ABSTRACT
Theories of values in the postmodern society are launched with the ambition not only to document the existence of value-orientations but also to show that these values are relevant in politics and for the making of policies. In short, values in the postmodern society are causally important, either for election outcomes, policy outcomes or system outcomes like institutions or regimes. This claim about relevance for outcomes has always been a typical feature of post-materialism as a theory. Post-materialist values were said to cause a culture shift in postmodern societies, mainly consisting of the growing support for so-called ‘new politics’ – environmentalism and feminism. The difficulty of pinning down what post-materialism is has been discussed in Chapter 11. In this chapter we shall examine the recently revised version of the theory of post-materialist values, now equated with self-expression values.
