Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Article
  • Published:

The cultural foundations of modern democracies

Nature Human Behaviour volume 4, pages 265–269 (2020)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

National democracy is a rare thing in human history and its stability has long been tied to the cultural values of citizens. Yet it has not been established whether changing cultural values made modern democracy possible or whether those values were a response to democratic institutions. Here we combine longitudinal data and cohort information of nearly 500,000 individuals from 109 nations to track the co-evolution of democratic values and institutions over the last century. We find that cultural values of openness towards diversity predict a shift towards democracy and that nations with low institutional confidence are prone to political instability. In addition, the presence of democratic institutions did not predict any substantive changes in the measured cultural values. These results hold accounting for other factors, including gross domestic product per capita and non-independence between nations due to shared cultural ancestry. Cultural values lead to, rather than follow, the emergence of democracy. This indicates that current stable democracies will be under threat, should cultural values of openness to diversity and institutional confidence substantially decline.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Results from the hierarchical time-lagged linear regression.
Fig. 2: Results from hierarchical time-lagged linear regression (including interaction term UD).

Similar content being viewed by others

Data availability

All raw data are publicly available from the following sources: World Values Survey (http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp), European Values Survey (https://europeanvaluesstudy.eu), Madison Project (https://www.rug.nl/ggdc/historicaldevelopment/maddison/releases/maddison-project-database-2018) and Polity IV project (https://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm).

Code availability

Code used to generate regression results and plots can be found in the Github repository: https://github.com/damianruck/Cultural_foundations_of_modern_democracies.

References

  1. Norris, P. Democratic Deficit: Critical Citizens Revisited (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2011).

  2. Inglehart, R. & Welzel, C. Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy: the Human Development Sequence (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005).

  3. Marshall, M. G., Gurr, T. R. & Jaggers, K. Polity IV Project Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800–2015 Dataset Users’ Manual (Centre for Systemic Peace, 2017).

  4. de Tocqueville, A. Democracy in America (Saunders and Otley, 1835).

  5. Putnam, R. Bowling alone: America’s declining social capital. J. Democr. 6, 65–78 (1995).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Woodbery, R. D. The missionary roots of liberal democracy. Am. Polit. Sci. Rev. 106, 244–274 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Claassen, C. Does public support help democracy survive? Am. J. Pol. Sci. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3045846 (2019).

  8. Brunkert, L., Kruse, S. & Welzel, C. A tale of culture-bound regime evolution: the centennial democratic trend and its recent reversal. Democratization 26, 422–443 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Acemoglu, D. & Robinson, J. A. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty (Profile, 2012).

  10. Acemoglu, D., Johnson, S. & Robinson, J. A. The colonial origins of comparative development: an empirical investigation. Am. Econ. Rev. 91, 1369–1401 (2001).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Spaiser, V., Ranganathan, S., Mann, R. P. & Sumpter, D. J. T. The dynamics of democracy, development and cultural values. PLoS One 9, e97856 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Fukuyama, F. Social capital, civil society and development. Third World Q. 22, 7–20 (2001).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Almond, G. A. & Verba, S. The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton Univ. Press, 1963).

  14. Newton, K. Political support: social capital, civil society and political and economic performance. Polit. Stud. 54, 846–864 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Dalton, R. J. & Shin, D. C. in The Civic Culture Transformed (eds Dalton, R. J. & Welzel, C.) 91–115 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2014).

  16. Woodley, M. A. & Bell, E. Consanguinity as a major predictor of levels of democracy. J. Cross Cult. Psychol. 44, 263–280 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Foa, R. S., Mounk, Y. & Inglehart, R. F. The danger of deconsolidation. J. Democr. 27, 5–17 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Inglehart, R. How solid is mass support for democracy—and how can we measure it? Polit. Sci. Polit. 36, 51–57 (2003).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Fails, M. D. & Pierce, H. N. Changing mass attitudes and democratic deepening. Polit. Res. Q. 63, 174–187 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Lingling Qi, L. & Doh Chull Shin, D. C. How mass political attitudes affect democratization: exploring the facilitating role critical democrats play in the process. Int. Polit. Sci. Rev. 32, 245–262 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Hofstede, G., Hofstede, G. J. & Minkov, M. Cultures and Organizations. Software of the Mind: Intercultural Cooperation and its Importance for Survival (McGraw-Hill, 2010).

  22. Welzel, C., Inglehart, R. & Kruse, S. Pitfalls in the study of democratization: testing the emancipatory theory of democracy. Br. J. Polit. Sci. 47, 463–472 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Wagner, A. F., Schneider, F. & Halla, M. The quality of institutions and satisfaction with democracy in Western Europe—a panel analysis. Eur. J. Polit. Econ. 25, 30–41 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Ruck, D. J., Bentley, R. A. & Lawson, D. J. Religious change preceded economic change in the 20th century. Sci. Adv. 4, eaar8680 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. World Value Survey—What We Do (WVS, 2019).

  26. European Values Study (EVS, 2011).

  27. Inglehart, R. Changing values among Western publics from 1970 to 2006. West Eur. Polit. 31, 130–146 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Grusec, J. E. & Kuczynski, L. Parenting and Children’s Internalization of Values: A Handbook of Contemporary Theory (J. Wiley, 1997).

  29. Sears, D. O. & Funk, C. L. Evidence of the long-term persistence of adults’ political predispositions. J. Polit. 61, 1–28 (1999).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. House, B. R. et al. Ontogeny of prosocial behavior across diverse societies. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 110, 14586–14591 (2013).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  31. Henrich, N. & Henrich, J. Why Humans Cooperate: A Cultural and Evolutionary Explanation (Oxford Univ. Press, 2007).

  32. Lipset, S. M. Some social requisites of democracy: economic development and political legitimacy. Am. Polit. Sci. Rev. 53, 69–105 (1959).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. Epstein, D. L., Bates, R., Goldstone, J., Kristensen, I. & O’Halloran, S. Democratic transitions. Am. J. Pol. Sci. 50, 551–569 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. Bolt, J., Timmer, M. & van Zanden, J. L. in How Was Life? Global Well-Being Since 1820 (eds. van Zanden, J. L., Baten, J., d’Ercole, M. M., Rijpma, A., Smith, C. & Timmer, M.) 57–72 (OECD, 2014).

  35. Matthews, L. J., Passmore, S., Richard, P. M., Gray, R. D. & Atkinson, Q. D. Shared cultural history as a predictor of political and economic changes among nation states. PLoS One 11, e0152979 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  36. Pettigrew, T. F. & Tropp, L. R. A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 90, 751–783 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. Norris, P. & Inglehart, R. Cosmopolitan Communications: Cultural Diversity in a Globalized World (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2009).

  38. Huggins, C. M. & Debies-Carl, J. S. Tolerance in the city: the multilevel effects of urban environments on permissive attitudes. J. Urban Aff. 37, 255–269 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  39. Berggren, N. & Nilsson, T. Globalization and the transmission of social values: the case of tolerance. J. Comp. Econ. 43, 371–389 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. Goldstone, J. A. et al. A global model for forecasting political instability. Am. J. Pol. Sci. 54, 190–208 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  41. Confidence in Institutions https://news.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.aspx (Gallup, 2018).

  42. Lührmann, A. et al. V-Dem Annual Democracy Report 2019: Democracy Facing Global Challenges (V-Dem Institute, 2019).

  43. Hammarström, H., Forkel, R. & Haspelmath, M. Glottolog 3.3. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (Glottolog, 2018).

  44. Lewis, M. P. Ethnologue, Languages of the World (SIL International, 2009).

Download references

Acknowledgements

D.J.R. is funded by the College of Arts and Sciences, the Office of Research and Engagement and the US National Science Foundation (grant no. ACI-1430508). The funders had no role in the conceptualization, design, data collection, analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA

    Damian J. Ruck & R. Alexander Bentley

  2. Center for the Dynamics of Social Complexity, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA

    Damian J. Ruck & R. Alexander Bentley

  3. College of Communication and Information, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA

    Damian J. Ruck

  4. RAND Corporation, Boston, MA, USA

    Luke J. Matthews

  5. School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Thanos Kyritsis & Quentin D. Atkinson

  6. Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany

    Quentin D. Atkinson

Authors
  1. Damian J. Ruck
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Luke J. Matthews
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Thanos Kyritsis
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Quentin D. Atkinson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. R. Alexander Bentley
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

D.J.R., T.K. and L.J.M. performed data analysis. D.J.K., L.J.M., T.K., Q.D.A. and R.A.B. wrote the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Damian J. Ruck.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Peer review information Primary Handling Editor: Stavroula Kousta.

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Methods, Supplementary Results, Supplementary Figs. 1–11 and Supplementary Tables 1–15.

Reporting Summary

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Ruck, D.J., Matthews, L.J., Kyritsis, T. et al. The cultural foundations of modern democracies. Nat Hum Behav 4, 265–269 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0769-1

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0769-1

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing