POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES OF RELIGIOSITY, POSTMATERIALISM AND ETHNO-NATIONALIST ATTITUDES IN NETHERLANDS*

The paper analyzes the political consequences of religiosity, post-materialism and nationalist attitudes. According to modernization and secularization theses, ideological orientations such as religiosity and (ethno)nationalism are supposed to decline in political relevance as modernizations progresses. On the other side, in the era of political de-alignment and re-alignment, political space is supposed to be determined by the 'new politics' ideological dimensions, of which post-materialist orientation is the most familiar. In order to examine the implications of these theoretical perspectives, this paper analyzes the ability of the aforementioned orientations to explain various aspects of political attitudes and behavior, such as the support for democracy, party preference, or ideological identification. The outlined problems are examined using data the Dutch Parliamentary Election Studies (DPES). Several features make the Netherlands an appropriate case to address these problems. These include the sharp trend of secularization, but accompanied by the persisting religious political cleavage. More recent trends of post-materialist and anti-immigrant politics have also been early and vividly expressed in the Netherlands. The main findings show that ideological orientations such as post-materialism, religiosity, and ethnocentrism, continue to be important for explaining various aspects of political Социолошки преглед, vol. XLVIII (2014), no. 2, стр. 141–164

The paper analyzes the political consequences of religiosity, post-materialism and nationalist attitudes.According to modernization and secularization theses, ideological orientations such as religiosity and (ethno)nationalism are supposed to decline in political relevance as modernizations progresses.On the other side, in the era of political de-alignment and re-alignment, political space is supposed to be determined by the 'new politics' ideological dimensions, of which post-materialist orientation is the most familiar.
In order to examine the implications of these theoretical perspectives, this paper analyzes the ability of the aforementioned orientations to explain various aspects of political attitudes and behavior, such as the support for democracy, party preference, or ideological identification.The outlined problems are examined using data the Dutch Parliamentary Election Studies (DPES).Several features make the Netherlands an appropriate case to address these problems.These include the sharp trend of secularization, but accompanied by the persisting religious political cleavage.More recent trends of post-materialist and anti-immigrant politics have also been early and vividly expressed in the Netherlands.
The main findings show that ideological orientations such as post-materialism, religiosity, and ethnocentrism, continue to be important for explaining various aspects of political Социолошки преглед, vol. XLVIII (2014), no. 2, стр. 141-164 Introduction: the changing role of political values Among various ramifications of major social transformations, changes in basic societal values and ideological coordinates are supposed to occur.Thus, while religion was the defining element of the medieval worldview, the process of modernization has brought about the widespread secularization.Religion, it was argued, will retreat to the private sphere, outside of political life.Likewise, while early modern era gave birth to nationalist ideology, and created the (imagined) ethnic belonging as the locus of state sovereignty (Gellner, 1983, Greenfeld 1992), this ideology has been expected to decline in appeal and political influence in the post-modern era, and with the growth of supra-national political entities, in particular the EU.While these two ideological dimensions have been expected to decline, the post-materialist worldview has been seen as a perspective increasingly defining the contemporary political discourse.
Academic literature has provided ample evidence of the existence of these trends, yet the trends do not seem to be linear as the great theories of value changes expect.Religious parties remain active and influential in most European countries.The political role of religion on the global scale is more than clear, giving rise to the claims that we are witnessing the 'clash of civilizations' based largely on religious divisions (Huntington, 1996).The collapse of the Eastern European socialist systems was accompanied by the upsurge in ethnic nationalism, which provided legitimacy for the foundation of a number of new countries in this region.In more developed European regions, post-materialist value transformation (or the 'silent revolution', Inglehart, 1977) shook the established party systems and transformed the political discourse.The most obvious manifestation of the shift are various ecological and other parties, often grouped under the label of 'new politics' (Dalton, 1988).Yet, the success of such parties has remained limited, and it increasingly seems that the traditional politics incorporated the post-materialist issues, rather than being fundamentally changed by them.
The aim of this paper is to examine the political influence of these key values and ideological orientations, using public opinion survey data.More specifically, the paper analyzes the utility of the ideological and value orientations for explaining political attitudes and behavior.By looking at temporal trends in the association between these values and various measures of political attitudes and behaviors, it is possible to test the claim of grand theories of societal changes that the political roles of the outlined value orientations are the large scale, unidirectional changes.The alternative possibility, i.e., that the trends do not follow linear pattern would support the view that the political roles of the ideological orientations are affected by shortterm factors.
The empirical basis for this study is provided by the Dutch series of election studies of public opinion, conducted over several decades.The Netherlands is an especially appropriate case to address these problems.The trend of the initial sharp secularization and then persisting religious cleavage is clearly outlined here.The Dutch have also been found to be among the most postmaterialist nations (Inglehart and Abramson, 1994).Finally, the new trend of anti-immigrant politics has been early and vividly expressed in the Netherlands, indicating the importance of nationalist and ethnocentric attitudes.
Societal prevalence of certain political values and orientations does not necessarily imply their relevance for explaining individual differences in political attitudes and behavior.In fact, universally accepted values, though important for understanding macro-level political features, are hardly useful for explaining variations in individual-level behavior.Values that are controversial and politicized are more likely candidates for politically relevant orientations.Hence, the overall decline in some values could easily be accompanied by their stable or even increasing explanatory value.
When speaking about the relationship between values and politics, the first question is what is meant by the 'political role' of values.In this case, this concerns the extent to which values are able to explain some important political attitudes and behaviors.
The DPES studies contain a quite extensive set of variables measuring various aspects of political attitudes and behaviors.For the present purpose, political variables are classified in three groups.
The first group of variable deals with the general attitude toward democracy.It involves both the normative orientation towards the political system (satisfaction with democracy), and more evaluative aspects, such as political cynicism.This set of variables is termed belief in democracy variables.
The second set of variables deals with the general orientation towards party politics.Since political parties are central agents in contemporary representative democracies, especially those based on proportional electoral systems such as the Netherlands, the political role of values cannot be properly analyzed without taking into account this aspect.
Values are also expected to be related to explicitly political dispositions.Hence, the third set of variables includes measures of ideological orientation and perception.
General theories of value change suggest that the political role of basic value orientations should follow their societal prevalence -religiosity and ethnocentrism should be decreasingly and post-materialism increasingly associated with political attitudes.This is the most general hypothesis examined in this paper.Hence, for instance, the modernization theory, and especially the secularization of politics, would imply not just that the level of religiosity should decline, but also that politics should be less determined by religious consideration.
Narrower theories, and specific studies, however, provide ground for more specific expectations.In the Netherlands, for instance, recent evidence suggests that religion continues to be important for explaining party preferences.Koster and van der Waal (2007) report that religion (Christian identity) predicts preference for the religious right-wing parties (CDA, SGP, CU)1 , but not for the secular right-wing party (VVD).Hence, while the overall relevance of religion for politics may still be declining, the continuing electoral presence of small strongly religious parties shows that this does not necessarily apply to the entire electorate.
Political implications of the post-materialist orientation is a topic that received considerable attention among the researchers.Post-materialism is known (and expected) to predict preference for 'new-left' parties, and general pro-democratic orientation (e.g., Inglehart, 1990a).However, there is also some evidence that post-materialism has not superseded the traditional left-right division, but rather became a part of it.Kitschelt (1994) argued that there is a certain 'inherent affinity' between postmaterialist values and left-wing orientation.Expectations about the association with the beliefs in democracy variables (political cynicism and dissatisfaction) are not clear.Since cynicism implies alienation from the system, and alienation is sometimes seen as providing inspiration for the liberal turn of the 1960s and 1970s in Europe (e.g., de Koster and van der Waal, 2007), postmaterialism might be close to cynicism.On the other side, postmaterialist are also likely to come from among the better educated and well-off citizens, and therefore should have fewer reasons for dissatisfaction and rejection of the democratic system, and hence they could score low on cynicism measures.
Nationalist and ethnocentric attitudes have resurrected as highly relevant political ideologies at the end of the 20 th century.In most accounts, these attitudes are associated with the right-wing political preferences.With the appearance of the 'new right' on the political scene, the conventional association with the 'right' has become more problematic.For instance, the electoral breakthrough of the ethnocentric (and socially liberal) LPF has often been explained as reflecting the public dissatisfaction concerning the issue of immigrants, as well as a political entrepreneur who fueled and channeled the public discontent (e.g., van der Brug, 2003, Zwan, 2004, Bйlanger and Aarts, 2006).The implications for political preferences in the Netherlands are twofold: ethnocentric orientation should be important for explaining preference for the anti-immigrant parties, but also increasingly for other parties as the issue became politically salient.The more a party has an outspoken attitude on the issue, the more relevant ethnocentric orientation should be for the respondents' preferences.Furthermore, ethnocentrism should be opposed to democratic orientation, and associated with cynicism and dissatisfaction.

Data and samples
The analyses are based on the Dutch Parliamentary Election Study (DPES)2 data.DPES studies are based on face to face interviews using probability samples of Dutch population, typically conducted in at least two waves -before and after parliamentary elections.The number of respondents per survey in all studies is over one thousand.The samples are constructed so that they are representative in terms of basic socio-demographic characteristics, such age, gender, education.The cumulative data set, with studies from 1971 to 2006, is freely accessible through the DANS archive. 3Further methodological information about these surveys can be found there.

Variables
Post-materialism DPES surveys from 1989DPES surveys from , 1994DPES surveys from , 2002DPES surveys from , and 2003 employed the standard 4-item operationalization of materialist vs. postmaterialist value orientation.Respondents are asked to rank four political goals according to their order of preference.Those who chose reducing inflation and maintaining order as their first two preferences are classified as materialists.Those selecting 'More say in politics', and 'Freedom of speech' as the most important goals are classified as postmaterialists.Respondents with value priorities that mix the two categories are coded as 'mixed' type, and placed inbetween the two former categories on the continuum from materialism to postmaterialism.

Religious orientation
DPES surveys contain a number of religiosity indicators.Frequency of religious service attendance is one of the most frequently used indicators in survey research.Presently, this variable is coded on a scale from 0 meaning 'not religious', to 5, mean-ing attending religious service at least once a week.Political aspects of religion are captured by the question: 'Religion is a good guide in politics' (variable V52_1).There are also several items that ask about the support for the existence of confessional political parties, trade unions, schools, and broadcasting organizations.These items are combined into a a composite measure labeled the confessional attitude score.
In order to construct an index of religiosity that captures both the behavioral aspect of one's relationship to institutional religiosity (religious service attendance), and views on the political role of religion (the confessional attitude score), I constructed a summary measure of religious orientation that is used throughout the paper.This Religious Orientation Scale (ROS) is defined here as the average score on the religious service attendance item and the confessional attitude score.Both input measures were first rescaled to the range from 0 to 1, hence the ROS scale has the same range.The goal was, on the one hand, to obtain a more reliable measure, and, on the other, to obtain a measure that is more general, i.e., which includes both initial aspects.

Ethnocentric orientation
DPES studies are imperfect concerning the possibility to operationalize nationalist/ethnocentric orientation.There are two indicators that are used over several election studies.One concerns the attitude towards asylum seekers (agreement with this item means 'Send back as many asylum seekers as possible'), and the other concerns Ethnic minorities i.e., "foreigners and ethnic minorities". 4Agreement with the latter item means that ethnic minorities "Should completely adjust to Dutch culture".For respondents, the reference to ethnic minorities typically means immigrants from Suriname, Morocco, Turkey, and recently Eastern Europe.Throughout the rest of the paper I concentrate on the attitude towards ethnic minorities, interpreting it is as a measure of ethnocentric orientation.5

Belief in democracy variables
A set of variables dealing with the general orientation towards democratic regime in the Netherlands was factor analyzed.The analysis resulted in two factors, interpreted as (1) Democratic orientation, saturating items such as political efficacy, political participation, interest and knowledge, and (2) Cynicism and dissatisfaction orientation, saturating items measuring political cynicism and dissatisfaction both with government in general, and with government policy performance.Oblimin rotated structure matrix is presented in Table 1.

Table 1 Two factors of the attitude towards democracy
Note: Oblimin rotated structure matrix.
The two factors represent meaningful political orientations, and should be related with political values in a predicable manner.For instance, post-materialist should be more likely to express pro-democratic orientation than materialists.Given the theories that find roots of ethnocentrism in various modes of frustration, cynicism seems to be a likely correlate of ethnocentric attitudes.

Attitudes towards party politics
Electoral participation is defined as a response to the question whether respondent participated in the most recent parliamentary election.
Party identification (PID) variable is recoded to the range 0-1, in order to make the measure comparable over years.Higher score means stronger identification with the selected party.
Sympathy for different political parties is a variable that represents respondent's general evaluation of different political parties. 6The variable is closely related to vot-

Ideological and issue orientations
Left-Right self placement is perhaps the most central measure of political orientation (e.g., Fuchs and Klingemann, 1990), and is expected to have clear relationships with political values analyzed here.
Ideological radicalism or extremism is defined as the squared distance from the neutral point on the left-right self-placement scale.
Perceived ideological polarization (PIP) is defined as standard deviation of respondent's placements of different parties on the Left-Right scale. 7Higher score means that parties are perceived as being ideologically diverse.Low scores mean that most parties are seen as similar to each other.
Affective polarization is defined as standard deviation of 'sympathy' scores for different political parties.Higher score indicates larger differences in affective reactions to political parties.A similar variable was also constructed, which reflected variations in the affective attitude towards specific politicians rather than political parties (variable Affective polarization (politicians)).

The influence of values onto political attitudes and behavior
This section presents some of the basic bivariate relationships between the examined value orientations (PM, religion, ethnocentrism) and various aspects of political attitudes and behavior.The main focus is on the change and stability of the relationships over time.

Postmaterialism and politics
The influence of the post-materialist orientation on democratic attitudes is presented in Table 2.The table entries are bivariate regression coefficients (b's), where democratic attitudes are regressed onto the PM value orientation.According to the evidence, it seems that PM influences democratic attitudes, and the relationship is stable over the three election studies.Postmaterialists score consistently higher in the democratic orientation compared to the materialists and those with the 'mixed' orientation.
The association of PM with the cynicism and dissatisfaction factor is quite weaker.There is only a modest tendency for post-materialists to be less cynical and dissatisfied with democracy.The tendency, however, seems somewhat more pronounced in 2002 compared to 1998 and 1994.
The associations are in the expected directions, but also seem sensitive to short term fluctuations.The implication is that the authors who emphasized the sensitivity of the PM index to short-term socio-economic fluctuations, may be correct (Clarke and Dutt, 1991).Post-materialists do not appear particularly interested in conventional party politics.Participation in elections and identification with political parties is only slightly and inconsistently associated with postmaterialism (see Table 3).This is not surprising since this value orientation is supposed to be better in explaining unconventional political participation, rather than participation in traditional party politics.
This, however, does not mean that post-materialists are indifferent to political parties.They perhaps are not particularly inclined to identify with them, but, according to the results reported in Table 4, they have clear party preferences.Post-materialists express sympathy mostly for political parties on the left-wing, especially those representing the so-called 'new politics".In the Dutch case it is primarily the GreenLeft (GL), but positive coefficients are obtained also for the Socialist Party (SP), and the more mainstream Labor Party (PvdA).The materialist are more inclined towards the right-wing parties, whether of Christian-democratic orientation (CDA), liberals (VVD), or smaller religious parties (SGP).It is also worth noting the negative association with sympathies for the rightwing populist party, i.e., the LPF.
Inglehart's assertion that, "The presence of materialist or post-materialist values proves to be the most important single influence on whether a given individual will support new social movements" (1990b, 64-65) is conformed by the obtained findings, at least as long as we interpret GL a a representative of new social movements.Post-materialism in the Netherlands, however, has a much broader influence on party preferences, and extends across the political spectrum, including the traditional parties.Reflecting the relationship with party preferences, PM orientation seems to be consistently associated with leftist ideological self-perception.According to Figure 1, post-materialists tend to be concentrated on the center-left of the political spectrum, while materialists and the 'mixed' type are distributed more around the center and right parts of the spectrum.

Figure 1 Distribution of ideological placement by postmaterialist value orientation
Table 5 shows that the strength of the relationship with the left-right ideology varies over years to a certain extent, but it is hard to notice a specific direction.The remaining relationships displayed in the table also do not show meaningful trends over time, nor in fact do they show stable associations.

Religion and politics
"The core of secularization theory is that it was once believed inevitable that modernization would inexorably, fundamentally and globally lead both to religious privatization and secularization.The result would be everywhere an elemental decline in religion's social and political importance.This was believed to be the case, regardless of religious tradition or form of dominant political power."(Haynes, 2013, p. 174).
The association between the ROS scores and democratic orientation is insignificant (Table 6).Also, using various component measures (e.g., political interest) that are available for additional election years, the relationships remain insignificant, or inconsistently varying, achieving significance only in a few studies (details not presented here).The cynicism and dissatisfaction factor is, however, significantly related to religious orientation, but the direction changes over time.In 1994 and 2006, the religious were relatively less cynical and dissatisfied.In 2002 the situation was apparently reversed.It seems likely that the direction of this association is dependent on who is in power at particular time.This shows that the influence of religious values onto politics responds to specific political context.Some evidence of decreasing relevance of religion for politics is shown in Table 7. Namely, the religious orientation was significantly associated with electoral participation during the 1970s and 1980s, but the degree of association had been decreasing, and basically disappeared by the end of the century.Thus, while in earlier years religion was apparently successful in mobilizing the public to take part in elections, this power seems to be lost.
Religion, however, has remained powerful in creating emotional bonds with political parties.The second column in Table 7 shows a quite stable significant association between religiosity and strength of partisanship.The coefficients over the last 10 years seem to be even above the average for the previous years.Thus, the relationship with party identification, despite study-to-study variations, seems to be stable over the surveyed 35 years.

Table 7 Religious orientation scale explaining political behavior over time
Note: Independent variable ROS scale; entries are unstandardized regression coefficients.DV-dependent variable.a Electoral participation is reverse-coded: higher score means 'did not vote'.
Evidence shown in Figure 2 confirms that affective relationship to political parties remains strongly associated with religiosity.Regression coefficients are consis- tently significant and high for all parties of religious orientation (CDA, SGP, RPF/CU).The coefficients are negative for parties with explicitly non-religious orientation, such as GL, SP, and even PvdA.Liking of the liberal party (VVD) seems to be unrelated to religiosity, especially in more recent years.We should also note some of the changes over time.The largest change seems to be associated with PvdA.While preference for this party was strongly anti-religious in 1980s, it became much more religion-neutral in more recent years.The appeal of the Christian democrats (CDA) also has become less exclusively religious.

Figure 2 Influence of religious orientation on sympathy for political parties over time (b coefficients)
Note: DV -dependent variable.
Religious orientation is decreasingly seen in the left-right ideological terms.Coefficients presented in Table 8 show that three decades ago, religious orientation was strongly associated with the right-wing self-identification.The association, however, shows a consistent decreasing trend, although it still remained significant in 2006.
The decreasing association with right-wing identification is also followed by the decreasing association with ideological radicalism.Obviously, the religious respondents are increasingly describing themselves in terms of centrist ideology.The associations with the remaining ideological variables are basically insignificant.

Ethnocentric attitudes and political behavior
The democratic orientation proved negatively associated with ethnocentric attitudes.The association is in the expected direction, and is consistent over time (Table 9).This confirms the interpretation that ethnocentrism is not an attitude towards specific isolated groups, but that it reflects broader orientation towards democracy, in line with Adorno et al.'s (1950) conception of the anti-democratic orientation.Political cynicism and dissatisfaction with democracy are also characteristics associated with ethnocentric orientation.However, the relationship is insignificant in the most recent survey (Table 9).Nonetheless, the evidence gives some ground for the interpretation of the success of anti-immigrant parties in terms of reactions to frustration and dissatisfaction.The associations of ethnocentrism with electoral participation and party identification are inconsistent and often insignificant (Table 10).There is a weak tendency of the more ethnocentric respondents not to participate in elections, especially in 1998 and 2003.This is somewhat surprising in the context of the anti-immigrant mobilization associated with Pym Fortuyn and elections of 2002and 2003. In 1994and 2004, , the tendency among the more ethnocentric respondents was also to less strongly identify with political parties.Party preferences are much more strongly and consistently associated with ethnocentric orientation (Table 11).Although, according to the above presented results, ethnocentrism was not a motivating force for electoral participation, it was a very important factor in explaining preferences for specific parties.Ethnocentrism is strongly negatively associated with preferences for the ecological and socialist parties (GL and SP, respectively), and, to a somewhat smaller degree, PvdA.Positive associations are observed for VVD, CDA, and especially LPF.It is also worth noticing that the preference for the smaller religious parties is quite consistently not associated with ethnocentrism.Thus, while religiosity and ethnocentrism often seem to belong to a common broader world-view (e.g., Wilson, 1973), the association does not necessarily involve religiosity per se.
The table also shows some noteworthy trends over time.For instance, preference for CDA became associated with ethnocentrism only in 2002, i.e., when the issue became explicitly politicized.The temporal politicization of the issue is also revealed by the fact that in most cases the strongest association with party preference is connected with the election of 2003 (coefficients displayed in boldface).Not surprisingly, ethnocentrism is consistently associated with right-wing ideology (note that the association is strongest in 2003) (Table 12).The increasing political relevance of ethnocentrism is shown by the association with perceived ideological polarization (PIP).Namely, it seems that ethnocentrism increasingly leads respondents to perceive political parties as being ideologically undifferentiated.Ethnocentrism also proved important for understanding variations in the degree of liking of different parties and politicians.The negative association means that ethnocentrism is associated with less differentiated affective relationships to parties and politicians.This perhaps could be interpreted in terms of political alienation among those with ethnocentric attitudes.

Discussion and concussions
Theories of macro-societal changes suggest the changing political relevance of religiosity, ethnic nationalism, and post-materialism over time, due to the processes such as modernization, secularization, European integration, and post-modernization.To start with religion: the French Revolution marked the start of its decline from the central place in the realm of politics.Demos, instead of Deus, became the site of political legitimacy.Classical sociological theorists, such as Durkheim and Weber saw industrialization and enlightenment as undermining religion from its central place in providing axiological orientation in the world.The process of secularization seemed irreversible, restricting religion to the private sphere (Haynes, 2013).
While modernization meant the declining political significance of religion, it inaugurated (ethnic) nationalism as a major force on the political scene.Gellner (1983) argues that it was modernity, including education and literacy, that enabled the formation of the contemporary concept of (ethnic) nation.Greenfeld, argues that nationalism also served as a 'road to modernity ' (1992).In any case, nationalist ideology seems intrinsically connected with modernity.Once the modernization process is advanced enough, these theories seem to imply its decline.
Political sociologists noted the extended life of political divisions based on societal cleavages long after the initial social divisions started losing their significance.According to Lipset and Rokkan's (1967) 'freezing hypothesis', political oppositions of the 1960 represented social divisions from the 1920s.For the present purpose, their theory suggests the continuing relevance of the religious-secular cleavage, and centerperiphery cleavage (here represented by the ethnic majority-minority division).
Theories of political de-alignment and re-alignment, however, suggested both the general decline of the traditional political divisions, with or without alignments around new political-ideological axes.In one of version of this perspective, the 'new politics' of the late 20 th century (and earliy 21 st ) is structured around new ideological division, often interpreted as post-materialism (Dalton, 1988, Inglehart, 1990a).
The evidence presented in this paper provides a mixed support for these theoretical perspectives.On the one side, all the three examined ideological orientations continue to be political relevant.On the other side, the degree of association with political attitudes and behavior is varying, mostly not showing clear temporal trends.
Thus, for instance, although ethnic nationalism may be regarded as an obsolete early-modern political orientation, its political effects do not show a declining trend.Rather, the trends seem to respond to the changing social and political context.As the political discourse in the Netherlands became dominated by the inter-group rhetoric, pitting the ethnic immigrants and the indigenous population against each other, so the corresponding value orientations gained in political influence.The trend even created sufficient ideological space for successful new parties, such as LPF in 2002-3, and subsequently.The trend also apparently forced ideological platform adjustments among the established parties.In 1990s, sympathy for CDA, for instance, was not associated with ethnocentric attitudes, but the association became significant and positive in the last three elections.
Likewise, religion apparently has not fully retreated to the private sphere, as predicted by the secularization thesis.According to Haynes, "in Europe, religion is now deprivatized, becoming politically active in various ways and with assorted outcomes."(Haynes, 2013, p. 181).While this claim implies a kind of a revival of the political role of religion, the presented evidence rather suggests that religion has never actually been fully out of politics, even in such modernized, democratic and liberal countries as the Netherlands.
The overall conclusion, therefore, is that value orientations, such as post-materialism, religiosity, and ethnocentrism, continue to be important for explaining various aspects of political attitudes and behavior in the Netherlands.Their effects are summarized in Table 13.The observed relationships do not always fit the expectations based on the (simplified) theories of value change, but the findings should be helpful in developing more refined theories about the interaction between individual values and politics.
Democratic attitudes proved to be related to the post materialist orientation, and to ethnocentric attitudes, though in the opposite directions.On the other side, the association between cynicism and dissatisfaction with materialist values was weak in the early 1990s, but may be on the rising trajectory.

Table 13 Summary of the relationships between values and political attitudes and behavior
Religiosity does not seem to be consequential for one's attitude towards democracy in the Netherlands.Religious opposition to democracy seems to be a thing of the past, at least in this country.
Electoral participation is one of the variables least based on the examined values.Religiosity was effective in mobilizing some voters in earlier decades, but even this effect disappeared meanwhile.Motivation for electoral turnout, thus, has to be sought in factors other than the examined values.
In accordance with the de-alignment thesis, party identification is loosing its political relevance.The present findings show that post-materialism and ethnic attitudes do not lead to strong party identifications.They perhaps are leaving party choice open.Religion, however, is associated with strong party identification.This is perhaps the strongest (together with the sympathy for specific political parties) political correlate of religiosity.In this case it seems that the 'freezing hypothesis' of Lipset and Rokkan (1967) is still useful in understanding political divisions.
Variables that are more ideological in nature, such as party sympathy scores, or left-right self-perception, are the strongest correlates of the examined values.This is not surprising, since broader ideologies are based on specific sets of values.The overall evidence suggests that these relationships are mostly stable.Thus, the left-wing preferences are associated with postmaterialism, lower religiosity, and ethnic tolerance.Preference for the right-wing parties and ideology, are more specific for materialists, the religious, and those with negative views on immigrants and minorities.
It is interesting to note that post-materialism and ethnic attitudes often have the opposite political correlates.For instance, the former is associated with pro-democratic orientation and left-wing ideological identification, while the later is associated with negative views of democracy and right wing orientation.These orientations could, perhaps, be interpreted as the opposed elements on a more general ideological dimension, perhaps under the label of 'new politics'.Post-materialism would be a component of the new liberal left, while ethic intolerance would belong to the populist new right.
Finally it is important to note certain limitations of the employed research approach, and provide suggestions for the future research.First, it would be useful to conduct similar analyses using extended time series.The examined trends are supposed to encompass large-scale changes, and in order to capture them adequately a broader time-perspective is needed.Of course, this requires appropriate data, which may represent a difficult problem.Second, improved operational definitions of the examined constructs would be beneficial.While religiosity and post-materialism are measured according to the contemporary methodological standards, measurement of nationalist/ethnocentric orientation could be improved, that is to be more focused on nationalist sentiments.
since most respondents actually vote for parties they like the best.However, sympathy score may be more interesting for the analysis of the role of value orientation for several reasons.Vote choice may reflect various factors, not necessarily one's preferences, such as in the case of strategic voting.Sympathy scores are also preferable on methodological grounds.Instead of a single categorical variable, we can analyze a set of quasi-interval variables.

Table 2 Postmaterialist value orientation explaining democratic attitudes over time
Note:Table entries are bivariate regression coefficients (b's), where PM is independent variable, and dependent variables are the two democratic attitudes.***p<.001;**p<.01;*p<.05.

Table 3 Postmaterialist value orientation explaining electoral participation and PID over time
Note:Table entries are bivariate regression coefficients (b's), where PM is the independent variable.***p<.001;**p<.01;*p<.05. a Electoral participation is reverse-coded: higher score means 'did not vote'.

Table 10 Ethnocentric orientation explaining electoral participation and partisanship over time
Note: Independent variable Attitude towards ethnic minorities and immigrants; entries are unstandardized regression coefficients.a Electoral participation is reverse-coded: higher score means 'did not vote'.***p<.001;**p<.01;*p<.05.