Changing Mass Priorities: The Link between Modernization and Democracy

A revised version of modernization theory implies that certain cultural variables (deeply-instilled attitudes among the public of a society) play an important role in democratization—and considerable empirical evidence supports this claim. Nevertheless, these variables are rarely used in econometric analysis of democratization. Why? One important reason is a tendency to view subjective mass orientations as volatile, relatively “soft” data. Analyzing data from many Large-N comparative survey projects, this article demonstrates that: (1) certain mass attitudes that are linked with modernization constitute attributes of given societies that are fully as stable as standard social indicators; (2) when treated as…