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What Is Different Is Dangerous 219

strongly uncertainty- avoiding, collectivist countries, rules are often implicit
and rooted in tradition (high-context communication). The latter is clearly
the case in Japan, and it represents a bone of contention in the negotiations
between Western countries and Japan about the opening of Japanese mar-
kets for Western products. The Japanese rightly argue that there are no
formal rules preventing the foreign products from being brought in, but
the Western would-be importers run up against the many implicit rules of
the Japanese distribution system, which they do not understand.
The implications of uncertainty avoidance for the relationship between
authorities and citizens differ from those of power distance, as described in
Chapter 3. In high-PDI countries authorities have more unchecked power,
status, and material rewards than in low-PDI countries. In high-UAI
countries authorities are deemed to have more expertise than in low-UAI
countries. The inequality in this latter case is not in the power but in the
competence of authorities versus other citizens.
The term citizen competence was coined in a classic study by U.S. politi-
cal scientists Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba: they found that the com-
petence attributed to ordinary citizens versus authorities varied strongly
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among five countries in their research. In Culture’s Consequences it is
shown that Almond and Verba’s citizen competence measure correlates
strongly negatively with uncertainty avoidance: perceived competence is
higher in countries that scored lower on uncertainty avoidance.
In another study, citizens from strong uncertainty- avoidance countries

were less optimistic about their possibilities to influence decisions made
by authorities than were citizens of weak uncertainty avoidance societ-
ies. Few citizens in high-UAI countries were prepared to protest against
decisions by the authorities, and if they did protest, their means of doing
so were relatively conventional, such as through petitions and demonstra-

tions. With regard to more extreme protest actions such as boycotts and
sit-ins, most citizens in high-UAI countries thought these actions should

be firmly repressed by the government. 50
Citizens from weak uncertainty- avoidance countries believed that they
could participate in political decisions at the lowest, local level. More than
in strong uncertainty- avoidance countries, they were prepared to protest
against government decisions, and they sympathized with strong and
unconventional protest actions if the milder actions did not help. They did
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not think the government should repress such protests. Eurobarometer
data from 2007 showed that young Europeans from nineteen prosperous
countries were more likely to have signed a petition if their country’s UAI