POLARIZED PRIORITIES OR FLEXIBLE ALTERNATIVES? DIMENSIONALITY IN INGLEHART'S MATERIALISM--POSTMATERIALISM SCALE

Abstract

Ronald Inglehart's Postmaterialism thesis has undoubtedly been one of the most influential ideas in cross-national and cross-temporal research on political behavior over the past two decades. The wide-ranging debate and criticism generated by the Inglehart thesis has focused both on theoretical issues concerning the nature of values and on methodological issues concerning the measurement of Materialism and Postmaterialism, particularly the method for ranking individual responses. Using a data set that employed both the original ranking method for measuring values and an alternative rating method, we explore the dimensional structure of these values and discuss the implications of differences between the two measurement strategies. The two-dimensional solution provided by the rating method is, we argue, a more theoretically appropriate way of understanding Materialist and Postmaterialist values than the notion of a single conflict dimension, since it allows for a more flexible and realistic account of the choices made by most social actors—choices which may represent both Materialism and Postmaterialism.