Institutions, Values, and Human Potential in the Context of Contemporary Modernization

Abstract

We are witnessing the transition of humankind to a qualitatively new scientific and technological stage. This transition requires the emergence of a new complex type of person who must go beyond the “creative class” that can live and create only in non-hostile social environments. This raises the question of the need for a deeper modernization, organically including socio-cultural and humanitarian components. To address this issue, modernization scholars studying institutions and values must unite. The article proposes a possible comprehensive assessment of the degree of modernization in different countries based on a sufficiently large number of alternative options of how institutions and value preferences can be organized in principle. Examples include (but are not confined to) such alternative pairs as 'legal system–custom based on the right of the strong,' 'democracy–dictatorship”, “private property–state property,' 'individualism–paternalism,' and 'trust–distrust.' The evaluation results can be presented in the form of a vector, the magnitude and the direction of which can reveal the magnitude and the direction of the prevailing trends in society. The vectors themselves can be placed in a coordinate system, where the vertical reflects the state of the institutional structure, and the horizontal reflects the value structure. In such a coordinate system, four quadrants are formed, two of which correspond to two opposite states of society — orders of limited access (using another t'erminology, the power–property system) and orders of open
access (private property–market democratic system). This opens the possibility to analyze transitions between the quadrants, corresponding to modernization and counter-modernization developments.