Plamen Akaliyski

Nations have been questioned as meaningful units for analyzing culture due to their allegedly limited variance-capturing power and large internal heterogeneity. Against this skepticism, we argue that culture is by definition a collective phenomenon and focusing on individual differences contradicts the very concept of culture. Through the “miracle of aggregation,” we can eliminate random noise and arbitrary variation at the individual level in order to distill the central cultural tendencies of

Abstract The European Union (EU) is considered to be a unique economic and political union that integrates most European countries. This article focuses on the cultural aspect of European integration, which has been increasingly debated over the course of deepening and widening integration and in the context of the legitimation crisis of the EU. Among the main goals of the EU is to promote certain values, which raises the question of whether it has been efficient in (or enabled) reducing cultura

The series of recent crises (EURO, refugees, backsliding, Brexit) challenge the self-portrayal of the European Union (EU) as a community of shared values. Against this backdrop, we analyse European Values Study data from 1990 till 2020 to assess the level and change in publics’ acceptance of the EU’s officially propagated values: personal freedom, individual autonomy, social solidarity, ethnic tolerance, civic honesty, gender equality and liberal democracy. We find that EU publics support these

Soon after the collapse of Soviet-type communism in Central and Eastern Europe, a new geopolitical division began to reshape the continent. Our study demonstrates that this newly emerging geopolitical divide has been underpinned by a corresponding cultural divergence, of which “emancipative values” are the most powerful marker. Using the European Values Study/World Values Survey 1990 to 2014, we find that the former Iron Curtain no longer constitutes a cultural boundary because the ex-communist

Nations have been questioned as meaningful units for analyzing culture due to their limited variance-capturing power and large internal heterogeneity. Against this skepticism, we argue that culture is by definition a collective phenomenon and focusing on individual differences contradicts the very concept of culture. Through the “miracle of aggregation,” we can eliminate random noise and arbitrary variation at the individual level in order to distil the central cultural tendencies of nations. Ac

Western theories of modernization and cultural change suppose that socioeconomic development fosters support for freedom and equality in all societies. Cultural relativism and “Asian Values” thesis challenge such theories of universal human development by arguing that East Asian societies’ cultural legacies predispose them to a distinct pathway of cultural and societal development. This study uses nationally representative data from the World Values Survey and European Values Study to test wheth

ABSTRACT An important question in understanding the war in Ukraine is whether Russian President Putin's claim that Russians and Ukrainians are ‘one people’ or whether the statement made by European Union Commission President von der Leyen, echoing Ukrainian government's position, that Ukraine is ‘one of us’ receives more support. In our contribution, we assess the societal values endorsed in Ukraine, and test whether they resemble those of Russia or Western Europe. After reviewing arguments brou

Focusing on Europe, this article aims to disentangle the patterns of cultural clustering and to throw more light on concepts such as ‘civilizations’ and ‘cultural zones.’ Cross-cultural analyses unanimously find that various historical background and socioeconomic indicators are strongly correlated to societal values, however, a systematic investigation on what makes societal cultures similar and different hasn’t been conducted. The author first outlines the factors and mechanisms that may expla

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on societies, with possible consequences for their fundamental values. Inglehart’s revised modernization theory links societal values to the underlying subjective sense of existential security in a given society (scarcity hypothesis), while also claiming that influences on values diminish once individuals reach adulthood (socialization hypothesis). An acute existential crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic offers a rare opportunity to test

Whether the EU is a community of shared values is increasingly contested in public debates and academic discourses alike. We analyse the level and change in the acceptance of the EU’s officially promoted values in seven domains: personal freedom, individual autonomy, social solidarity, ethnic tolerance, civic honesty, gender equality and liberal democracy. We find that EU-member populations support the EU- values strongly and increasingly over time, especially in individual freedoms and gender e

Post–Cold War Europe has become a scene of a grueling contestation over questions of morality, with key players being the EU and Russia. The legacy of the Cold War on the moral beliefs of European nations and their transformation over the last three decades requires an examination. We advance theory toward the potential role of development, institutions , and identity , associated with the Cold War division and continued differentiation at present. We use the Morally Debatable Behaviors Scale fi

Individualism-collectivism (I-C), the most widely researched cultural dimension, is often equated with Hofstede's pioneering nation scores. Concerns are growing about these scores' validity, but subsequent research has not produced a widely accepted alternative. Here, we offer a refined theoretical conceptualization of I-C, we systematically reevaluate the validity of Hofstede's I-C scores, and we report the development and validation of a new I-C index, covering 102 countries/territories inhabi

Individualism-Collectivism (I-C), a key concept in cross-cultural research and one of the most studied context variables in personality, social, and developmental psychology, is often treated as synonymous with Hofstede’s pioneering nation scores. Concerns are growing about these scores’ validity, but subsequent research has not produced a widely accepted alternative. In Study 1, we systematically evaluated Hofstede’s I-C index, revealing inferior convergent and nomological validity compared to