RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INDIVIDUALISM AND SOCIO-POLITICAL ATTITUDES - A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF EUROPEAN COUNTRIES

According to Blekesaune and Quadagno (2003), attitudes toward welfare state policies are dependent on situational, such as unemployment, and ideological factors, such as egalitarian ideology, at both the individual and national level. The present study examines whether cultural factors can have an influence on attitudes related to the state's responsibility for social issues, such as unemployment, family services, and care for the elderly. An important starting point is Hofstede's analysis of cultural values and, in particular, the concept of individualism. In this study, data from the European Social Survey (N=37,743 in 20 countries) are analyzed using a two-level regression analysis. The findings indicate that the individualist culture is a significant factor in terms of the socio-political attitudes of individuals. The dependence between individualism and attitudes can be observed in both the country-level analysis and the two-level regression analysis. According to the final regression model, other country-level factors, i.e. GDP, unemployment rate, distribution of income (GINI index), social and health expenditure, and other cultural dimensions of Hofstede's model, do not significantly explain the sociopolitical attitudes of individuals. On the other hand, many individual-level factors correlate with attitudes and their effect is greater than the effect of individualism.