Values, Democracy and Social Change: New Comparative Findings from the European Values Study and World Values Survey

The European Values Study (EVS) and the World Values Survey (WVS) are two long-standing international survey programmes providing comparative evidence on values, beliefs, and social and political attitudes across countries and over time. Since the early 1980s, successive survey waves have made it possible to examine both long-term transformations in political culture and the ways in which citizens respond to changing social, economic, and political conditions. The joint EVS/WVS 1981-2022 dataset offer broad opportunities for analysing these developments from a comparative perspective.
The theme of the 2027 IPSA World Congress, “Uncertain Democracies: Rethinking Governance in a Changing Global System,” provides an especially relevant context for examining contemporary value change. Democratic institutions operate today amid geopolitical instability, economic and technological transformation, changing patterns of political competition, and growing public contestation over the meaning and performance of democracy. Comparative public opinion data are essential for understanding how citizens perceive and respond to these developments.
This panel invites research using the European Values Study and/or the World Values Survey, solely or in combination with other datasets, to analyse the relationship between changing values, political orientations, and democratic governance. Of particular interest are studies examining how citizens understand and evaluate democracy, how support for democratic institutions and principles changes across social and political contexts, and how individual-level values are related to broader processes of democratic resilience, dissatisfaction, or institutional transformation.
The panel also welcomes research that examines patterns of change, generational replacement, contextual variation, and the relationship between individual attitudes and national political conditions.
While the central focus is on democracy and governance in a changing global environment, papers addressing other substantive areas covered by the European Values Study and the World Values Survey, including political trust, political participation, institutional legitimacy, social and political values are equally welcome.