EXPLAINING EUROPEAN VALUE PATTERNS: PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

The European Values Study (EVS) started as an applied social science project that aimed at providing valid and reliable information about the value patterns of Europeans. Later on the focus of the European Value Systems Study Group (EVSSG) changed from solving social problems to solving social-scientific ones and from descriptions and interpretations to explanations. As a result of the applied social science origin of EVS it for a long suffered from a theoretical deficit. This article addresses the question of whether we can make up the theoretical deficit of EVS and, if so, how.