Bio: (1934-2021) American political scientist and sociologist. Ronald Inglehart completed his master's and doctoral studies at the University of Chicago. He was a professor of political science at the University of Michigan, and has also taught at many universities all over the world, and worked in several research institutes. Inglehart is best known for studying the development of postmodern values ​​in the United States and around the world. He believes that post-material values ​​that emphasize aesthetic, intellectual, and self-actualizing needs replaced modernist values ​​that are focused on the material, that is, economic needs. This change occurs because the generations that grew up after the Second World War, grew up in conditions of relatively high economic security, while the previous generations were more exposed to wars and poverty. This "silent revolution", (the concept first introduced in his book Silent Revolution, 1977)  which took place in the 1960s and 1970s, led to cultural and political differences between the generations.

In order to conduct a series of empirical studies of values ​​around the world, Inglehart founded the World Values ​​Survey in 1981, a network of scientists and institutions that have been conducting surveys in over 80 countries for decades. Inglehart, together with Christian Welzel, created the so-called Inglehart-Welzel Cultural Map of the World. They classified all the countries from which they had empirical data on a chart with two dimensions: 1) traditional values ​​- secular rational values ​​and 2) values ​​of self-preservation versus the values ​​of self-realization. All countries are classified into nine major cultural fields: Confucian, European-Protestant, Catholic-European, Orthodox, Islamic, African, Latin American, South Asian, and English-speaking. Inglehart, in co-authorship with Pippa Norris, has published three books on secularization and reducing the influence of traditional religions – Sacred and Secular (2004), increasing gender equality - Rising Tide: Gender Equality and Cultural Change around the World (2003) and preserving cultural differences in the age of globalization - Cosmopolitan Communications: Cultural Diversity in a Globalized World  (2009). In the book Cultural Evolution: People's Motivations Are Changing, and Reshaping the World (2018) Inglehart explains the recent rise of xenophobic and authoritarian populist parties by rising existential security, which is a consequence of rapid cultural change, large-scale immigration, and fast rising economic inequalities in the world.

Main works

The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles Among Western Publics (1977);

Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society (1990);

Value Change in Global Perspective (1995);

Modernization and Postmodernization (1997);

Rising Tide: Gender Equality and Cultural Change around the World (2003);

Human Beliefs and Values: A Cross-Cultural Sourcebook based on the 1999-2002 values Surveys (2004);

Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide (2004);

Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence (2005);

Cosmopolitan Communications: Cultural Diversity in a Globalized World (2009);

„Changing Mass Priorities: The Link Between Modernization and Democracy“, in Perspectives on Politics (2010);

Cultural Evolution: People's Motivations are Changing, and Reshaping the World (2018);

Religion's Sudden Decline: What's Causing it, and What Comes Next? (2021).