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In what seems to be a process of normalization or democratization of political protest, a shift appears to have taken place in the public that is willing to embrace political protest to further their political agendas, at least in Western Europe. After the upheaval of the 1960s and 70s, political protest was predominantly a vehicle of the young and of those wanting to change society along the lines of a progressive agenda. More recently, protest-proneness seems to have become spread more evenly over the population. Our analyses of developments in nine countries using data from the European Values Study for the period 1981-2017 show strong evidence for the growth of protest-proneness, loosening its ties with the young everywhere, but only in some countries with the political left. In all countries, protest proneness is higher in the ‘protest generation’ (born 1941-1955) than among people born before that period, but the differences compared with people born later fluctuate.

Following up on Loek Halman’s work on value change and stability, we investigate public opinion patterns between 1990 and 2017 in the Netherlands. While large-scale societal processes raise perceptions of severe value changes over time, prior research has shown that Dutch citizens generally rely on already existing values ingrained in Dutch society. Based on theories regarding fundamental differences between values, attitudes, and preferences, we propose different expectations regarding stability and change in public opinion. Based on regression analyses of European Values Study data (1990-2017), we find three main trends in the Dutch public opinion landscape: 1) conservatism and religiosity are declining, 2) preferences for government involvement grow, and 3) materialist values increasingly tend to be prioritized over post-materialist values. Given the revival of economic instability and the rise of cultural insecurity, we conclude that while circumstances change, people’s attitudinal reaction generally does not. With the addition of new waves, the European Values Study will continue to deepen our understanding of value development and its relation to changing environments.

This book on Reflections on European Values is a Liber Amicorum honouring Loek Halman’s contribution to the European Values Study. For years, he has been a key figure in this longitudinal and cross-national research project on moral, social, and political values, dedicating his academic life to advancing the understanding of values in Europe. This Liber Amicorum is published at the occasion of Loek’s retirement after a long career at the Department of Sociology at Tilburg University. It brings together essays on the study of European values, written by his academic friends. The 32 chapters in this volume are structured in five themes that reflect Loek’s scholarly interest. A first group of contributions presents theoretical and methodological reflections on the European Values Study. Second, essays on the sociology of religion reflect Loek’s interest in this topic. Third, comparative studies using the European Values Study are presented. The fourth part focuses on a case most well-known : the Netherlands. The fifth and final section further deepens the understanding of values in several specific countries in Europe. Upon his retirement, this book will serve as an inspiration for scholars who want to walk in Loek Halman's footsteps in continuing research on values in Europe.

Since the introduction of the ‘solidarity items’ in the European Values Study in 1999 and their subsequent analyses, it is a well-known fact in the field of welfare attitudes research that people differentiate in their solidarity towards vulnerable groups in their societies. The EVS items show that in all European countries, people are more solidaristic with elderly people and with people who are sick and disabled, than with unemployed people; solidarity with migrants is weakest. Although this solidarity rank-order is evident, less is known about the degree to which people make a difference between vulnerable groups at all. People who make less of a difference between various groups are less conditional in their solidarity, than people who make stronger differences. This chapter focuses on analyzing the degree of Dutch people’s solidarity conditionality over time (across three waves of the EVS: 1999, 2008, 2017), and on understanding its socio-structural and cultural determinants. We find that, as expected, conditionality was highest in 2008, corroborating the general idea that public solidarity is under strain in economically more critical time periods. Additionally, conditionality is higher among people who are more vulnerable economically, with less trust in society and its institutions, and with a more rightist political stance.

The article explores the relationship between becoming a grandmother and retiring in Italy. In contrast to the US and other countries in Europe, the two events do not overlap in Italy, and the former hardly influences the latter. Francesca Zanasi and Inge Sieben interpret the findings in relation to the familistic structure of Italy.

The paper investigates the consequences of grandmotherhood on retirement for Italian mid-life women born before 1949. It accounts for eventual differences in terms of work history, as the transition to retirement depends on the number of years worked, and the kind of job held. Using retrospective data from the ISTAT Multipurpose Survey Families and Social Subjects (2009), individual fixed-effects models show that there is only a weak relation between the birth of the first grandchild and retirement for Italian grandmothers, and no differences in term of work history. The authors argue that the result could originate from two parallel processes. On the one hand, mid-life women seem to retire before becoming grandmothers in Italy (as Kaplan-Meier survivor functions suggest). This could be due to the interplay of the postponement of fertility and availability of early retirement options: women became grandmothers late in life, and they have the possibility to retire early. On the other hand, Italy has a very low female labour force participation rate, and several young mothers are not employed due to the difficulty to reconcile work and family. In other words, young mothers do not need support by grandmothers with childcare, and therefore, grandmothers do not need to early retire so to be helpful with care duties toward grandchildren.