the proportion of universalistic vs. means-tested social welfare programmes. Figure 3 illustrates the path coefficients for the first mediation model. Similarly, for the triangular relationship between egalitarianism, proportion of social welfare programmes and social trust, the model showed a sufficient model fit,10 however effect estimations showed that the indirect effect is small and not statistically significant (βindirect effect=0.015, SE=0.01, p=0.630). The analysis implies that the positive relationship between egalitarian cultural values and social trust is only to a small extent mediated by the 9 We assessed model fit using absolute and comparative measures of fit, including the chi-square test, the comparative fit index (CFI), root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) and the standardised root mean square residual (SRMR). When the model fits well, the chi-square test is non-significant, CFI>0.95, RMSEA<0.06 and SRMR<0.08. The first model showed the following indices of fit: Chisquare(17)=71.21, p=0.00, RMSEA=0.00, CFI=1.00, SRMR=0.00. One possible explanation for the significant chi-square test lies in the size of the model, as models with many variables and non-normal data tend to inflate the chi-square measure. 10 Chi-square(17)=79.69, p=0.00, CFI=1.00, RMSEA=0.00, SRMR=0.00. The role of values for social cohesion: theoretical explication and empirical exploration German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) 29 proportion of universalistic vs. means-tested social welfare programmes. To facilitate the interpretation of the effects, we computed the ratios for the different types of effect. These showed that the indirect effect is around one eighth the size of the direct effect with about 12 per cent of the total effect being mediated. Figure 4 shows the path coefficients for the second mediation model. Figure 4: Path coefficients for mediation model 2 Note: N=62. Coefficients are standardised. x<0.1, *p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001. Total effect of egalitarianism on the dependent measure social trust, after including the proportion of universal vs. means-tested social welfare programmes, is in parenthesis. Mediation model includes all previous covariates. Source: Authors 3.5 Discussion 3.5.1 Summary of findings To summarise, the results of our explorative quantitative analysis revealed that the scope of social welfare policies statistically significantly predicts institutional but not social trust across countries. More specifically, they show that countries with a large proportion of universalistic social welfare programmes experience higher levels of institutional trust. We find a similar association for social trust, but it is neither statistically significant nor substantially strong. Similarly, the findings reveal that countries with a cultural value emphasis on egalitarianism have more universalistic and less means-tested social welfare programmes. This relationship is sizable, but narrowly misses a significance level of 0.1. Based on the results of the direct effects, it was likely that no statistically significant indirect effect would occur through the proportion of universalistic vs. means-tested social welfare programmes. The analysis proved that the association between emphasis on cultural values and trust is indeed neither statistically significantly nor substantially mediated by the scope Daniel Nowack / Sophia Schoderer 30 German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) of social welfare programmes. Nevertheless, the results show that the proportion of universalistic vs. means-tested social welfare programmes influences the relationship between cultural values and the two types of trust in different ways. For social trust, the scope of social welfare programmes marginally mediates and thereby adds to the positive relationship between egalitarian values and social trust, whereas for institutional trust, it offsets a weak negative effect of egalitarian values. 3.5.2 Implications of main results The findings of our empirical exploration show that a strong cultural value emphasis on egalitarianism translates into a larger proportion of universal welfare programmes, although this finding does not prove statistically significant according to conventional levels. In the regression model, egalitarian cultural values are only the fourth strongest in terms of effect size, and a number of other factors (e.g. educational equality) are more significant for explaining differences in the scope of social welfare policies. Our results thus suggest that underlying cultural value emphases, such as egalitarianism, express themselves at least moderately in a society’s policies and institutions. Our results also reveal that institutional efforts to tackle social inequalities influence the levels of institutional trust. So far, only a few publications have researched the relationship between the scope of social welfare programmes and trust. For instance, Kumlin and Rothstein (2005) examined individual trust levels of beneficiaries from means-tested and universalistic social welfare programmes in Sweden. However, they draw on individuallevel data and focus on only one country case. This study extends the scope of the sample to 63 countries. Our empirical exploration shows that the scope of institutions is essential for the level of institutional trust that they generate, and thereby for their contribution to social cohesion (Chan et al., 2006; OECD, 2011). The mediation analysis showed only comparatively small indirect effects of cultural value emphases on trust via the scope of social welfare programmes. However, interestingly, the proportion of universalistic vs. means-tested social welfare programmes mediates the relationship between cultural values and the two trust types in different ways. It would therefore be worthwhile to investigate the indirect effects further. Regarding social trust, the positive effect of egalitarian values on social trust increases due to the positive indirect effect from the scope of social welfare programmes. As cultural egalitarianism seeks to socialise people to view one another as equal and to internalise a commitment to cooperate, it seems logical that people trust each other more in countries where egalitarian values prevail (Rothstein & Uslaner, 2005). According to our results, welfare institutions channel some part of this effect. As they increase the likelihood that welfare institutions have a universal scope, egalitarian values raise social trust within societies. For our second mediation model, the scope of social welfare programmes has a positive indirect effect on institutional trust that offsets the negative relationship between egalitarian values and institutional trust. One plausible explanation for the negative relation between egalitarian values and institutional trust originates from critical attitudes towards institutions and their ability to guarantee social justice, equality and welfare to every citizen, which all represent characteristics that lie at the core of cultural egalitarianism. This is in line with findings in Schwartz (2006), showing that egalitarian values predict greater political The role of values for social cohesion: theoretical explication and empirical exploration German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) 31 activism as well as more critical political attitudes. Since the direct and indirect effect have different directions, introducing the proportion of universalistic vs. means-tested social welfare policies as a mediating variable largely reverses the negative effect of egalitarian values on institutional trust. In other words, countries with a strong cultural value emphasis on egalitarianism experience lower institutional trust, unless they have a large proportion of universalistic vs. means-tested social welfare programmes. Overall, our results imply that the scope of social welfare policies mitigates the negative relation between egalitarian values and institutional trust, whereas for social trust, it reinforces the positive effect of egalitarian values. 3.5.3 Limitations Several limitations of this empirical exploration must be considered. First, even though the time difference between the assessment of the different variables was kept to a minimum, time ranges between data collection still vary across countries from zero to fifteen years. This is mostly down to the age of the Schwartz Value Survey, with some data dating back to 1985 while the most recent entries were made in 2005. Therefore, more recent data is imperative for a better insight into cultural values, especially in fast changing societies. Second, some of the country-level variables were highly aggregated from individual-level data. In almost all social sciences, the loss of information that goes along with the aggregation of micro-level to macro-level data has been a prominent issue (Clark & Avery, 1976). Additionally, this quantitative exploration draws on data from 63 countries, which constitutes a relatively small sample. In small samples, the obtained regression coefficients fluctuate more easily, thereby providing less robust results. Although the sample includes a limited number of countries and parts of the variables are aggregated, there is a wealth of data behind every country (e.g. N=14996 for the Schwartz Value Survey). Given this large amount of data backing up every country variable, our analysis still provides valid results, despite the aforementioned limitations. Third, European and Western countries are clearly overrepresented in the sample of this explorative analysis, as quantitative data from developing countries remains sporadic. Especially in case of the Schwartz Value Survey, it is necessary to expand its cross-cultural application across all continents, which implies increased efforts to collect reliable primary data. Some measurements used in our exploration are also subject to methodological limitations. For instance, the binary most-people question to assess social trust has shortcomings, such as limited scale length and interpersonal incomparability. The latter may also apply to the institutional trust measure, as people from different cultures might interpret the questions and answer scale differently. Furthermore, it may also be problematic to use countries as units of cultural analysis since cultural differences within countries are often larger than between countries, especially when it comes to values (Fischer & Schwartz, 2011). Up to now, Schwartz’ cultural values have been widely used for measuring cultural differences, next to the common binary distinction between individualism and collectivism. However, more recent theories such as the dimensional tightness-looseness concept introduced by Gelfand et al. (2011), might shed new light on cultural differences and broaden the ways of ‘unpacking’ culture. 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Retrieved from https://www.zeit.de/thema/leitkultur The role of values for social cohesion: theoretical explication and empirical exploration German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) 43 Appendix Table A1: Overview of variables and source Variable name Function Description Source Egalitarianism IV Individuals are portrayed as moral equals, who share basic interests, cooperate voluntarily with others, and show concern for everyone's welfare (equality, social justice, freedom, responsibility, honesty) Schwartz Value Survey, 2005; Israel Social Sciences Data Center Social trust DV Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or you can’t be too careful in dealing with people? World Value Survey, European Value Study, Afrobarometer, Latinobarómetro, Arab Barometer Institutional trust DV I am going to name a number of organizations [the police] [the courts] [the parliament]. For each one, could you tell me how much confidence you have in them: is it a great deal of confidence, quite a lot of confidence, not very much confidence or none at all? World Value Survey, European Value Study, Afrobarometer, Latinobarómetro, Arab Barometer Means-tested vs. universalistic social welfare programmes Mediator How many welfare programmes are means-tested and how many benefit all (or virtually all) members of the polity? V-Dem Educational equality Control To what extent is high quality basic education guaranteed to all, sufficient to enable them to exercise their basic rights as adult citizens? V-Dem Freedom of discussion Control Are citizens able to openly discuss political issues in private homes and in public spaces? V-Dem Political corruption Control How pervasive is political corruption? V-Dem Electoral democracy Control To what extent is the ideal of electoral democracy in its fullest sense achieved? V-Dem Ethnic heterogeneity Control Ethnolinguistic Fractionalization Index Roeder, 2001 Economic development Control GDP per capita World Bank Government revenue Control Total government revenue, excluding grants and social contributions UNU-Wider Source: Authors Daniel Nowack / Sophia Schoderer 44 German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) Table A2: Descriptive statistics Variable M SD Minimum Maximum N Egalitarianism 4.49 0.45 3.45 5.49 65 Social trust 0.29 0.14 0.03 0.65 64 Institutional trust 2.43 0.29 1.92 3.06 65 Means-tested vs. universalistic social welfare programmes 3.34 0.95 0.37 4.87 65 Educational equality 2.77 1.07 0.28 3.93 65 Freedom of discussion 0.82 0.23 0.14 0.99 65 Political corruption 0.38 0.31 0.01 0.94 65 Electoral democracy 0.68 0.24 0.1 0.92 65 Ethnic heterogeneity 0.4 0.28 0.00 0.92 64 Economic development 11919.57 13438.54 240.2 54715.7 65 Government revenue 0.26 0.09 0.1 0.51 64 Source: Authors The role of values for social cohesion: theoretical explication and empirical exploration German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) 45 Table A3: Overview of countries, SVS sample size, year of SVS data collection and Egalitarianism score Country Sample size Year Egalitarianism Argentina 351 1995 4,596 Australia 230 1988 4,626 Austria 113 1998 4,878 Belgium 265 1991 5,321 Bosnia & Herzegovina 236 2002 4,261 Brazil 140 1995 4,791 Bulgaria 237 1995 3,449 Cameroon 106 2003 4,047 Canada 183 2002 4,451 Chile 335 1994 4,564 China 212 1995 4,317 Costa Rica 136 2003 4,346 Croatia 200 2002 3,882 Czech Republic 160 1993 4,684 Denmark 190 1991 4,792 Egypt 133 2004 4,185 Estonia 287 1997 4,385 Ethiopia 103 1995 4,313 Finland 431 1997 5,057 France 613 1996 5,046 Georgia 205 1992 4,36 Germany 609 1996 5,252 Ghana 210 1995 4,238 Greece 115 1996 4,52 Hungary 160 1995 4,419 India 114 1992 4,084 Indonesia 263 1992 3,908 Iran 175 2000 4,229 Ireland 231 2000 4,803 Israel 242 1995 4,36 Italy 152 1991 5,491 Japan 537 1990 4,615 Latvia 89 1998 3,776 Macedonia 288 1995 4,22 Mexico 144 1996 4,323 Namibia 263 1997 4,602 Netherlands 217 1996 5,206 New Zealand 289 1994 4,821 Nigeria 107 1995 3,857 Norway 325 1994 5,222 Daniel Nowack / Sophia Schoderer 46 German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) Table A3 (cont): Overview of countries, SVS sample size, year of SVS data collection and Egalitarianism score Peru 145 1996 4,422 Philippines 451 1996 4,383 Poland 191 1990 4,477 Portugal 198 1989 5,159 Romania 187 1996 3,903 Russia 242 1999 3,993 Senegal 145 1996 4,683 Singapore 177 1997 4,387 Slovakia 231 1996 4,565 Slovenia 214 1992 4,513 South Africa 405 1996 3,745 South Korea 218 1993 4,588 Spain 100 1996 5,248 Sweden 308 1994 5,081 Switzerland 263 1996 5,33 Turkey 240 1995 4,105 Uganda 185 1995 3,851 Ukraine 246 2003 3,997 United Kingdom 156 1990 4,971 USA 476 1995 4,45 Venezuela 116 1994 4,152 Yemen 196 2003 4,55 Zimbabwe 202 1989 4,261 Source: Authors Publications of the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) Discussion Papers 5/2020 Berger, Axel, Sören Hilbrich & Gabriele Köhler. 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