The Liberal Idea of Nondiscrimination in Access to the Labor Market and Its Support by Citizens in 26 Countries Around the World

Abstract The notion that jobs should be awarded on applicants’ qualifications and not on the basis of gender, ethnicity, religion, or family background is a key component of modern liberal societies. Drawing on a novel public opinion survey covering 26 countries from all regions of the world, we analyze the degree to which citizens support the idea that job recruitment should be based on applicants’ qualifications. To understand the variation in citizens’ attitudes toward nondiscrimination, we derive our hypotheses from two broader sociological theories: world society theory and modernization theory. We find strong support for the idea of nondiscrimination in almost all countries surveyed, and at the same time significant variation across the 26 countries, with support being highest in Chile, Latvia, and Sweden and lowest in India, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Türkiye. Modernization theory as well as world society theory contribute to better understanding of citizens’ attitudes, albeit to different degrees and mediated through different channels. Citizens living in countries more deeply embedded in world society are more likely to support the principle of nondiscrimination. On the individual level, it turns out that people’s level of education and their general commitment to the norms of a global culture are associated with support for nondiscrimination. With regard to modernization theory, we find that a country’s level of modernization does not directly impact nondiscrimination attitudes, but many of the individual features derived from modernization theory do because individuals who are better educated and more secularized and those holding postmaterial values are more likely to support the nondiscrimination norm.