IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nathum/v4y2020i3d10.1038_s41562-019-0769-1.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The cultural foundations of modern democracies

Author

Listed:
  • Damian J. Ruck

    (University of Tennessee
    University of Tennessee
    University of Tennessee)

  • Luke J. Matthews

    (RAND Corporation)

  • Thanos Kyritsis

    (University of Auckland)

  • Quentin D. Atkinson

    (University of Auckland
    Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History)

  • R. Alexander Bentley

    (University of Tennessee
    University of Tennessee)

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Damian J. Ruck & Luke J. Matthews & Thanos Kyritsis & Quentin D. Atkinson & R. Alexander Bentley, 2020. "The cultural foundations of modern democracies," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 4(3), pages 265-269, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nathum:v:4:y:2020:i:3:d:10.1038_s41562-019-0769-1
    DOI: 10.1038/s41562-019-0769-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0769-1
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41562-019-0769-1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Li Donni, Paolo & Marino, Maria & Welzel, Christian, 2021. "How important is culture to understand political protest?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    2. Len Fisher & Anders Sandberg, 2022. "A Safe Governance Space for Humanity: Necessary Conditions for the Governance of Global Catastrophic Risks," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 13(5), pages 792-807, November.
    3. Benjamin D. Horne & Natalie M. Rice & Catherine A. Luther & Damian J. Ruck & Joshua Borycz & Suzie L. Allard & Michael Fitzgerald & Oleg Manaev & Brandon C. Prins & Maureen Taylor & R. Alexander Bentl, 2023. "Generational effects of culture and digital media in former Soviet Republics," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 1-11, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nathum:v:4:y:2020:i:3:d:10.1038_s41562-019-0769-1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.