Foreword

In a sense, this book began when Ronald Inglehart went to Paris in May 1968 to investigate the causes of a student uprising that had just paralyzed France. He mounted a representative national survey of the French public that probed into the motivations underlying the greatest mass uprising since World War II and why the Gaullist government that had opposed it was returned to power by a majority of French voters in subsequent national elections.

When he began to analyze the results, Inglehart was surprised: the data contradicted his expectations. Like most observers – including the strikers and demonstrators themselves – he assumed that the May 1968 uprising was a manifestation of class conflict. Paris was covered with posters attacking capitalist exploitation; French intellectuals interpreted the events in Marxist terms, and the participants used standard Marxist slogans about class struggle. Accordingly, Inglehart initially struggled to make the findings fit Marxist expectations. New elections were held a month after the strikes and demonstrations. His data showed that instead of heightened class polarization, with the proletariat supporting the parties of the Left and the bourgeoisie rallying behind General de Gaulle, a large share of the working-class voters had shifted to support the Gaullist ruling party, contributing to its victory. It was mainly middle-class voters who moved in the opposite direction.