Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Growing Apart?
- Introduction: Growing Apart? America and Europe in the Twenty-First Century
- 1 The Religious Divide: Why Religion Seems to Be Thriving in the United States and Waning in Europe
- 2 Value Change in Europe and North America: Convergence or Something Else?
- 3 On Different Planets: News Media in the United States and Europe
- 4 One Ring to Bind Them All: American Power and Neoliberal Capitalism
- 5 Spreading the Word: The Diffusion of American Conservatism in Europe and Beyond
- 6 Work, Welfare, and Wanderlust: Immigration and Integration in Europe and North America
- 7 Lost in Translation: The Transatlantic Divide over Diplomacy
- 8 The Atlantic Divide in Historical Perspective: A View from Europe
- Index
2 - Value Change in Europe and North America: Convergence or Something Else?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Growing Apart?
- Introduction: Growing Apart? America and Europe in the Twenty-First Century
- 1 The Religious Divide: Why Religion Seems to Be Thriving in the United States and Waning in Europe
- 2 Value Change in Europe and North America: Convergence or Something Else?
- 3 On Different Planets: News Media in the United States and Europe
- 4 One Ring to Bind Them All: American Power and Neoliberal Capitalism
- 5 Spreading the Word: The Diffusion of American Conservatism in Europe and Beyond
- 6 Work, Welfare, and Wanderlust: Immigration and Integration in Europe and North America
- 7 Lost in Translation: The Transatlantic Divide over Diplomacy
- 8 The Atlantic Divide in Historical Perspective: A View from Europe
- Index
Summary
Introduction
A large body of empirical evidence demonstrates that the basic values of mass publics in advanced industrial societies have changed over the last three decades. The same research also shows that there are significant and persistent crossnational differences in values. This chapter considers whether the trajectory and pace of value change in advanced industrial countries is leading to convergence or divergence in the values of publics in Europe and North America.
The question of value convergence or divergence can be conceptualized and addressed empirically in at least two ways. The most straightforward approach entails identifying common value domains among European and North American publics and then asking, Have these become more, or less, alike over the two decades for which we have data? A second approach, however, is to explore the internal dynamics of value change by examining how North American and European publics organize their core values. After outlining some different perspectives on value change and describing our data and methodological approach, we present the basic crossnational and crosstime evidence of change on single-value dimensions for publics in Europe and North America. The focus then shifts to consider the matter of how publics on both continents bundle their basic value outlooks. Do the publics in North America and Europe organize their basic value outlooks in similar or different ways? And are there discernible patterns in the way in which these core values have changed over the same period?
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- Growing Apart?America and Europe in the 21st Century, pp. 53 - 79Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007
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