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Preliminary Materials /L. Halman , R.L. Inglehart , Jaime Díez-Medrano , R. Luijkx , Alejandro Moreno and Miguel Basáñez -- Introduction /L. Halman , R.L. Inglehart , Jaime Díez-Medrano , R. Luijkx , Alejandro Moreno and Miguel Basáñez -- Tables /L. Halman , R.L. Inglehart , Jaime Díez-Medrano , R. Luijkx , Alejandro Moreno and Miguel Basáñez -- Technical Notes /L. Halman , R.L. Inglehart , Jaime Díez-Medrano , R. Luijkx , Alejandro Moreno and Miguel Basáñez -- About The Authors /L. Halman , R.L. Inglehart , Jaime Díez-Medrano , R. Luijkx , Alejandro Moreno and Miguel Basáñez.

It is a popular assertion that modern society is undergoing a moral decline. The increased emphasis on the individual is regarded as a real threat to collectively shared moral views, ultimately leading to selfishness, egoism, etc. The question is, however, whether modern society does indeed lack commonly shared moral principles. In other words, are modernity & morality incompatible? This question is addressed empirically using the survey research data from the European Values Studies (EVS) in 1981 & 1990. Two moral dimensions have been distinguished & tentatively labeled "permissiveness" & "civic morality." The data reveal that during the last decade populations have indeed become more lenient. Young & less educated people are more permissive & less strict, but as they get older they appear to become less permissive & more severe. However, these changes in moral outlook during the last decade do not indicate a moral decline. People have remained rather strict in the extent to which they will accept various deviant behaviors. The analyses seem to indicate a shift from traditional institutional morality toward a personal morality. The conclusion is that the idea of an emerging ethos of "anything goes" is a myth. 5 Tables, 7 Figures, 32 References. Adapted from the source document.

This volume elaborates on a number of issues that seem particular important for the people in Central and Eastern Europe: the development and working of democracy, the public support for, legitimacy and efficacy of democracy and the free market economy, and of course the stability of the newly established political culture.

Intro -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- New Directions in Quantitative Comparative Sociology: An Introduction -- Who Votes Left after the Fall of Communism? The Czech Republic in Comparative Perspective -- Political Involvement in Transition: Who Participated in Central and Eastern Europe? -- Modernisation Theory, Income Evaluation, and the Transition in Eastern Europe -- Perceptions, Attributions and Policy in the Economic Domain: A Theoretical and Comparative Analysis -- Gender and Country Differences in the Sense of Justice: Justice Evaluation, Gender Earnings Gap, and Earnings Functions in Thirteen Countries -- Comparative Public Opinion on Distributive Justice: A Study of Equality Ideals and Attitudes toward Current Policies -- The Religious Factor in Contemporary Society: The Differential Impact of Religion on the Private and Public Sphere in Comparative Perspective -- Orientations Towards Authority and Congruency Theory: The Cross-national, Cross-time Evidence -- List of Contributors -- Author index -- Subject index -- INTERNATIONAL STUDIES IN SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY.

The increase in international survey research projects investigating basic orientations reveals that the grand sociological theories fall short in explaining the often large differences between populations in contemporary societies that continue to exist. There is more than modernization to explain varieties. Institutions, culture, history, policies, all appear to affect people's values. Our review of current state-of-the-art cross-national research activities demonstrates that increasingly multilevel analysis techniques are applied to address either modernization or institutionalism, or both. From various theoretical perspectives, hypotheses are extracted about the impact of the context on values in aspecific domain. The selected studies include very different contextual features to explain varieties in domain-specific value orientations, which clearly proves that there are different mechanisms at work in the distinct value domains. The studies reveal that context matters, but also that it is essential to include individual-level characteristics, at least as controls. Quite often, the individual attributes appear differently distributed in different countries, which may be the main reason why differences in value orientations between countries remain. ZusammenfassungDie Zunahme an internationalen Umfrageforschungsprojekten, die grundlegende Wertorientierungen untersuchen, zeigt, dass die gro ss en soziologischen Theorien nicht ausreichen, um die oft gro ss en Unterschiede zwischen den Bevolkerungen in heutigen Gesellschaften zu erklaren. Es gibt mehr als nur Modernisierung, um die Unterschiede zu erklaren. Institutionen, Kultur, Geschichte und Politik scheinen alle die Werte der Menschen zu beeinflussen. Die vorliegende uberprufung der aktuellen internationalen landerubergreifenden Forschungsaktivitaten zeigt, dass zunehmend Mehrebenenanalysen verwendet werden, um entweder Modernisierung oder Institutionalismus oder beide theoretischen Ansatze gemeinsam zu untersuchen. Aus verschiedenen theoretischen Perspektiven werden Hypothesen uber die Auswirkungen des Kontexts auf Werte in einem bestimmten Lebensbereich generiert. Die ausgewahlten Studien untersuchen sehr unterschiedliche kontextuelle Merkmale, um die Varianz domanenspezifischer Wertorientierungen zu erklaren, was eindeutig belegt, dass unterschiedliche Mechanismen in den verschiedenen Lebensbereichen wirken. Die Studien zeigen, dass Kontext von Bedeutung ist, aber auch, dass es notwendig ist, Merkmale auf individueller Ebene zu berucksichtigen, zumindest als Kontrollvariablen. Haufig sind die individuellen Merkmale in den verschiedenen Landern unterschiedlich verteilt, was der Hauptgrund dafur sein kann, dass Unterschiede in den Wertorientierungen zwischen den Landern bestehen.

Grace Davie's (1994) famous characterization of European religiosity in terms of believing without belonging triggered us to elaborate in a more sophisticated way on the interplay between religious beliefs and religious belonging. Using latent class cluster analysis, we explored to what extent there are clusters of people with distinct religious profiles which resemble Davie's categories, and whether, and if so how they have changed over time. Analyses of the survey data from the European Values Study lead to the conclusion that Davie's idea can be confirmed, however, only to a very limited extent. There appears strong evidence for the existence of a group of what David Voas (2009) has identified as fuzzy believers. We also concluded that European religious diversity persist and the cross-temporal analysis indicates that a clear distinction has emerged between a small group of countries whose citizens can be predominantly characterized as conventional believers and a larger group of countries with a mixture of fuzzy believers, unconventional believers who do not belong, and conventional religious believers.

In this study, we investigate morality in relation to the public good in post-socialist Europe. Public good morality is defined as the (non)acceptance of behaviour that contravenes the law and harms society and the greater good of the collective, such as cheating on taxes if one has the chance, paying cash to avoid taxes, not paying one's fare in public transport, and claiming state benefits one is not entitled to. Using data from the European Values Study in 2008 on more than 30,000 respondents in 23 post-socialist states, we find that on average the level of public good morality is quite high: 8.4 on a ten-point scale. However, there are marked differences between individuals and between countries, which we attempt to explain by looking at the legacy of communist rule, processes of democratization and compliance attitudes. We find that individuals living in former Soviet states are more 'lenient' when it comes to actions that harm the collective. However, those who lived under communist rule for a longer time display higher (and not lower) levels of public good morality. The level of democracy in a country does not seem to add any explanatory power, but individuals who hold more democratic values appear to be morally less strict. Finally, compliance attitudes such as interpersonal trust and confidence in government do not seem to mediate the observed relationships between communist rule and democracy on the one hand and public good morality on the other hand.

In this study, we investigate morality in relation to the public good in post-socialist Europe. Public good morality is defined as the (non)acceptance of behaviour that contravenes the law and harms society and the greater good of the collective, such as cheating on taxes if one has the chance, paying cash to avoid taxes, not paying one's fare in public transport, and claiming state benefits one is not entitled to. Using data from the European Values Study in 2008 on more than 30,000 respondents in 23 post-socialist states, we find that on average the level of public good morality is quite high: 8.4 on a ten-point scale. However, there are marked differences between individuals and between countries, which we attempt to explain by looking at the legacy of communist rule, processes of democratization and compliance attitudes. We find that individuals living in former Soviet states are more 'lenient' when it comes to actions that harm the collective. However, those who lived under communist rule for a longer time display higher (and not lower) levels of public good morality. The level of democracy in a country does not seem to add any explanatory power, but individuals who hold more democratic values appear to be morally less strict. Finally, compliance attitudes such as interpersonal trust and confidence in government do not seem to mediate the observed relationships between communist rule and democracy on the one hand and public good morality on the other hand.