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The “Silent Revolution,” Value Priorities, and the Quality of Life in Britain*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Alan Marsh
Alan Marsh*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
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Abstract

Inglehart's “Silent Revolution” thesis is examined critically through an analysis of an experimental British survey of subjective attitudes toward the “quality of life.” Inglehart's techniques were replicated to identify “Acquisitive” and “Post-bourgeois” types. It was found that whilst those holding to “postbourgeois” values possessed the demographic characteristics and the political dispositions predicted by Inglehart's thesis, on other highly relevant measures of values choices the postbourgeois group revealed attitudes similarly or even more “acquisitive” than the “Acquisitives.” Discussion is critical of the Maslovian assumptions of Inglehart's model and proposes instead an interpretation of the postbourgeois phenomenon based upon identity and status discrepancies.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 69 , Issue 1 , March 1975 , pp. 21 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1975

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References

1 Inglehart, Ronald, “The Silent Revolution in Europe: Intergenerational Change in Post-Industrial Societies,” American Political Science Review, 65 (Dec. 1971), 991–1017CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Maslow, Abraham H., “A Theory of Human Motivation,” Psychological Review, 50 (1943), 370–396CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Maslow, Abraham, Motivation and Personality (New York: Harper & Row, 1954)Google Scholar.

3 Lenin, V. I., State and Revolution (New York: International Publishers, 1932)Google Scholar.

4 Inglehart, pp. 997, 1001 (my emphasis).

5 The survey, in its primary form, was designed and executed by John Hall and Mark Abrams, respectively Senior Research Fellow and Director of the S.S.R.C. Survey Unit. For details see: Mark Abrams and John Hall, “The Condition of the British People: Report on a pilot survey using self-rating scales,” Paper read to Social Indicators Conference of British and American S.S.R.C, Ditchley, England, May 1971; and John Hall, “Measuring the Quality of Life Using Sample Surveys,” Paper read to 4th Annual SAINT Conference, Salzburg, Austria, September 1972.

6 Bradburn, Norman, The Structure of Psychological Well-Being (Chicago: Aldine Press, 1969)Google Scholar.

7 Maslow, 1943.

8 Whereas our earlier questions concerning “District” were defined for our respondents in terms of material services (i.e., the kind of services chargeable to local taxes) and thus reflected “lower-order” material concerns, in the list of anxieties, “Things that go on in your district” were characterized much more by the responsiveness of local authority agencies and the social atmosphere of the area. It must be admitted, however, that this item carries greater ambiguity than the others used.

9 Put another way, we find that Acquisitives are, as we might expect, more anxious about material security than about personal relationships but only marginally so; contrary to expectations, however, precisely the same point applies to the Postbourgeois.

10 Flacks, Richard, Youth and Social Change (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1971), pp. 114–117Google Scholar.

11 See Abrams and Hall.

12 Bagehot, Walter, The English Constitution (London: Chapman and Hall, 1867)Google Scholar.

13 Barber, Elinor G., The Bourgeoisie in 18th Century France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955), pp. 141–146CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Bailey, F. G., Caste and the Economic Frontier (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1957), pp. 188–191Google Scholar.

15 Runciman, W. G., Relative Deprivation and Social Justice (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), p. 184Google Scholar; (also Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1966).

16 Hugh Berrington, Professor of Politics, University of Newcastle, England, written communication, 1973.

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