Rights, democracy and values: A comparison between the representations of obedience and disobedience in Italian and Finnish students

The aim of the present research is to investigate whether different representations of obedience and disobedience influence the support for democratic values and rights, accounting for contextual differences in post-materialistic values. A comparative study was conducted on two groups of Finnish and Italian undergraduate students. Results showed that obedience and disobedience were organized in similar and comparable semantic structures in the two countries. A latent class analysis highlighted that the links among the semantic structures differed slightly between the two countries: three groups (named anomic, responsible and submissive) were found to have the same representations of obedience and disobedience in both countries, while a fourth group (rebel) was only identified in Italy. An analysis of variance supported the hypothesis that when disobedience is linked to social responsibility its link with support for democratic rights and values is stronger. On the contrary, representations in which obedience is pivotal and disobedience is connoted as transgression were more linked to authoritarian attitudes and materialistic values, results also showed that universal aspects were offset by contextual differences; in Finland smaller differences concerning democratic rights and responsibility were found among respondents sharing different representations of obedience and disobedience than in Italy.

► Common representations were found in Italy and Finland although values and history differences. ► Exploratory factor and latent class analysis were used to assign respondents to posterior categories. ► Students considering disobedience as right and duty felt personally responsible for democracy. ► Disobedience was more detached from personal responsibility (rebellion) in Italy than in Finland.