Sources of societal value similarities across Europe: Evidence from Dyadic Models

Plamen AKALIYSKI*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Journal PublicationsJournal Article (refereed)peer-review

12 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Focusing on Europe, this article aims to disentangle the patterns of cultural clustering and to throw more light on concepts such as 'civilizations' and 'cultural zones.' Cross-cultural analyses unanimously find that various historical background and socioeconomic indicators are strongly correlated to societal values, however, a systematic investigation on what makes societal cultures similar and different hasn't been conducted. The author first outlines the factors and mechanisms that may explain value similarities, then the author tests their importance using dyadic data on 40 countries from the wvs. Multiple factors are associated to the cultural similarities: The historical background - i.e. countries' political-institutional traditions, religion, language, and imperial legacies - and also socio-economic development, geographical distance, European integration, and climatic differences. The substantial overlap among them, however, diminishes the absolute importance of any of the explanatory factors. The multiple determinants of value differences speak against a classification of national cultures into cultural zones based on single formative factors.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)447-470
Number of pages24
JournalComparative Sociology
Volume16
Issue number4
Early online date3 Aug 2017
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2017
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Keywords

  • civilizations
  • cultural values
  • cultural zones
  • Europe
  • historical legacies
  • modernization

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