Scholars and policy makers have for centuries constructed and used developmental hierarchies to characterize different countries. The hypotheses motivating this paper are that such social constructions have been circulated internationally, are constructed similarly in various countries, and follow the social constructions of elite international organizations, such as the United Nations. This paper uses data from fifteen surveys in thirteen diverse countries to study how developmental hierarchies are understood in everyday life. Our research shows that most people have constructions of developmental hierarchies that are similar across countries and are similar to the developmental hierarchies constructed by the United Nations. These findings suggest that developmental hierarchies are widely understood around the world and are widely available to ordinary people as they make decisions about many aspects of life.

We examine how ordinary citizens in Bulgaria view the developmental levels of European countries and certain states outside of Europe. Our research is motivated by the understanding that scholars and policy makers have for centuries used developmental hierarchies to characterize countries and that this perception of differential development has shaped interactions among different groups, countries and regions. We expect that views of such developmental hierarchies and models have great potential for influencing demographic and family behavior and political and cultural identities of ordinary people. Using data from a 2009 survey in Bulgaria we document that developmental hierarchies are widely perceived in Bulgaria, but are distributed differentially by age, education, and degree of urbanization. We also consider internal mechanisms underlying this hierarchical understanding of development and how hierarchical understandings may be related to national identities.

1This paper analyzes the structural and discursive context in which Hungary is becoming a low fertility emigrant country during the refolding of the Hungarian society into the direct competitive mechanisms of global capitalism. These changes include the increasing demand for labor within the internally open European Union and other longer-term local developments which have uprooted and continue to uproot a large number of people in Hungarian and East European societies. Following the logic of structure versus discourse interplay in a global and local context, we first carry out a historical structural analysis of the key demographic processes. Then, policies and institutionalized norms are reviewed. Finally, we analyze the radicalization of wider and popular political discourses in order to complete a complex and dynamic analysis of Hungarian demographic nationalism and panic in the second decade of the Millennium.