Modernization man: the significance of Ronald Inglehart’s theory for the social sciences

Abstract

Ronald Inglehart, an outstanding political scientist, passed on May 8, 2021. This article attempts to pay tribute to him as a scholar and a person by narration of his theory and its significance. The authors emphasize that the idea of sociocultural modernization was central for him. His theory’s humanism is that a human and their motivational changes become a core of global modernization transformation. A concise account of Inglehart modernization theory is given from changes of social economic conditions and security to basic values shift to increase in freedom of choice and its institutional consolidation. Noted that despite of Inglehart being liberal and progressist, his theory is just scientific, but not a normative knowledge or an ideological conception. Its propositions have been tested multiple times with the data from the largest survey project ever, World Values Survey together with European Values Study. We recognize organizational merits of Inglehart who established and coordinated this survey project and a big community around it for a long time. We consider the place of his theory to be among other academic theories of global development like those in historical macrosociology and institutional economy. An attempt is made to learn lessons for Ukraine from Inglehart theory. Ukraine has not demonstrated a considerable shift to self-expression values, and objective conditions for it are unfavorable at the moment. In fact, an “economic miracle” and a long peace are needed for this. Conceptually, a coherent integration of the modernization theory and economic institutionalism is needed. Translation and popularization of Inglehart’s work, as well as wider usage of data from values surveys remain topical for Ukraine. After all, Ronald Inglehart himself deserves to be a scientist role model for us.