| Abstract: | Ronald Inglehart's Postmaterialism thesis has undoubtedly beenone of the most influential ideas in cross-national and cross-temporalresearch on political behavior over the past two decades. Thewide-ranging debate and criticism generated by the Inglehartthesis has focused both on theoretical issues concerning thenature of values and on methodological issues concerning themeasurement of Materialism and Postmaterialism, particularlythe method for ranking individual responses. Using a data setthat employed both the original ranking method for measuringvalues and an alternative rating method, we explore the dimensionalstructure of these values and discuss the implications of differencesbetween the two measurement strategies. The two-dimensionalsolution provided by the rating method is, we argue, a moretheoretically appropriate way of understanding Materialist andPostmaterialist values than the notion of a single conflictdimension, since it allows for a more flexible and realisticaccount of the choices made by most social actors—choiceswhich may represent both Materialism and Postmaterialism. |
