Abstract

Ronald Inglehart’ s theory of postmaterialism contends that since the late nineteen sixties, a new type of politics is progressively taking over from the ‘old politics’ system. Inglehart’s case is built on steady changes in the postmaterialist index (PMI), where changes in public values are regularly assessed. Whereas ‘old politics’ consisted of debates over the place and scale o f redistribution and pitted class-based parties of left and right against each other, the new politics pivots on lifestyle issues, which do not fit clearly into the left and right camps. This thesis looks at the political implications of this detected value change, gathering new and existing criticisms of Inglehart’s model, and empirically tests his claims by means of a small-n case study with France and Ireland as comparators. We test four hypotheses derived from his works: (i) that class is less predictive of vote choice; (ii) that voter discontent has been increasing; (iii) that new parties have prospered in response to the new priorities, and (iv) that there has been a rise in unconventional political activity. We find that there is at best, only partial support for Inglehart’ s model, and conclude by outlining what this test of posmaterialism tells us about the link between political values and political change.