Changes in the valuing of autonomy in the ex-communist societies: the role of socio-economic and civic rights development

Abstract

Autonomy is treated as a major element in a number of value models and often as a very important feature of the democratic political culture. The aim of this paper is to analyse the valuing of autonomy in a number of ex-communist and non-communist European countries, as well as the changes in that regard in the period between 1999 and 2009 and their main determinants. The data from the European Values Study and the World Values Study were used and aggregate, country-level analysis was performed. A total of 38 European countries were included, which comprised 47.999 respondents for 1999 and 58.155 respondents for 2009. Autonomy valuing was operationalized via the preference for the qualities that children should be encouraged to learn at home, opposing support for independence/determination and religious faith/obedience. The Freedom House scores and Human Development Index values were used as measures of civic and political rights and socio-economic development of the countries, respectively. The results indicate that half of the ex-communist and the majority of the non-communist European countries show a significant increase in the autonomy preference over the ten-year period. In the non-communist countries, the autonomy shift is significantly enhanced by the rising level of socio-economic development. Enhanced guarantees of civil and political rights and freedoms are, however, the major factors in promoting autonomy in the excommunist societies. The obtained findings are discussed in terms of the institutional model of political culture, as well as in the context of the main assumptions of the self-determination theory.