WVS Webinar on April 08: The global development of value orientations, political support and democracy since the 1990s
Welcome to the World Values Survey Association's webinar series. In these monthly sessions, we invite scholars from various disciplines who utilize WVS survey data, either alone or in combination with other datasets, to share their latest findings and insights. The webinars will explore a wide range of topics measured through the time-series WVS surveys, covering analysis of both substantive issues and methodological perspectives. Learn more about the forthcoming webinars here.
In this webinar, our guest speaker, Ursula Hoffmann-Lange from the University of Bamberg, Germany will examine the global development of democracy since the 1990s, using survey data from 89 countries that participated in the World Values Survey (WVS) and the European Values Study (EVS) to analyze political support across different regime types and world regions. The study finds that while global democratic quality has declined since the mid-2000s, the decline has been less severe than suggested by Freedom House and V-Dem, as it is largely concentrated in a few populous countries, while democracy has remained stable when all countries are weighted equally.
The webinar will take place on Tuesday, April 08, 2025, at 14:00 UTC.
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This article analyzes the global development of democracy since the 1990s. The theoretical introduction is followed by a descriptive analysis of several indices of political support based on survey results for 89 countries that participated at least twice in the World Values Survey (WVS) or the European Values Study (EVS). The analysis focuses on emancipative value orientations measured by Welzel's Choice Index and several indicators of political support. The scores of these indicators are broken down by five regime types and seven world regions. The results confirm that the global decline of democratic quality since the mid-2000s has not been as dramatic as the pessimistic analyses of Freedom House and the V-Dem project have claimed. It has primarily taken place in a limited number of populous countries on which these publications have focused. When countries are treated equally, the quality of democracy has remained remarkably stable since the early 1990s. Emancipative values are globally on the rise, but their increase has been considerably higher in the established democracies. This supports the skeptical argument that they cannot be considered as the major cause of the third wave of democratization. The descriptive analysis is complemented by regression analyses for confidence in regime institutions and support for democracy as dependent variables. The evaluation of democratic regime performance is the strongest predictor of confidence in regime institutions. An intrinsic conception of democracy and the importance assigned to living in a democracy have the strongest influence on support for democracy. Emancipative value orientations have a minor influence on political support even in consolidated democracies. Finally, the analysis does not confirm the suspected relationship between the different levels of political support. Easton's theory of political support assumed that they mutually influence each other via a generalization of experiences or an overflow of values. Instead, it seems that confidence in regime institutions and support for democracy follow different cognitive logics. Read the full paper here.
Ursula Hoffmann-Lange is Professor Emerita at the University of Bamberg. She received her Ph.D. at the University of Mannheim and held vising appointments at the University of Texas and Vanderbilt University. She has been a long-standing member of the IPSA Research Committee on Political Elites and of a network of scholars studying the global development of democracy. Her publications on elites, democratization and political culture appeared in various journals and edited volumes. She (co-)authored two books on German elites, was co-editor of The Palgrave Handbook of Political Elites (2018) as well as of two special issues on elites published in Historical Social Research (2012 and 2018).
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