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Generational Change and the Future of the Atlantic Alliance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 November 2022

Ronald Inglehart
Ronald Inglehart*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
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Extract

In 1968 a wave of student protest manifested itself throughout the Western world. Fifteen years later, a phenomenon variously described as the “Yuppies” or “Yumpies” began to be noted in the United States; a new environmentalist party entered the West German Bundestag for the first time; and a peace movement emerged in Western Europe that was able to mobilize an even larger and more mature segment of the public than did the anti-war movements of the Vietnam era.

These seemingly dissimilar phenomena have something in common: they reflect a process of intergenerational value change that is gradually transforming the politics of Western societies. This process—a shift from Materialist to Postmaterialist value priorities—has brought new political issues to the center of the stage, and provided much of the impetus for new political movements. It has split existing political parties and given rise to new ones. And it raises serious doubts about the long-term viability of the Atlantic Alliance.

Type
Generational Politics
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , Summer 1984 , pp. 525 - 535
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 1984

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Footnotes

*

This research was supported by grant SES-8208333 from the National Science Foundation.

References

1 See Inglehart, Ronald, “New Perspectives on Value Change: Response to Lafferty, Knutsen, Savage, Boltken and Jagodzinski,” Comparative Political Studies, January 1985 (forthcoming)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; this is part of a four-article symposium on this subject; see also Inglehart, , “Aggregate Stability and Individual-Level Change: The Level of Analysis Paradox,” American Political Science Review, March 1985 (forthcoming)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Dalton, Russell et al. (eds.), Electoral Change: Realignment and Dealignment in Western Societies (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, forthcoming).Google Scholar

2 The theory and methodological details are presented much more fully in Inglehart, , “The Silent Revolution in Europe,” American Political Science Review 65, 4 (December 1971), 991–1017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Cf. Inglehart, , The Silent Revolution (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977).Google Scholar

3 These surveys were carried out as part of the Euro-Barometer series, sponsored by the Commission of the European Communities, under the direction of Jacques-Rene Rabier; coinvestigators were Helene Riffault and the present author. The data are available from the ICPSR survey data archive.

4 This point is demonstrated in Inglehart, “New Perspectives,” op. cit., which presents a more detailed cohort analysis including nation by nation analyses; and in Inglehart, “Aggregate Stability,” op. cit., which utilizes both cohort analysis and panel survey analysis.

5 See Abramson, Paul R. and Inglehart, Ronald, “Generational Replacement and Value Change in Six West European Societies,” paper prepared for the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., September, 1984 (forthcoming).Google Scholar

6 For evidence on this score, see Dalton et al., op. cit., chapter 2.

7 See Inglehart, , “Post-materialism in an Environment of Insecurity,” American Political Science Review 75, 3 (December 1981), 880–900.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 See Burklin, Wilhelm, “Determinanten der Wahlentschiedung fur die Grunen,” Politische Vierteljahresschrift 22 (1981), 4 Google Scholar; Muller-Rommel, Ferdinand, “Ecology Parties in Western Europe,” West European Politics 1 (1982), 68–74 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Fietkau, Hans-Joachim and Kessel, Hans (eds.), Die grune Zukunft (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, forthcoming).Google Scholar

9 The data in Tables 1 and 2 were included in Euro-Barometer 17 under the sponsorship of the International Institute for Environment and Society of the Berlin Science Center, with David Handley and Nicholas Watts as principal investigators.

10 See Merritt, Richard L. and Puchala, Donald, West European Attitudes Toward international Affairs (New York: Praeger, 1968).Google Scholar