The Study On Ronald Inglehart’s Self-expression Value Theory

The renowned American political scientist Ronald Inglehart is the leading project manager of WVS, whose emergence signals the transmission of the scope of political culture research.From the perspective of democratic system, self expression value is the driving force of democratic system. It empowers the establishment, maintenance and development of democratic system. More specifically, self expression value shares common focus with democratic system, that is, the right of human independent selection, self expression value stands for the pursuit of freedom, while democratic system equals the support of freedom, whose vacancy determinates the direction and degree of the change of political system. The increasingly growing self expression value will boast the establishment, maintenance and development of democratic system inevitably. The datas of World Value Survey for five times prove the cause-effect relation of self expression value and democracy.From the perspective of democratic culture, self expression value is the core characteristics of citizen culture. First of all, self expression value is the most closing value with democracy historically. Then self expression value closely explains citizen culture in democratic relation. If other common cultures have closer relation with self expression value,it will have clearer influence on democracy. While, it has a weaker relation with self expression value, it will have a weaker effect on democracy.From the perspective of democratic action, the demanding self expression value forces the common power and guides the collective activities favoring democracy. For one thing, with the development of economic society, the common ones highlight self expression value and independent selection, which makes pressure for the elites. For another thing, self expression value take a direct effect on the elites and leads to that some of them are keener on self expression value. With the arousal of social power, collective action changes from traditional ones to anti-elites activity, In arbitrary societies, it will develop democratization while in democratized societies it will maintain democracy and better the quality of democracy.This thesis tries to analyze the theories on self expression value of Ronald Inglehart from three dimensions of democratic system, democratic culture and democratic activity. Meanwhile it also tries to point out the limitations of the theories.