Abstract
Emergent properties of global political culture were examined using data from the World History Survey (WHS) involving 6,902 university students in 37 countries evaluating 40 figures from world history. Multidimensional scaling and factor analysis techniques found only limited forms of universality in evaluations across Western, Catholic/Orthodox, Muslim, and Asian country clusters. The highest consensus across cultures involved scientific innovators, with Einstein having the most positive evaluation overall. Peaceful humanitarians like Mother Theresa and Gandhi followed. There was much less cross-cultural consistency in the evaluation of negative figures, led by Hitler, Osama bin Laden, and Saddam Hussein. After more traditional empirical methods (e.g., factor analysis) failed to identify meaningful cross-cultural patterns, Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) was used to identify four global representational profiles: Secular and Religious Idealists were overwhelmingly prevalent in Christian countries, and Political Realists were common in Muslim and Asian countries. We discuss possible consequences and interpretations of these different representational profiles.
Highlights
As processes of globalization connect the world [1], an important question arises: what might be the basis of any possible global political culture? If such a confluence is likely, cultures with different historical trajectories and political traditions will need to find ways to work together economically, and politically
History is a crucial symbolic resource [4] for legitimizing political systems, and our findings suggest a dialogical process by which governments are called upon to live up to their often unfulfilled ideals by exceptional figures, like the Gandhis and Martin Luther Kings of the world, who are valorized subsequently by large numbers of their educated citizens
We are at a juncture in time where the world is becoming fully connected economically [1]
Summary
As processes of globalization connect the world [1], an important question arises: what might be the basis of any possible global political culture? If such a confluence is likely, cultures with different historical trajectories and political traditions will need to find ways to work together economically, and politically. Chinese children may learn instead about the strength Mao Zedong demonstrated swimming the Yangtze River in his 70s (signaling the start of the cultural revolution) and the Qin Emperor escaping assassination to unify China (popularized in movies like Zhang Yimou’s Hero) [11]. These contrasting morality tales about the invincibility of central authority accord with variances in power distance [12] across national political cultures and they make the point that people’s interpretations and evaluations of who is a “hero” and who is a “villain” in world history differ across countries. The outcome of this issue connects to lively debates across the social sciences about the nature, extent and universality of the cosmopolitanism emerging from globalization [13], [14]
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