How can the study of human nature help us to reach normative conclusions in political philosophy?

When I read the sentence quoted in the epigraph above, the thought crossed my mind that Aristotle would have agreed with it. Aristotle based his philosophy on his observation of human nature. The reason why Aristotle came to mind will become apparent as you read the essay.

The quoted sentence written by Gerry Gaus is from the Preface of The Open Society and its Complexities (p.x). I have previously written about this book in an essay entitled: What does Gerry Gaus tell us about the implications of the knowledge problem for political entrepreneurship?

I have three objectives in writing this essay:

• The first is to outline Gaus’s discussion of the social evolution of human nature and how that provides a basis for his normative conclusions about the desirability of an Open Society.
• The second is to consider what we need to know about human nature to reach normative conclusions about the desirability of an Open Society.
• The third is to consider whether Gaus’s approach helps us to defend the intuition that natural rights exist.

The evolution of human nature  

Gaus argues that human nature has been shaped by evolution, including cultural evolution. Humans are a norm-guided species. Social norms are predominantly a cultural phenomenon – a product of cultural evolution. The norms associated with different types of social order differentially encourage some aspects of human nature while discouraging others. Gaus suggests that “the truly outstanding feature of our evolved moral psychology is our ability to follow a wide variety of sharing and fairness norms in different circumstances and cultures”. (p.86)

Gaus suggests that the common view that publicly justified moral rules are a modern Western invention fails to appreciate that public justification has been a fundamental feature of moral life from the beginning:

“From the very beginning, human morality has relied on public justification: the rules of the group must be such that the members’ personal normative convictions and interests align with them.” (p.50)

Gaus is critical of the “tribal collectivist” view that humans “are simply, at bottom, natural egalitarian collectivists”. He begins his evolutionary story with conjectures about the complex social life of ancestral Pan – the posited common ancestor of humans, chimps and bonobos. Concern for personal autonomy may have its roots in a social life where individuals displayed a keen sense of self-interest in competition for alpha status, and in rebelling to avoid dominance.

Gaus acknowledges that Late Pleistocene (LPA) hunter-gather societies engaged in egalitarian meat-sharing. That was a means of reducing the variance in food intake, but it also reflects successful efforts by subordinates to control would-be bullies and upstarts. Under that interpretation, the egalitarian ethos of LPA societies was not inherently collectivist. LPA societies “appear characterized by a near-obsession with resisting the authority of would-be dominators”. LPA societies also exerted immense social pressure against innovators who sought to introduce new techniques to improve their own lot. This may have been an effective way to protect distributive shares.

People in LPA societies had a strong ethic of reciprocation – they engaged in the conditional cooperation that enables markets to function. Social support was more readily available to those who had a reputation for being willing to assist others.

Social norms developed in LPA societies as some moral rules became internalized because large majorities developed an emotional attachment to them and willingly complied with them. The exercise of self-control in conforming to social rules was a highly prized virtue in many small hunter groups.

About 17,000 years ago, there was a rise in inequality brought about by the development of forager clans, leading to creation of hierarchical states. The state’s organization gave it a decisive military advantage over more egalitarian groups. Grain-based monoculture may be the creation of hierarchical states rather than a cause of it.

Gaus presumably adopts F. A. Hayek’s view of the Open Society (or Great Society) as a society in which coercion of some by others has been reduced as far as possible and individuals are free to use their own knowledge for their own purposes. He argues that the morality of the Open Society scales up the norms of reciprocity and fairness while incorporating the ancient concern with autonomy and personal freedom: “the core rights of person and property become universal”. (p.133)

The recent emergence of WEIRD morality (the morality of Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democracies) may have occurred as a consequence of teachings of the Catholic Church opposed to incest, which was once defined so broadly that it led to the breakup of kin- and clan-based morality. Gaus notes Jonathan Haidt’s data (The Righteous Mind, 2012) indicating that the moral reasoning of WEIRD populations is largely focused on individuals and centres on the dimensions of liberty-oppression, care-harm, and fairness-cheating.  In contrast, most other moral systems, including those of conservatives in WEIRD societies give greater emphasis to loyalty-betrayal, authority-subversion, and sanctity-degradation.

Gaus suggests:

“Extending core morality beyond kin-based networks may have been the critical development of WEIRD morality, but WEIRD morality too manifests a push toward expansion of the impartial network and pulling back by kin and ethnic markers and the power of social proximity. Human social life is defined by this constant tension between the push to wider moral relations and the pulling back of familiarity and social proximity. To describe human morality as either tribalistic or an ever-expanding circle is evocative but fundamentally distorting.” (p. 90)

Gaus goes on to suggest that although cultural evolution does not render humans unfit for the Open Society, they may well be unfit for Millean liberalism (and by implication, WEIRD morality). He argues that Millean progressivism “is a recipe for drastically reducing social learning (aka imitation), throwing us back on our cognitive capacities. That, however, is in turn a recipe for undermining ultra-social cooperation, and would probably make any significant system of social rules dysfunctional”. (p.102)

The Open Society is characterized by self-organized social morality, entailing moral rules that lead toward extended cooperation rather than conflict and division. Diversity of moral perspectives is fundamental to the moral life of the Open Society. Thus, the existence of increasingly diverse moral perspectives can enhance justification of the Open Society and public justifications of those moral rules must be as accommodating to diversity as possible. (pp. 164-167)

Gaus concludes:

 “a variety of different moral perspectives can, counterintuitively, enhance the ability of a society to secure public justification of shared moral rules. Each has his own opinion of the point and value of these rules, yet each can particulate in, and indeed enhance a social process that can generate a self-organized social morality.” (p. 167)

That description of an important characteristic of an Open Society seems to be as close as Gaus comes to reaching a normative conclusion about the desirability of an Open Society.

What do we need to know about human nature to reach normative conclusions supporting an Open Society?

I don’t think we need an evolutionary account of the shaping of human nature to reach normative conclusions supporting an Open Society. Gerry Gaus could have argued that humans have a variety of different moral perspectives by merely referring to evidence such as that presented by Jonathan Haidt. He didn’t need his interesting account of the evolution of human nature to make the point that moral rules can only secure “public justification” if they are as accommodating to diversity as possible.

That is not intended as a criticism. Gaus made clear that his primary intention in providing the evolutionary account was to counter the view (attributed to Hayek among others) that our evolved moral sentiments constantly cause us to rebel against the Open Society and resort to a “tribal” moral outlook.

Gaus’s discussion of the evolution of moral norms helped him to focus on some aspects of human nature that are relevant to assessment of politico-legal orders. However, it seems to me that Gaus overlooked other relevant aspects of human nature such as the importance to individual flourishing of the exercise of practical wisdom and self-direction. The relevance of those aspects might have been given more prominence if Gaus had considered some studies with an individualistic focus on virtues and values.

The study by Martin Seligman and Christopher Petersen of virtues that are ubiquitous and valued in every culture is relevant in this context. By reading the basic writings of all the major religious and philosophical traditions, the researchers found that six virtues were endorsed by “almost every single one” of these traditions: wisdom and knowledge, courage, love and humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence. That list incorporates the ancient cardinal virtues of practical wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice and the Christian virtues of faith, hope and love. Seligman and Petersen identified 24 character strengths that they viewed as the routes by which the virtues can be achieved. One aim of the study was to assist people to identify their own character strengths. The study recognizes that individuals who have different character strengths have potential to flourish in different ways. (The study is described in Martin Seligman, Authentic Happiness, 2012, pp. 125-161.)

Another relevant approach is Shalom Schwartz’s theory of basic values. The findings of his surveys suggest that the value priorities in 82 countries exhibit a similar hierarchical order, despite substantial differences in the value priorities of individuals within those countries. The 10 basic values identified in that study were self-direction, universalism, benevolence, conformity, tradition, security, power, achievement, hedonism, and stimulation. (See: Schwatz, S.H., 2012, ‘An Overview of the Schwartz Theory of Basic Values’, Online Readings in Psychology and Culture.)

There are no doubt other empirical studies that identify the importance of practical wisdom and self-direction to individual flourishing.

However, as Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl (often referred to as the Dougs) have pointed out, “the character of human flourishing is not discovered solely by a scientific study of human nature. Considerations of the requirements and conditions for human volition and action, cultural and social practices, and commonsense observations are part of the process”. The Dougs add: “The point of entry for such reflection most often occurs when we examine our lives as a whole and wonder what they are for”. (Norms of Liberty, 2005, p.116).

The Dougs present a Neo-Aristotelian account of human flourishing in which the human good is explained to be objective, inclusive, individualized, agent-relative, self-directed and social. After providing that explanation, the authors conclude:

“Regardless of whether or not the forgoing outline of human flourishing meshes with Aristotle’s, it clear that human flourishing is, for our theory of individualistic perfectionism, something plural and complex, not monistic and simple. As we have noted, this view of human flourishing amounts to a version of moral pluralism because there are many goods that help to define human flourishing. Further, there is no single good or virtue that dominates all others and reduces them to mere instrumental values.” (p.143)

The Dougs do not refrain from declaring that human flourishing is good. Flourishing occurs when individuals actualize their natural potential to be good humans. (p.122)

The Dougs note that the individualized and agent-relative character of human flourishing poses the problem of how it can be possible for individuals to flourish in different ways without the flourishing of some individuals or groups being given structural preference over that of others. They explain that recognition of individual rights solves that problem because it enables individuals to flourish in different ways provided that they do not interfere with the rights of others. (pp. 76-96)

I hope that this brief outline of Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl’s discussion of human flourishing provides sufficient evidence that their normative conclusions in political philosophy are based on their study of human nature.

Does Gaus’s evolutionary discussion help us to defend intuitions that natural rights exist?

In my book, Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing, I noted that, since ancient times, some philosophers have recognized that there is a foundation in human nature for intuitions about natural rights. I noted Haidt’s moral foundations theory and Hayek’s theory of cultural evolution but most of my discussion focused on Robert Nozick’s discussion of the evolution of norms and intuitions related to social cooperation for mutual benefit and the ethics of respect. (pp. 26-28) Nozick’s discussion is in his book, Invariances: The Structure of the Objective World, published in 2001.

Gaus’s discussion of cultural evolution overlaps considerably with Nozick’s, but there are differences of emphasis. As noted above, Gaus’s discussion emphasizes that public justification has always been a fundamental feature of moral life of humanity and that some moral rules become internalized as large majorities developed an emotional attachment to them. I think public justification is also implied in Nozick’s discussion of the merits of voluntary cooperation to mutual benefit because voluntary cooperation requires public justification.  (Nozick, p.259)

One difference of emphasis arises because of Nozick’s interest in the question of why conscious self-awareness was selected for in evolutionary processes. Nozick suggests that “if the function of conscious self-awareness was selected for because it makes us capable of ethical behaviour, then ethics, even the first layer of the ethics of respect, truly is what makes us human”. (p.300) Gaus is more interested in issues of public justification of norms and the question of “how we can live without oppression and subjugation in a complex and deeply divided world”.

I think Gaus’s evolutionary discussion is helpful to an understanding of why it is common for people to have intuitions that rules that restrain individual action require public justification to ensure that, as far as is possible, they are aligned with the personal normative convictions of community members.  Perhaps the intuition that people have a natural right to public justification of rules that restrain individual action is just as widespread and as strong as the intuition that individuals have a natural right to respect for their persons and property.

 Conclusions

This essay was prompted by my reading of Gerry Gaus’s book, The Open Society and its Complexities.

Gaus’s discussion of the evolution of human nature emphasizes the following points:

• Public justification of rules and concern for personal autonomy were a fundamental feature of moral life even before the evolution of modern humans.
• The evolved moral psychology of humans has allowed a wide variety of fairness norms to be followed in different circumstances and cultures.
• Human nature is neither fundamentally tribalistic nor is it characterized by an ever-expanding circle of moral relationships. There is constant tension between tendencies toward expansion of moral concerns and pulling back to familiarity and social proximity.
• The Open Society is characterized by self-organized social morality and diversity of moral perspectives.

Gaus argues that diversity can enhance the ability of a society to secure public justification of shared moral rules.

I think the points that Gaus emphasizes about human nature are helpful in considering the merits of an Open Society but I would have liked to have seen him give consideration to the relevance of other aspects of human nature such as the widespread view that exercise of practical wisdom is a virtue and the value that people place on self-direction. Consideration of practical wisdom and self-direction would have required consideration of studies with an individualistic focus as well as those that focus on social norms.

 It is possible to obtain insights about human nature from commonsense observations, introspection and reasoning, as well as from scientific research. On the basis of their observations and reasoning Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl were able to explain (in Norms of Liberty) that the human good is individualized, agent-relative and self-directed, as well as social. Their understanding of the nature of human good and individual flourishing provided a foundation for their normative conclusion that it is necessary for the politico-legal framework to recognize individual rights. Rights recognition makes it possible for individuals to flourish in different ways without the flourishing of some individuals or groups being given structural preference over that of others.

It is appropriate for conclusions about the rights of individuals to be based on the study of human nature rather than intuitions. Nevertheless, the intuition that humans have rights that should be respected is an important factor influencing individual behaviour. That influence could be expected to be stronger when people believe that individual rights are natural, in the sense of having a foundation in human nature. It seems to me that evolutionary theory supports that belief.

Gaus’s book left me thinking that the intuition that individuals have a natural right to public justification of the rules that restrain their actions may be as widespread and as strong as the intuition that they have a natural right to respect for their persons and property. More generally, it may be that humans tend to have strong intuitions that natural justice itself is a natural right.

What does Gerald Gaus tell us about the implications of the knowledge problem for political entrepreneurship?

 

This essay is the latest in a series that I have been writing about political entrepreneurship. It is the second that I have written on the implications of the knowledge problem for the plans of entrepreneurs who seek to improve economic and social outcomes. The first essay discussed Don Lavoie’s contribution to our understanding of the implications of the knowledge problem in that context.

The Complexities of the Open Society

This essay is based on my reading of Gerry Gaus’s final book, The Open Society and its Complexities. Gaus was a prolific author. This book, published in 2021, has been described by Chandran Kukathas as “his most ambitious work”. Gaus adopted an interdisciplinary approach to political philosophy and saw himself as being in “the truth business” rather than a proponent of any ideology. Nevertheless, it is obvious from the book that he valued the norms of liberty of the Open Society and detested authoritarianism and totalitarianism.

Like Don Lavoie, Gerry Gaus was strongly influenced by F. A. Hayek. In The Open Society, Gaus re-considers some of Hayek’s views in the light of developments over the last 20 years in theories of evolution and analyses of societies as complex systems. He focuses on the following three challenges based on his interpretation of Hayek’s views:

• First, do “our evolved moral sentiments constantly cause us to rebel against the Open Society and resort to a “tribal” moral outlook”?
• Second, given that “an evolved complex culture requires fidelity to … evolved norms, what type of justification” of the norms of the Open Society is open to us”?
• Third, has the Open Society “evolved beyond our governance”?

I will provide here just the briefest possible summary of Gaus’s responses to the first two questions.

First, humans “are certainly not inherently groupish creatures”. Humans are “fit for the Open Society”. However, they have not been optimized for it or any other social order, including tribal society.

Second, because the diversity of moral perspectives is fundamental to the moral life of the Open Society, the existence of increasingly diverse moral perspectives can enhance justification of the Open Society. The Open Society is characterized by self-organized social morality, entailing moral rules that lead toward extended cooperation rather than conflict and division. Public justifications of those moral rules must be as accommodating to diversity as possible. Effective governance requires widely justified norms and policies.

Knowledge required for governance

In this essay I focus on the Gaus’s view of the knowledge problem in his discussion of the question of whether the Open Society has evolved beyond “our” governance. He alludes to the knowledge problem when he observes that “we seek to devise policies to improve” the functioning of the Open Society. However, “we do not have the knowledge and competency to do so, hence we are constantly disappointed by the last round of interventions and we blame the last government for its failures and broken promises” (p. 13).

The passage quoted in the epigraph is from page 244, a point in the book where Gaus was summing up his argument. After noting that the passive population model often supposed that people would act against their own judgments, Gaus adds:

“Unfortunately, this view has been resurrected by those elites who continue to believe that the public is too ignorant to make its own decisions, and so should submit to “epistocracy,” or rule by those who know (aka, them). Not only, however, is such expertise essentially nonexistent in complex systems, but most actual agents in the Open Society are anything but passive materials to be guided by the elite: they are active, reflexive agents who make their own choices. When citizens do not endorse a policy, many will employ their resources to evade it.”

In considering whether the Open Society has evolved beyond our governance, Gaus introduces the concept of “self-governance”.  Self-governance is not the same as spontaneous self-organization, although Gaus suggests that the two concepts are not necessarily incompatible.

Self-governance requires that there be a “controller” who collects information at the system level and then uses that information to fuel a decision procedure that plays a role in guiding the systems behaviour.

Gaus refers to those aspiring to be controllers as governors. The roles that governors seek to perform may include the functions of political entrepreneurs. As I have discussed elsewhere, that function includes listening to the discourse of potential customers (supporters) to sense what they are likely to find attractive, and on that basis producing new products (policy proposals) and selling them persuasively.

Gaus considers three levels of governance – macro, meso, and micro- and three dimensions of governance – goal directed, strategic, and rules-focused. A goal-directed governor identifies preferred states and seeks to move society toward them. A strategic governor seeks to solve strategic dilemmas to assist citizens to secure outcomes they all want. A rules-focused governor seeks to structure some of the rules of self-organization.

Gaus’s analysis leads to the following conclusions:

• There is little prospect for a governor to successfully pursue macro-level goals in a complex society. For example, efforts to promote development in particular societies are often unsuccessful because institutions cannot readily be transferred from on society to another.
• Attempts to structure the “rules of the game” at a macro level are more promising. In cooperation with the self-organized normative framework of society a governor may effectively shape the rules of self-organization e.g. via civil rights legislation.
• Goal pursuit at the meso level is a dubious enterprise. Pursuit of environmental, economic and welfare-targeted variables is a hit-and-miss affair because our social world is a complex system. It is not linear and determinate, as is often assumed. Successful goal pursuit in a complex world is usually a matter of “muddling through” (sometimes described as learning-based governance).
• Polycentric governance studies show that a focus on problem-solving tends to facilitate effective governance when publics share pressing strategic dilemmas.
• There may be grounds for more optimism about the prospect for micro governance than governance at other levels.

In writing about micro governance, Gaus makes a favourable reference to the work of Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. Gaus justifies his optimism about micro governance as follows:

 “When changes come up from the more micro levels, not only are they apt to garner the moral endorsement of actual citizens, but the Open Society will possess a diversity of normative networks. Because what works today may be dysfunctional tomorrow, a diversity of approaches is always critical. This itself upsets the moralist, who believes she speaks for the truth about justice, and sees most deviations from her plan as shades of immorality. But many of the diverse publics will not take up her solutions—many citizens will see different problems and possibilities, and their normative beliefs will lead them to different solutions. (p. 240)

Summing up

In The Open Society and its Complexities, Gerry Gaus provided insights about the circumstances in which political entrepreneurs may be successful in pursuing goals.

Gaus was highly critical of the passive population model which assumes that people will follow policies dictated by governments rather than acting as self-governing agents. Such considerations made him highly skeptical about pursuit of goals at a macro level in a complex society.

He viewed pursuit of environmental, economic and welfare goals as problematic but acknowledged that some success may be achieved by “muddling through” i.e. adjusting policies in response to outcomes.

He was more optimistic about cooperative efforts to modify the “rules of the game” in which self-organization occurs. He also acknowledged that a focus on problem-solving tends to facilitate effective governance when people are confronted by pressing strategic dilemmas.

Gaus seems to have been most optimistic about micro-level governance that is able to garner the endorsement of “actual citizens”.

Are declining economic growth rates likely to have undesirable impacts on social attitudes?

 

Research for an earlier essay on this blog led to the conclusion that declining economic growth rates in high income countries are likely to cause an increasing proportion of the population of those countries to feel that their standard of living is worse than that of their parents at a comparable age, and therefore to experience lower average life satisfaction. In this essay I extend that analysis to consider the social attitudes of people in the USA, Britain and Australia who feel worse off than their parents.

In the previous study I used data from the World ValuesSurvey to examine the relationship between the perceptions of respondents about their standard of living relative to their parents at a comparable age and economic growth in the countries in which they reside. That data was then linked to average life satisfaction.

The main findings were:

• Perceptions of standard of living relative to parents are positively related to past economic growth experience of the countries in which people live.
• In the high-income countries, low growth has a greater adverse impact on young peoples’ perceptions of their standard of living relative to parents than on the corresponding perceptions of old people.
• The perception of having a lower standard of living than parents at a comparable age has a substantial adverse impact on life satisfaction ratings.

These findings imply that lower economic growth rates would be likely to result in an increasing proportion of the population having lower living standards than their parents, and hence, lower average life satisfaction. The psychic costs of adjustment to lower economic growth would initially fall most heavily on young and middle-aged people.

Those findings raise questions about likely changes in social attitudes if economic growth prospects continue to decline in high-income countries, resulting in an increasing proportion of people who feel worse off than their parents were at a comparable age. This essay uses World Values Survey data to explore how some of the social attitudes of people who perceive themselves to have a lower standard of living that parents differ from those of the rest of the population.

I focus on three high-income countries – USA, Britain and Australia. The USA survey was undertaken in 2017, the British survey in 2022, and the Australian survey in 2018.

Figure 1 provides further evidence that people in the USA, Britain and Australia tend to have lower average life satisfaction if they perceive that their standard of living is lower than that of their parents.

 

Demographics

Figure 2 indicates that people who perceive themselves to be “worse off” than their parents tend to be concentrated in the 25-54 age groups.

 

Figure 3 suggests that the sex composition of those who feel “worse off” than their parents differs somewhat by age group in the countries considered, but I have no idea why. There appears to be a higher percentage of young women in that category in Australia, a higher percentage of women in the 30-49 age group in Britain and a higher percentage of older women in the United States.

 

Work and Success

Figure 4 indicates that those in the “worse off” category are less likely to agree that hard work brings a better life.

 

Attitude to Migrants and Migration

The only conclusion I can draw from Figures 5 and 6 is that Australians who feel “worse off” than their parents tend to have more negative attitudes toward migrants and immigration than those who feel better off or about the same.

 

Trust

Figure 7 suggests that a lower percentage in the "worse off" category say most people can be trusted.

Figure 8 suggests that a lower percentage of those in the "worse off" category have confidence in the justice system.

Priority given to Freedom

Figures 9 and 10 suggest that there is not much difference between the three groups in terms of priority given to freedom. Slightly fewer of those in the “worse off” category tend to give freedom higher priority than equality. Surprisingly, in Australia and Britain, slightly more of the people in that category tend to give freedom higher priority than security.

 

Government objectives

Figure 11 indicates that those in the “worse off” category are more inclined to want government to take more responsibility to ensure everyone is provided for. The percentages shown are for the top 3 ratings on a 10 point scale.

 

Figure 12 indicates that those in the “worse off” category are less inclined to give high priority to economic growth. Respondents were asked to select from a list which national aim should be given highest priority. Other items on the list include having strong defence forces and individuals having more say in decision making.

 

Politics

Figure 13 suggests that those in the “worse off” category are no more interested in politics than other people in the countries considered.

 

Figure 14 suggests that people in the “worse off” category are no more likely to consider that it is good to have a strong political leader.

 

Figure 15 suggests that people in the “worse off” category are no less likely to consider that democracy is important.

 

Figure 16 suggests that people in the “worse of” category are less likely to be satisfied with political system performance than are people in the other categories.

 

Figure 17 suggests that people in the “worse off” category are as strongly opposed to political violence as are people in the other categories.

 

Conclusions

The social attitudes of people who perceive their standard of living to be worse than that of their parents at a comparable age are similar in many respects to those of people who perceive their standard of living to be better or about the same as that of their parents.

However, there are some important differences. People who perceive their standard of living to be worse than that of their parents at a comparable age are more inclined to:

• Skepticism about hard work bringing a better life;
• Pessimism about trustworthiness of others and lack of confidence in the justice system;
• Collectivism in terms of responsibility for the wellbeing of citizens;
• Negativity about giving high priority to economic growth; and
• Dissatisfaction with political system performance.

That combination of attitudes seems likely to be self-perpetuating because it is likely to promote policy responses that will lead to lower economic growth and a further increase in the proportion of the population who perceive their standard of living to be worse than that of their parents. Adoption of more market-friendly economic policies to facilitate higher economic growth seems unlikely to occur before that course of action becomes more obviously necessary to avert major economic crises.   

Is cultural backlash a major determinant of political outcomes in the liberal democracies?

 

In recent years, a major transformation has occurred in the politics of many of the liberal democracies as major political parties have increasingly been challenged, or taken over, by populists. What has brought this about? Can it be attributed to some kind of cultural backlash?

My starting point in this essay is the analysis of Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart in their book, Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit and Authoritarian Populism (2019). I then consider some problems associated with this analysis, focusing particularly on the authors’ definition of authoritarian values and some critical comments by Armin Schäfer. In the following sections, I consider the relevance of Yasha Mounk’s explanation of Tne Identity Trap, the nature of the backlash to changing economic circumstances, and John Burn-Murdoch’s outline of differences between conservatives in the U.S. and Europe in values and attitudes regarding international cooperation.

The Norris-Inglehart analysis

The book by Norris and Inglehart seemed like a good place to begin considering cultural backlash theory because Ronald Inglehart deserves to be remembered with great respect for his efforts in creating a cultural model which explains a great deal about the reasons why people from different parts of the world often hold widely different views on social and political issues. Inglehart’s cultural model has two dimensions: secular rational values versus traditional values; and self-expression values versus survival values. He documented a shift from materialist values, which emphasize safety and security, to post-materialist values, involving increasing emphasis on individual freedom, occurring as a consequence of ongoing economic growth.

Norris and Inglehart argue that the spread of post-materialist values has induced a backlash among cultural conservatives. The authors do not dismiss explanations of growing support for authoritarian populism which emphasize economic grievances associated with economic globalization, immigration, stagnant real incomes, and perceptions of growing inequality. They find that populist attitudes are strongly influenced by personal experience of economic insecurity and perceptions of the national economy’s performance. However, according to their definition, “authoritarian values” are more common among old people than young people, and are more strongly linked with the respondent’s birth cohort than with economic indicators.

The authors found that anti-immigration attitudes were more strongly linked with authoritarian and populist values than with protecting economic interests. And, even after controlling for a range of attitudes toward immigrants and economic conditions, the respondent’s birth cohort remains the most important predictor of authoritarian values.

Norris and Inglehart believe that “the combination of authoritarian values disguised by populist rhetoric” is “potentially the most dangerous threat to liberal democracy.”

To assess the threat to liberal democracy that may be posed by those values and attitudes it is important to consider how the authors define authoritarian values.

Have authoritarian values been measured correctly?

 The authors conceptualize “authoritarian” values “as a cluster of three related components, emphasizing the importance of (i) conformity (strict adherence to group conventions and traditional customs); (ii) security (safety and protection of the group against risks, justifying strict enforcement and aggression toward outsiders who threaten the security or the accepted group norms); and (iii) loyalty (supporting the group and its leaders).” They view populism “as a style of rhetoric reflecting first-order principles about who should rule, claiming that legitimate power rests with ‘the people’ not the elites.”

The main problem I have with the Norris-Inglehart definition of authoritarian values is that many of the people I know who emphasize conformity to group conventions, group security, and loyalty to the group and its leaders, would be more appropriately labelled as conservatives than as authoritarians. The conventions they seek to uphold are concerned with civility rather than oppression. They emphasize national security because they see it as necessary to avoid becoming the victims of oppression. They display loyalty to the group and elected leaders because they identify as citizens of the nation in which they live.

It seems to me that a more appropriate measure of authoritarian values is implicit in Christian Welzel’s work on emancipative values. The people who hold authoritarian values are those whose values are on the lower end of the scale of emancipative values. Welzel developed the concept of emancipate values to measure the beliefs that people hold about such matters as the importance of personal autonomy, respect for the choices people make in their personal lives, having a say in community decisions, and equality of opportunity. More information about Welzel’s research on emancipative values can be found here.

My understanding is that people who have an authoritarian personality are attracted to the possibility of oppressing others. That is the view of Hans Eysenck, who undertook some pathbreaking work on the personality predictors of political extremism. An important implication of that view is that authoritarian values are not the preserve of either the conservative or progressive side of politics.

That line of reasoning might suggest that the Norris-Inglehart analysis is more relevant to understanding a conservative backlash than the emergence of authoritarian tendencies that might threaten democracies. Nevertheless, as discussed later, there is some evidence that people who identify with the right wing of U.S. politics now have values more akin to Russians and Turks than to the supporters of right wing parties in western Europe.

How much do cultural attitudes vary by age?

In an article entitled “Cultural Backlash? How (Not) to Explain the Rise of Authoritarian Populism”, published in 2021, Armin Schäfer found that, on most issues, people in different age groups have similar cultural attitudes. His analysis suggests that older cohorts are slightly more likely to vote for authoritarian (right wing) parties but less likely to vote for populist ones. His conclusion is that generational replacement is unlikely to attenuate the rise of authoritarian (right wing) populism.

Schäfer does not dismiss cultural explanations of populism. He agrees with Norris and Inglehart that opposition to immigration is linked systematically to authoritarian (conservative) values and a lack of trust in politics.

A backlash to the illiberalism of progressives

 It is common for the spread of post-materialist values to be accompanied by conservative resistance, but much of that resistance seems to dissipate over time. Many cultural conservatives now seem to have accepted, however reluctantly, some of the social changes that they strongly opposed a few decades ago e.g. divorce, pre-marital sex and legalization of homosexuality, and they now also seem to be going through the process of accepting other social changes, such as same sex marriage.

In my view, it is the authoritarian tendencies of many progressives that has promoted a voter backlash, rather than the spread of post-materialist values. The best discussion I have read about the authoritarian tendencies of progressives has been provided by Yascha Mounk in his book, The Identity Trap, published in 2023. Mounk does not refer explicitly to “authoritarian tendencies” but the illiberalism that he discusses amounts to the same thing in my view.

In writing about what he refers to the “identity synthesis”, Mounk recognizes that its advocates are seeking to remedy serious injustices affecting marginalized groups that have historically suffered “terrible forms of discrimination”.  The identity synthesis is concerned with many different kinds of groups including those related to race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and disability.  The distinguishing feature of the identity thesis is that its advocates reject neutral rules like equal opportunity and free speech in favour of action to promote the interests of particular groups. According to this thesis, the way the state treats each citizen – and how citizens treat each other – should depend on the identity group to which they belong.

Mounk’s main point is that the identity synthesis will ultimately prove counterproductive: 

“Despite the good intentions of its proponents, it undermines progress toward genuine equality between members of different groups. In the process, it also subverts other goals we all have reasons to care about, like the stability of diverse democracies.”

The identity synthesis subverts the stability of democracies because it makes it harder for people to broaden their allegiances beyond a particular identity. It is a political trap because it makes it harder to sustain diverse societies whose citizens trust and respect each other. It “pits rigid identity groups against each other in a zero-sum battle for resources and recognition.”

Much of Mounk’s book is devoted to a philosophical discussion of how the identity synthesis evolved. The story he tells is of a short march through the institutions, associated with postmodernism, rather than the long march of cultural Marxism. He suggests that since the identity synthesis is inherently about ongoing tension between different identity groups it lacks Marxism’s utopian promise of eventually abolishing all class distinctions.

There has also been a backlash to the authoritarian tendencies within the environmental movement. Although environmental activism is not part of the identity synthesis discussed by Mounk, he makes the interesting observation that in embracing “intersectionality” many voluntary organisations have broadened their missions in line with the idea that all forms of oppression are connected. He gives the Sierra Club as an example.

What about the economy?

The analysis in the preceding essay on this blog leads me to suspect that the longer-term slowdown in economic growth in the liberal democracies might be more important in generating support for populist policies than are grievances that can be related directly to import competition or immigration. Import competition and immigration may just be convenient scapegoats.

The preceding essay shows:

• The perception of having a lower standard of living than parents at a comparable age has a substantial adverse impact on life satisfaction ratings.
• Perceptions of standard of living relative to parents are positively related to past economic growth experience of the countries in which people live.
• In the high-income countries, low growth has a greater adverse impact on young peoples’ perceptions of their standard of living relative to parents than on the corresponding perceptions of old people.

A backlash to internationalism?

John Burn-Murdoch, a researcher who works for the Financial Times, recently made an international comparison of the values of people associated with different political parties in article entitled ‘Why the Maga mindset is different’ (March 7, 2025). His analysis, using data from the World Values Survey, suggests that in many respects (including attitudes to international cooperation) the values of people who identify with the U.S. right wing are closer to the values of people in Turkey, Russia, and China than to those who identify with right wing parties in Europe, or with the U.S. left. His analysis also suggests, however, that “the US Republicans of 20 years ago were no keener on autocracy than the average Canadian or Western European – and just as supportive of international co-operation.”

Perhaps that change of attitudes reflects a cultural backlash that can be partly attributed to 9/11 and the outcomes of the Iraq and Afghan wars. It may also be partly attributable to increasing dissatisfaction with the performance of international organisations, and a perception that U.S. taxpayers have been making excessive contributions to those organisations.

It is important to note that even where a substantial proportion of the population of a country endorses authoritarian values, that does not necessarily result in authoritarian political institutions. That finding emerges from some analysis published on my blog in 2023 in an essay entitled:  “To what extent do international differences in personal freedom reflect people’s values?”  The analysis uses Christian Welzel’s emancipative values data from the World Values Survey and personal freedom data from Cato. It indicates that international differences in personal freedom do broadly reflect the prevalence of emancipative values (the opposite of authoritarian values). However, there are many outliers. For example, personal freedom in China and Iran is lower than might be predicted solely on the basis of the prevalence of emancipative values, whereas personal freedom in Armenia, Georgia, Cyprus and Taiwan is higher than might be predicted on that basis.

Personal freedom in the U.S. seems broadly consistent with the overall prevalence of emancipative values in that country (including both the left and right wings). The current U.S. government is clearly seeking to implement a major change in the direction of many government policies. I am not yet persuaded, however, that its actions will have a substantial adverse impact on the institutions of liberal democracy. 

Conclusions

Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart argue that the spread of post-materialist values has induced a cultural backlash among cultural conservatives. On that basis they suggest that the combination of authoritarianism and populist rhetoric is a threat to liberal democracy.

In my view, Norris and Inglehart were mistaken in attributing cultural backlash to the spread of post-materialist values. It would be more correct to attribute cultural backlash to the illiberalism of progressives who have been advocating what Yascha Mounk has described as the identity synthesis. The identity synthesis has provoked a backlash because it rejects neutral rules like equal opportunity and free speech in favour of action to promote the interests of particular groups that have suffered from discrimination in the past.

Economic grievances play an important role in encouraging people to support policy remedies proposed by populists. My previous research has highlighted the adverse impact that slower economic growth may have on life satisfaction. I suspect that the longer-term slowdown in economic growth in the liberal democracies might be more important in generating support for populist policies than are grievances that can be related directly to the impact of import competition or immigration.

Some recent research has suggested that over the last 20 years the values held by people who identify with the right wing of U.S. politics has moved closer to the values of people in Turkey, Russia and China than to people who identify with the right wing of politics in Europe. It remains to be seen what impact, if any, this apparent retreat from classical liberal values will have on the institutions of liberal democracy in the United States.

How difficult would it be for individuals to adjust to zero economic growth?

 

It would not be difficult for governments to achieve zero economic growth. They would just need to do more of the things that they are doing at present to slow down the adoption of new technology, create policy uncertainty, protect inefficient firms and industries from competition, and reduce the incentives for people to work. I could make a more detailed list of policies they could adopt, but I am not in the business of advising politicians about how to achieve zero growth.

Those who argue for lower economic growth don’t talk much about adverse psychological impacts that people might experience as a consequence. They seem to assume that if economic growth was stopped, average life satisfaction would stay where it is now. The basis for that assumption is that in high-income countries, further increases in income offer negligible benefits in terms of increased life satisfaction. That is consistent with the views of Richard Easterlin, who was made famous by his pathbreaking research on the relationship between economic growth and indicators of subjective well-being. Easterlin argues:

“At a point in time, happiness varies directly with income both among and within nations, but over time the long term growth rates of happiness and income are not significantly related.”

That passage is quoted in an article by Michael Plant which provides quite a strong defense of Easterlin’s position.

In my view, Easterlin is broadly correct. As incomes rise, additional economic growth can be expected to make a progressively smaller contribution to psychological well-being (as commonly measured by average life satisfaction ratings). Nevertheless, people may have good reasons to seek to have higher incomes. As I discussed in Chapter 1 of Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing, psychological well-being is only one of the goods of a flourishing human.

However, the main point I propose to make in this essay is that adoption of policies to achieve zero economic growth would be likely to pose substantial psychic costs (psychological adjustment costs) for many people as they are forced to revise their expectations downwards. I begin the essay by discussing international data on the perceptions that people have about their standard of living relative to their parents and then link that data to average life satisfaction.

1.        Are perceptions of standard of living relative to parents related to economic growth?

In the latest round of the World Values Survey (WVS 2017-22) respondents were asked the following question about their standard of living: “Comparing your standard of living with your parents’ standard of living when they were about your age, would you say that you are better off, worse off or about the same?” (I downloaded that data for as many countries as possible using the WVS’s excellent facility for online analysis.)

Matching the WVS data with World Bank data on per capita income (NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KD) and rate of growth in per capita income (NY.GDP.PCAP.KD.ZG) left me with a data set covering 63 countries. I used income data for 2002, and growth data for the period from 2002 to 2022. The reasoning behind that was to separate the growth experience prior to 2002 (reflected in income levels for 2002) from subsequent growth experience.

(It would have been nice to be able to conduct this analysis using a larger data set, but beggars can’t be choosers. I hope that one day someone will attempt to replicate and extend the study using a data set for a larger number of countries.)

Countries were allocated to four groups of approximately equal size:

• Low-income, low growth e.g. Pakistan, Kenya
• Low-income, high growth e.g. China, Indonesia, India
• High-income, low growth e.g. U.S.A., Germany, Australia
• High-income, high growth e.g. South Korea, Singapore.

The average percentage of those who consider themselves to be better off than their parents at a comparable age is shown in Figure 1a. As might be expected, a higher percentage of people are in the “better off” category in the high-income and high growth countries.

Figure 1b shows that the percentages in the “worse off” category are lowest in the high income and high growth countries.

Figure 1c shows that the percentage who are “about the same” is higher in the low growth countries than in the high growth countries.

Overall, this analysis suggests that perceptions of standard of living relative to parents are positively related to past economic growth experience of the countries in which people live. Historical growth experience, reflected in per capita income levels in 2002, and more recent growth experience over the last 20 years are both relevant.

2.        Do perceptions of standard of living relative to parents differ according to the age of respondents?

As might be expected, Figure 2a shows that in the high income, low growth countries older people are less adversely affected by low growth than are young people. The fact that more than half of respondents aged 50+ still perceive their standard of living to be better than that of their parents, presumably reflects the benefits of higher economic growth rates earlier in their working lives.

The picture presented in Figure 2b is consistent with that in Figure 2a.

Figure 2c indicates that there is not much difference between age groups among respondents who perceive that their standard of living is about the same as that of their parents.

Overall, perceptions of standard of living relative to parents do differ somewhat according to the age of respondents. In particular, in the high-income countries, low growth has a greater adverse impact on young people than on old people.

3.        Are life satisfaction ratings influenced by perceptions of standard of living relative to parents?

Figure 3 shows average life satisfaction ratings for each of the four categories of countries and each of the three categories of responses to the question about standard of living relative to parents.

Several observations may be made:

First, average life satisfaction ratings are higher for the high-income, low growth group than for other countries. It is somewhat surprising that life satisfaction is not as high, or higher in the high-income, high growth group. It might be interesting to speculate about that result, but my focus is on the question of whether perceptions of standard of living relative to parents influence life satisfaction ratings.

Second, average life satisfaction ratings of those who perceive their standard of living to be about the same as their parents are not much lower than for those who perceive their standard of living to be higher than that of their parents.

Third, average life satisfaction ratings of those who perceive their standard of living to be lower than that of their parents are substantially lower than for those who perceive their standard of living to be higher than that of their parents. That is true for all four groups of countries.

The important point to note is that the perception of having a lower standard of living than parents had at a comparable age has a substantial adverse impact on life satisfaction ratings.

Implications

The implications of the observed relationship between perceptions of standard of living relative to parents at a comparable age and economic growth experience are obvious. Lower economic growth is likely to result in increasing percentages of people having lower living standards than their parents. If economic growth is brought to a halt, the percentages who perceive that their living standards are lower than those of their parents would presumably end up approximately equal to the percentages who perceive that their incomes are higher than those of their parents.  

The implications for average life satisfaction of an increase in percentages who feel worse off than their parents at a comparable age are also obvious from the analysis presented above. An increase in the percentage of people who perceive that they have a lower standard of living than their parents is likely to result in a decline in average life satisfaction. The extent and duration of the associated decline in psychological well-being could be expected to vary depending on the resilience of individuals.

The analysis suggests that the psychic costs of adjustment to zero economic growth would initially fall most heavily on young people. In countries where per capita incomes are relatively high, older members of the population have been able to retain the benefits of higher economic growth that occurred earlier in their working lives.

In an earlier study focusing on Australia I found that in the 18-54 years group 33% felt better off than their parents; 48% felt worse off, and 19% felt that their incomes were about the same as their parents’ incomes at a comparable age. Consistent with the findings of the current study, those who felt worse off than their parents had substantially lower life satisfaction.

The Australian study looked more deeply at the group who feel worse-off than their parents, to observe the extent to which their life satisfaction experiences interacted with their resilience. As might be expected, the results indicated that people with relatively high resilience were able to maintain relatively high life satisfaction despite feeling worse off than their parents were at a comparable age.

Implications of three different kinds follow from acknowledging that lower economic growth causes an increasing proportion of the population to experience the psychic costs associated with disappointed expectations.

First, at an individual level, those affected are posed with the problem of how to adjust to the new set of circumstances. They may need the support of family and friends, and possibly professional help, to moderate the psychic costs involved.

Second, governments, and those advising them, need to consider whether there are more sensible ways to pursue policy objectives. The psychic costs associated with zero economic growth make this outcome less desirable, irrespective of whether it is pursued deliberately or occurs as a consequence of the incompetence of those responsible for economic policies.

Third, observers of interactions within social and economic systems need to consider likely responses of voters who are disappointed that it has become more difficult to achieve the goal of being able to maintain a standard of living at least as high as that of their parents. Voters can be expected to blame government policies for their predicament. From a social science perspective, the interesting question is whether government policy responses are more likely to restore economic growth or make the problem worse.

Conclusions

This essay has focused on the likely impact on average life satisfaction at a national level of policies to achieve zero economic growth. Data from the World Values Survey has been used to examine the relationship between the perceptions of respondents about their standard of living relative to their parents at a comparable age and economic growth in the countries in which they reside. That data has then been linked to average life satisfaction.

The main findings are:

Perceptions of standard of living relative to parents are positively related to past economic growth experience of the countries in which people live.

In the high-income countries, low growth has a greater adverse impact on young peoples’ perceptions of their standard of living relative to parents than on the corresponding perceptions of old people.

The perception of having a lower standard of living than parents at a comparable age has a substantial adverse impact on life satisfaction ratings.

These findings imply that lower economic growth rates would be likely to result in an increasing proportion of the population having lower living standards than their parents, and hence, lower average life satisfaction. The psychic costs of adjustment to zero economic growth would initially fall most heavily on young people.

Zero economic growth would have implications for individuals, governments and social scientists:

• At an individual level, those whose expectations have been disappointed are posed with the problem of how to adjust.
• Governments and their advisors are posed with the problem of considering whether there are more sensible ways of pursuing policy objectives.
• Social scientists are posed with the problem of assessing whether voters in different countries are more likely to respond in ways that will fix the problem by restoring economic growth, or to make it worse by favoring policies that will lead to economic decline.

The problems of psychological adjustment to lower economic growth should no longer be ignored.

Addendum

I have received the following comment by email from Arthur Grimes, Senior Fellow, Motu, Wellington, New Zealand:

"This is an excellent article - thanks for the contribution to understanding these issues.

Another angle is to think about how people's life satisfaction reacts when incomes in their country grow more slowly than comparable and/or neighboring countries. There are a couple of studies that show an analogous situation to your results; i.e. people in more slowly growing countries feel worse off (in subjective wellbeing terms) than do people in higher growth countries."

My response:

One of the articles that Arthur referred to is: Arthur Grimes and Marc Reinhardt, ‘Relative Income, Subjective Wellbeing and the Easterlin Paradox: Intra- and Inter -national Comparisons’, published as Chapter 4 in: Mariano Rojas (Ed.) The Economics of Happiness: How the Easterlin Paradox Transformed Our Understanding of Well-Being and Progress (Switzerland: Springer Nature, 2019).

The abstract of the article is as follows:

“We extend the Easterlin Paradox (EP) literature in two key respects. First, we test whether income comparisons matter for subjective wellbeing both when own incomes are compared with others within the country (intra-national) and with incomes across countries (inter-national). Second, we test whether these effects differ by settlement-type (rural through to large cities) and by country-type (developed and transitional). We confirm the intra-national EP prediction that subjective wellbeing is unchanged by an equi-proportionate rise in intra-country incomes across all developed country settlement-types. This is also the case for rural areas in transitional countries but not for larger settlements in those countries. International income comparisons are important for people’s subjective wellbeing across all country-settlement-types. Policy-makers must therefore consider their citizens’ incomes in an international context and cannot restrict attention solely to the intra-national income distribution.”

In combination with my results, the findings of the article suggest to me that a range of different reference points are relevant to life satisfaction ratings. Arthur has provided another reason to expect people in more slowly growing countries to feel worse off (in subjective wellbeing terms) than do people in higher growth countries.