Values, culture and the economic integration of Latin America and North America: an empirical perspective on culturalist appr

With democratization and economic liberalization in Latin America, structural and amixture of structural and institutional explanations for problems related to economicgrowth, global competitiveness, and distribution of wealth no longer appear asconvincing as they did several decades ago. Attempts to deal with these issues incultural terms have assumed increasing importance (Armony and Lamy, 2000b).Culturalist approaches run the risk of exaggerating the degree of culturalhomogeneity. Especially when culturalists are using the vocabulary of civilizationdifferences as their model of cultural distinction. Differences between and withinregions and countries in Latin America are often ignored to reinforce that hypothesis.This paper presents an analysis of the 1995-1997 World Values Surveys. These datawere found to show more diversity than is usually acknowledged in culturalistapproaches to Latin American issues – for example, some Latin American countrieswere found to be closer to the U.S. on certain value dimensions than to other LatinAmerican countries. We discuss the implications of these findings.