Page 148 - Cultures and Organizations

I, We, and They 127

mostly wasted. Even the most powerful foreign state cannot brainwash
entire populations out of their deeply held values.
A main issue in international politics is national governments’ respect
for human rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted
by the United Nations in 1948. Charles Humana, a former researcher for
Amnesty International, calculated human rights ratings for a large num-
ber of countries on the basis of forty questions derived from UN criteria.

Across fifty-two countries from the IBM set, Humana’s human rights rat-
ings correlated primarily with gross national income (GNI) per capita,
which explained 50 percent of the differences; adding culture scores did
not improve the explanation. The picture changed when we looked sepa-

rately at the twenty-five wealthier countries: now the single explaining
variable, accounting for 53 percent of the differences in human rights rat-
ings, became IDV. For the remaining twenty-seven poorer countries, GNI
per capita remained the single explaining variable, but it now accounted
53
for only 14 percent of the differences. Our conclusion from these relation-
ships is that respect for human rights as formulated by the United Nations
is a luxury that wealthy countries can afford more easily than poor ones;
to what extent these wealthy countries do conform to UN criteria, how-
ever, depends on the degree of individualism in the culture. The Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and other UN covenants were inspired by
the values of the dominant powers at the time of their adoption, and these
were individualistic.

Individualism, Collectivism, and Ideas

Individualist societies not only practice individualism but also consider
it superior to other forms of mental software. Most Americans feel that
individualism is good and that it is at the root of their country’s greatness.

On the other hand, the late chairman Mao Zedong of China identifi ed
individualism as evil. He found individualism and liberalism responsible for

selfishness and aversion to discipline; they led people to placing personal
interests above those of the group or simply to devoting too much attention
to their own things. In Table 4.1 the places with a predominantly Chinese
population all score very low on IDV (Hong Kong 25, mainland China 20,
Singapore 20, Taiwan 17).