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The Asian Values Thesis Revisited: Evidence from the World Values Surveys

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 February 2011

CHRISTIAN WELZEL
CHRISTIAN WELZEL*
Affiliation:
Leuphana University Lueneburg, Germany, and Higher School of Economics St. Petersburg, [email protected]
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Abstract

The thesis that ‘Asian’ cultures oppose the ‘Western’ emphasis on emancipative values and liberal democracy has mostly been criticized for its political instrumentality. By contrast, the empirical claim about most Asians’ dismissal of emancipative values and liberal democracy has not been tested on a broadly cross-cultural basis. Filling this gap, this article uses data from the World Values Surveys to put the values of Asian populations into global perspective. As a result, the differences between Asian and Western populations over emancipative values and liberal democracy appear to be gradual, not categorical. What is more, the forces of modernization that gave rise to emancipative values and a liberal notion of democracy in the ‘West’, are doing the same in the ‘East’, confirming a universal model of human development rather than Asian exceptionalism, or any other form of cultural exceptionalism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Japanese Journal of Political Science , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , April 2011 , pp. 1 - 31
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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