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Abstract
Recent electoral successes for candidates with anti-globalization platforms highlight the need to understand globalization’s effects on voting behavior. To understand how globalization affects whether people vote, we posit that it is necessary to consider both globalization’s distributional effects on individuals and individuals’ beliefs about the general view of globalization among their fellow citizens. Drawing on research about the intrinsic value of voting, we argue that the losers of globalization are less likely to vote relative to the winners. However, losers who believe that others also think globalization is a negative force exhibit a higher likelihood of voting. Winners are also more likely to vote when they perceive their compatriots share their positive view of globalization. Both winners and losers who believe that they hold a view inconsistent with the broader public are less likely to vote. We test our hypotheses using an original survey of Americans. In support of our hypotheses, respondent beliefs about majority opinion (or, as a robustness check, the sociotropic effects of trade) significantly reduce the gap between winners and losers in intention to vote. Our results are replicated using a 2016 Pew survey.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Lisa Lechner and Tabea Palmtag for their insightful comments. Participants at the 2017 American Political Science Association, 2018 International Political Economy Society, 2019 International Studies Association, and BYU Global Politics Lab working group provided tremendous feedback. Funding was received from Brigham Young University and Fordham University. All errors are our own.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The results from this original Qualtrics survey additionally replicate findings from an M-Turk pilot with 455 respondents. Results from the pilot survey are shown in Appendix A.
2 For example, research has emphasized the distinct influence of globalization’s sociotropic and egotropic effects on attitudes towards globalization (Colantone & Stanig, Citation2018; Fordham & Kleinberg, Citation2012; Mansfield & Mutz, Citation2009; Schaffer & Spilker, Citation2014).
3 Campbell et al. define political efficacy as “the feeling that individual political action does have, or can have, an impact upon the political process, i.e., that it is worthwhile to perform one's civic duties” (Citation1954, p. 187).
4 We acknowledge that it is theoretically possible that grievance could increase the intrinsic value to deciding and casting a vote, because losers could receive a higher psychological payoff from a feeling that that they are expressing their demands and taking action (Radcliff, Citation1992; Schlozman & Verba, Citation1979). However, we think that globalization-induced grievances are less likely to produce this effect for the reasons given above.
5 For example, the United States, under both parties, pursued common liberal economic policies for seven decades, such as creating and upholding the Bretton Woods institutions and signing preferential trade agreements. Importantly, as we explain in our argument, this liberal order and policies are now “under attack by leading political candidates;” changing the national policy debate (Kagan & Daalder, Citation2016).
6 This argument does not require an expectation that the preferred electoral outcome will prevail (although that may accompany a belief that fellow citizens think like them and would also increase the intrinsic value of participation). Indeed, the electoral victories for Donald Trump and the Brexit “Leave” campaign were seen as unexpected in 2016. Furthermore, this differs from a strategic or instrumental motivation for voting, as those explanations would show an increase in voting for a close election, but the incentive to turnout would fall as the probability of winning passes a bare majority threshold.
7 In order to ensure respondents had a clear sense and definition of trade or multinational corporations when answering these questions, we provided neutrally worded information on MNC operations or trade flows to two different randomly selected groups. A third group received no information on globalization. We designed the vignettes to prime respondents to think about globalization without challenging or manipulating any particular view of globalization. The specific wording of the MNC and trade vignettes are available in Appendix E.1.
8 Because the personal and contextual globalization variables are not randomly distributed, we check whether beliefs about the effects of globalization on individual welfare or the contextual globalization variable are confounded by other individual-level covariates by analyzing models that interact globalization variables with the controls variables as well as with each other (see Appendix B, Table B.5 for a test of interactive confounds for the personal globalization variable and Table B.6 for a test of interactive confounds for “Majority Opinion on Globalization”). Taken together, the results for the interaction of the globalization variables across for these various models support the findings in the manuscript. While these robustness checks do not definitively address the inherently non-random distribution of these two attitudes, they provide empirical support that the relationship reported in the results section is not due to confounding variables. We thank an anonymous reviewer for calling our attention to the need for such a test.
9 Research on voter turnout has long debated the role of egotropic and sociotropic economic concerns on the likelihood of voting (Killian et al., Citation2008; Kinder & Kiewiet, Citation1979; Lau & Sears, Citation1981; Lockerbie, Citation2006). International political economy models also explore egotropic and sociotropic beliefs, but have focused on explaining preferences for globalization, not political behavior. For example, Mansfield and Mutz (Citation2009) highlight that trade attitudes are actually shaped greatly by sociotropic views. Colantone and Stanig (Citation2018) further find that local sociotropism accounts for individuals’ preferences to vote “Leave” or “Remain” in the 2016 Brexit vote in the United Kingdom.
10 While survey respondents are known to over-report voting due to social desirability bias, reported voting or intention to vote is still a common measure in studies of turnout (Gerber & Rogers, Citation2009). We also expect that such bias is constant across attitudes about the personal effects or majority opinion of globalization; globalization’s losers are not expected to over-report to a greater extent than winners.
11 Appendix Table D.4 controls for institutional constraints using macro-level turnout data.
12 We are unaware of any existing survey data that asks specifically about the respondent’s view of the majority opinion on globalization, so we rely on the proxy measure.
13 The findings are robust in models with alternate measures of partisanship or models that include controls for race (Fraga, Citation2018) or attitudes towards immigration and diversity. See Appendix C.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Celeste Beesley
Celeste Beesley is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Brigham Young University. Her research analyzes how international economic interdependence and individual attitudes about globalization influence the broader political environment.
Ida Bastiaens
Ida Bastiaens is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Fordham University. Her research analyzes questions on the political determinants of and public preferences for economic integration as well as the impact of such integration on fiscal and social welfare.