Individual Education and Societal Conditioning Effects on Liberalism Values: Evidence from World Value Survey.

Public opinion studies note the importance of economic and cultural contexts in shaping individuals' ideas. The effect of political systems is also important but remains under studied. The potential conditioning effects of various societal level factors need more investigation as well. The paper combines these issues in an analysis of data from 99 societies in five waves of the World Value Survey (WVS). It finds economic development and political freedom both condition the educational effect on values: education's liberalizing effect on people's liberal attitudes is greater in a rich society than a poor society and is greater in a free society than a non-free society. This paper contributes to the literature by examining the importance of societal level conditioning effects. Its findings have important implications for democratization studies: a non-democratic political context slows down citizens' value liberalization process through education and corrupts the value basis required for democratization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]