Generations Analysis and International Relations: Cultural Zones, Intergenerational Value Change, and Cross-National Comparison

Using findings from the World Values Survey, I argue for a consideration of generational difference as an overlooked component of social value systems, change, and cultural conflict in the international system. To the extent that such value systems underlie oft-unspoken shared understandings, and even formalized agreements replete with value-based assumptions, understanding this unstated dynamic is important in reconciling what otherwise appear to be insurmountable ‘civilizational divides’. To this end, I discuss generation, alongside civilization, as productive levels of analysis (or analytic variables) in international relations.The growing data from the World Values Survey indicates that intergenerational value change is quite real and measurable, and works in conjunction with socio-cultural, or civilizational, differences in to shape group attitudes. This provides cross-national, time-series, data-driven leverage for several research agendas within a constructivist IR approach. Among these are implications for understanding the value-laden side of democratization and democratic consolidation, the normative element of the democratic peace dynamic, formation and evolution of international regimes, civilizational divisions related to conflict, and intra-national value changes in leadership cohorts. People are shaped by their formative experiences; the World Values Survey provides a more nuanced means of measuring these processes and their outcomes. Accordingly, applying a generational distinction to IR theorizing allows us to understand the shift in international politics away from a survival-oriented state-power political environment toward a more socially-constituted understanding of international relations.