the reverse may be true, younger generations being disaffected with a
culture and values associated with the fallen communist regimes, and
more attracted by the promises of a competitive, market-oriented
society.^18 Still, overall the pattern holds, and younger respondents are in
general more to the left.
Educational level is negatively associated with left–right self-
placement. Everything else being equal, the more formal education a
person has, the more likely she is to be on the left. This finding may
appear intriguing, because more educated persons also tend to be
wealthier, but education has often been associated with the develop-
ment of leftist views.^19 Income level, the variable that best captures a
respondent’s social position is, as expected, positively associated with
left–right self-placement. Respondents who are better placed in the
social hierarchy and wealthier appear more likely to be convinced that
merit lies behind the individual’s social condition.
Civilization divides?
One could accept the evidence, so far, that left and right perceptions
are universal, coherent, and broadly associated with distinctive views
about social justice and, yet, still have doubts about the relevance of
such conclusions for societies that have non-Western traditions and
cultures. In these societies, other cleavages could be more meaningful
or give the left–right labels other meanings. To shed some light on this
admittedly complex question, we took a closer look at national cases,
from different continents and cultural areas.
For each country in our set, we tested the correlation between
respondents’ left–right orientations and their answers to the questions
presented in Table2.2 on equality (“Should incomes be made more
equal or do we need incentives for individual effort?”), on competi-
tion (“Do you think that competition is good and stimulates people to
work hard and develop new ideas, or that competition is harmful and
brings out the worst in people?”), and on the role of government
(“Should government take more responsibility or should people take
more responsibility?”). Countries where the three correlations yielded
significant results in the expected direction were given a score of 1 (3/3),
those with one or two significant correlations got a 0.33 (1/3) or a
(^18) Norris,Electoral Engineering, pp. 114–15. (^19) Ibid., pp. 112–13.
A worldwide value divide 47