Keynote Speakers

Ronald Inglehart ( LCSR, HSE Moscow, &  University of Michigan, USA) 

Ronald Inglehart is a famous American political scientist and the Scientific Supervision of LCSR. He is currently working at the University of Michigan as professor in Democracy, Democratization and Human Rights. He was the President of World Value Survey Association in 1988 – 2013 and he is one of the cofounders of the Eurobarometer project. Ronald Inglehart is also famous for developing sociological theory of post-materialism  as he published more than 225 scientific papers. He won the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science (together with Pippa Norris) in 2011,  WAPOR Helen Dinerman Award and Prize of the Mattei Dogan Foundation in 2014.

Presentation title: "Cultural Change: Reshaping Human Motivations and Society, 1896 - 2014"

Abstract: Rising levels of economic and physical security are reshaping human values and motivations, and thereby transforming societies.  Basic values tend to be instilled during one’s pre-adult years and persist in later life.  But if a society’s younger birth cohorts grow up under fundamentally different conditions from those shaping older cohorts, the society’s prevailing values can change, generally at the glacial pace of intergenerational population replacement.

Economic and physical insecurity are conducive to xenophobia, strong in-group solidarity, authoritarian politics and conformism to traditional cultural norms. Conversely, secure conditions lead to tolerance of outgroups, openness to new ideas and more egalitarian social norms.  Consequently, the rapid economic growth and expanding welfare states experienced by developed societies after World War II brought an intergenerational shift from emphasizing economic and physical security above all, toward greater emphasis on free choice, environmental protection, gender equality and tolerance of gays.  This contributed to major societal changes such as the legalization of same-sex marriage and a sharp increase in the number of democracies around 1990.  Subsequent economic stagnation, rising inequality and high unemployment have retarded this value shift, encouraging growing xenophobia and authoritarianism.  Nevertheless, acceptance of gender equality and homosexuality have become socially desirable attitudes in secure societies and continue to spread rapidly.

Christian Welzel (LCSR, HSE Moscow, & Leuphana University, Germany)    

Christian Welzel is a leading professor of LCSR. He is a Second Vice-President of World Values Survey Association and a Chair for Political Culture Research at the Leuphana University in Germany. He was qualified as professor at the Free University of Berlin in 2000 and was appointed as a Professor of Political Science at the Jacobs University Bremen from 2002 till 2010. He also was the president of WVSA in 2013. Christian has published many scientific articles related to cross-cultural analysis and his latest book “Freedom Rising” (2013) presents an all-embracing theory about universal freedoms and democracy development around the world. He also won the Alexander L. George Award and Stein Rokkan Prize in 2014.

Presentation title: "Democracy Betrayed: Why People View an Undemocratic Situation as Democratic"

Abstract: Despite the fact that people in most countries of the world say that they prefer democracy, in some countries many of these alleged supporters define democracy as its opposite: autocracy. Usually, this pattern is typical of authoritarian states, which suggests that these regimes are legitimate because overt democrats consider them as democratic, despite the fact that they are not. These insights shed another light on the recent debate about the merits of formative and reflective measurement. Had we followed a reflective measurement approach, we simply had to conclude that notions of democracy are not comparable across countries and that's where we end. All the insights of this analysis would have been left in the dark because only a formative approach to concept construction can unearth them.

Eric Uslaner (University of Maryland-College Park, USA)

Eric Uslaner  is one of the leading experts of LCSR.  He is a professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland–College Park (USA). Professor Uslaner received his B.A. from Brandeis University cum laude with Honors in Politics in 1968 and his M.A. (1970) and Ph.D. (1973) in Political Science from Indiana University. He was the Professor of American Political Science at the Australian National University, Canberra in 2010. Now he is the author of eight books, including "The Moral Foundations of Trust" (2002), "Corruption, Inequality, and the Rule of Law: The Bulging Pocket Makes the Easy Life" (2008), and "Segregation and Mistrust: Diversity, Isolation", and "Social Cohesion" (2012) and approximately 150 articles. He has received grants from the National Science Foundation and the Russell Sage and C.V. Starr Foundations.  

Presentation title: "Trust and Corruption Perceptions in Russia"

Abstract: Russia is widely regarded as a society in which there is low interpersonal trust and high levels of corruption.  Using a survey of 2003 Russians conducted by the Levada Analytical Center for a grant from the Research Council of Norway (NORRUSS) to the research foundation Fafo, I examine trust and corruption perceptions in Russia.   For generalized trust, neither inequality nor changes in inequality were significant predictors, althouth having more than adquate living standards mattered a lot.  Cultural influences were also important: Religious people are less trusting while people who have lived abroad are more trusting.  Trust in government largely reflects attitudes toward President Putin, but also how well laws are enforced and the level of corruption.  Perceptions that corruption has increased since the Soviet era reflect generalized trust, whether it is acceptable to make “gift” payments, how adequate people see their income, and the level of inequality in their oblast.  Also people who identify more as Europeans than as Russians are more likely to see increased levels of corruption.

Scott Frey (University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA)

Scott Frey is a senior associate researcher of LCSR. Now he is a professor of Sociology and Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Social Justice at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He has taught previously at George Washington University, Kansas State University, and the University of North Florida, and he has held chair and head positions at the University of North Florida and the University of Tennessee. He has also held appointments at Argonne National Laboratory and the National Science Foundation. He has contributed chapters to recent books on environmental issues and published in numerous periodicals, including the "American Sociological Review", "American Journal of Sociology", "Journal of World-Systems Research", among others. He has received research funding from the Ford Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 

Presentation title: "Infant Mortality in the World-System: The Cross-National Evidence"

Abstract: The plight of children improved dramatically over the 20th Century. Infant and child mortality, for instance, declined globally over the past six decades and infant deaths have declined across countries occupying very different positions in the world-system (World Bank, 2015), but considerable cross-national variation in infant mortality remains at the beginning of the 21st Century (Central Intelligence Agency, 2013) and child mortality reduction goals under the UN’s 2015 Millennium Development Goals will not be met (United Nations, 2014; World Bank, 2015). Consider the fact that there was a 100-fold variation in the infant mortality rate across countries in the world-system in 2013: Monaco had a rate of 1.81 infant deaths per live 1,000 births, while Afghanistan had a rate of 187.5 infant deaths per 1.000 live births (Central Intelligence Agency, 2013).

Why does infant mortality continue to vary so widely across countries of the worldsystem? Various explanations have been offered, but little attention has focused on examining the validity of these explanations simultaneously with recent data. This gap in the literature was addressed in a cross-sectional analysis of the determinants of infant mortality in 2010 for a sample of 144 countries. The empirical validity of four  macrosocial change theories was examined: gender stratification theory, modernization theory, dependency/world-systems theory, and developmental state theory. Strong support was found for gender stratification theory: female education had a negative effect on infant mortality. Support was also found for modernization theory: as industrialization increased, the infant mortality rate decreased. No support was found for developmental state theory (the level of state intervention in the economy) and dependency/world-system theory (position of the country in relation to the core countries). Several control variables were examined (population growth and democracy, among other variables), but only Sub-Saharan Africa status proved to be an important predictor: Sub-Saharan African countries had a significantly higher infant mortality rate than their non Sub-Saharan African counterparts. Increasing gender equality seems to be the most rational means for reducing infant mortality. Implications of the results and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Timur Kuran (Duke University, North Caroline, USA)

Timur Kuran is an invited speaker for LCSR seminar. He is Professor of Economics and Political Science, and Gorter Family Professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University. He currently directs the Association for Analytic Learning about Islam and Muslim Societies (AALIMS); is a member of the Executive Committee of the International Economic Association; and is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Arab World Council. He was graduated from Robert Academy in Istanbul in 1973, got his Phd at Stanford University and taught at the University of Southern California from 1982 till 2007. Among his publications are Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification (Harvard University Press); Islam and Mammon: The Economic Predicaments of Islamism (Princeton University Press); The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East (Princeton University Press); and a tri-lingual edited work that consists of ten volumes, Socio-Economic Life in Seventeenth-century Istanbul: Glimpses from Court Records (İş Bank Publications). 

Presentation title:"Trust, cooperation, and development: Historical roots"

Abstract: There are regions, countries, even continents where, for decades, efforts to galvanize development have resulted mostly in disappointment. Such places are unresponsive to measures that stimulate production and trade in other places. In some cases, the basic reason lies in lack of resources and/or inhospitable climate. But in a many other cases, the main source of the problem is that complementary factors are missing. Commonly the missing factors include adequate interpersonal trust. In Italy, for instance, the Mezzogiorno remains chronically underdeveloped because of low interpersonal trust; this condition deters private investment and causes outflows of human capital. In India, cities without a history of commercial prominence are more likely to experience intercommunal strife, which makes them unattractive to investment today. In the Middle East, the Islamic court system was openly biased in favor of Muslims, members of the dominant religion. Judicial biases reduced Muslims’ incentives to comply with contracts, making them relatively untrustworthy as borrowers, business partners, and sellers. In the Middle East, even where essentially secular court systems replaced the Islamic system several generations ago, interpersonal trust remains low. This is among the deep reasons why its development record has been disappointing in spite of abundant natural resources.