compliance to be stronger in advanced societies. Rising living standards reduce the
need to break the law and the extensive monitoring and prosecution capacities of the
state increase the risk of capture and punishment. Similarly, one can expect to find
higher tolerance levels in advanced societies. The development of conflict-mediating
and mollifying institutions, including public welfare arrangements, has enabled these
societies to deal with ever increasing levels of pluralism and has made the citizens of
such societies become accustomed to cultural diversity and develop an attitude of
respect for people with different ideas and lifestyles (Crepaz 2009; Evans and Toth
2008). Finally, the finding that advanced societies typically combine pluralism on
substantive values with consensus on basic political values is consistent with the
notion that western liberal democratic states can tolerate considerable value diversity
because they have developed widely accepted norms and institutions regulating inter-
group relations (Dahl 1967; Rose 1969).
The relation between socio-economic development and the participation factor
suggests the following regularities: the more advanced a society, the higher its civic
participation rates, the lower the trust in institutions, and the higher the levels of
national pride. The higher participation rates in advanced societies make sense
theoretically because citizens in affluent democratic states have the resources and
opportunities to engage in civic participation. The lower institutional trust levels in
advanced societies are at first sight surprising because public institutions in these
societies have more financial means at their disposal and are therefore more effective
in meeting the needs and demands of citizens than institutions in poorer societies.
However, people in post-industrial societies have also become more critical of
authority and hierarchy as part of the wider cultural transition from materialist to post-
materialist values (Inglehart 1990, 1997; Dalton 2004). These cultural changes are
likely to have had a greater impact on people’s evaluations of public institutions than
the performance of these institutions. The higher levels of national pride in advanced
societies are more difficult to grasp theoretically, though. One would expect
secularization, individualization and the change to postmaterialism to have
undermined collective identities, such as a sense of national pride, in these societies
and thus to find higher levels of national pride in poorer societies. In sum, in view of
the components of the two factors, the relation of socio-economic development with
participation is slightly more difficult to interpret theoretically than the link of socio-
economic development with solidarity.
Figure 2 about here
Figure 3 about here
Assessing the particularist perspective
In addition to the close relationships of solidarity and participation with socio-
economic development, Figures 2 and 3 also show remarkable variation in the factor
scores of countries with similar levels of PPP. While being as poor as some Latin-
American states, the post-communist countries, for instance, have solidarity levels
equal to the ones of many affluent western states. The reverse applies for
participation. On this factor the African and Latin-American states have levels of
participation which are equal to or sometimes exceeding those of western states, and it