The Psychocultural Fracture of the Western Civilization

Federico R. León

Published: 2026/03/01

Abstract

Is the West a community of shared values? In particular, this study examines whether the populations of the nine ex-Communist Catholic countries along the eastern border of the West, from Estonia to Croatia, presently share the values and individualism characteristic of the West. A related question arises from the fact that Mediterranean Western countries (Italy, Spain, and Portugal) are situated outside the West’s ecological niche. Using data from samples across multiple nations, the study shows that the former communist countries of the West, together with the Mediterranean Western countries and Ireland, are fractured from the core West in terms of freedom, responsibility, emancipative values, and/or individualism. The core West is identified as comprising Protestant populations along with those of Austria, Canada, France, and Luxembourg, all of which maximize Western values and individualism and differ in this regard from geographically and psycho-culturally peripheral Western countries. The findings indicate that this fracture is attributable partly to religion and partly to political systems or ecology. Although Germanic ethnicity remains a possible source of the core West, this explanation was not confirmed in regression analyses. Further research is needed to examine the relationships among ethnicity, religion, political history, and ecology in Western countries and their regions in order to better understand the observed fracture in values and individualism.

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