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Abstract
This paper investigates the influence of education and citizens' assessments of the national economic, political, and societal situation on public opinion regarding globalisation in the five largest European Union member states. Using Eurobarometer survey data, it is demonstrated that largely, regardless of skill level differences, there is a widespread public malaise with the perceived negative contribution of globalisation on the national economic, political, and societal situation. In the light of these findings, implications are drawn.
EXTRACTO - Este documento investiga la influencia de la educación y la valoración de los ciudadanos sobre la economía nacional, situación política y social, de la opinión pública en materia de la globalización en los cinco más grandes países miembros de la Unión Europea. Usando la información de las investigaciones de Eurobarometer, se demuestra que en su inmensa mayoría, sin perjuicio de sus diferentes habilidades, existe un amplio sentimiento adverso público respecto a la contribución negativa que se percibe de la globalización sobre la situación política, económica y social nacional. A la luz de estos hallazgos, se sacan sus implicaciones.
Notes
1 Radical political parties—such as La Destra, Rifondazione Comunista, UKIP, BNP, PCF, FN, Izquierda Unida, Linkspartei/PDS, and Republikaner Partei—as well as factions within mainstream parties—PSOE, PP, The Conservative Party, Labour, SPD, UMP, PS, PD, and PDL—moreover instrumentalise these national characteristics to advocate an alternative to current globalisation.
2 For example, nations at different stages of economic development.
3 Except in Germany where the reverse is true, 30.2% versus 45.6%.
4 moreover confirms that public opinion on the perceived influence of globalisation on social well-being and the need to police globalisation is hardly different in 2008 compared to 2009 and 2010. There is no difference between public opinion on globalisation and general economic welfare in 2008 and the same in 2009 and 2010.
5 Respectively, 77%, 76%, 68%, and 55% of respondents in Italy, France, Spain, and Germany thought the Euro had a negative impact on the country's economy (FT-Harris, Citation2007).
6 As the UK has not adopted the Euro, the opinion of British respondents cannot be totally comparable to respondents whose nations have adopted the Euro. Nevertheless, British citizens are able to make inferences about whether the Euro would have positive or negative effects on their country, and take countries which have adopted the Euro as a point of reference.
7 That is to say, examine the unique contribution of independent variables to the explanation of the dependent variable, controlling for other variables. Maximising the explained variance in the regression analyses is subsidiary here.
8 The “do not know” response was retained in the dependent variable as it can help to capture the opinion of people who neither agree nor disagree with the statements—and not only those who have no opinion on the issues—in the absence of such an option in the response categories proposed to respondents. The fact that “do not know” responses represented around 18.3% of all responses seems to substantiate this. The regression results were very similar with or without integrating the “do not know” category.
9 The result of the Kayser–Meyer–Oklin test was 0.63, exceeding the recommended value of 0.5 and the Bartlett's test of Sphericity reached statistical significance (<0.01) which supported the use of factor analysis (Bartlett, Citation1954; Kaiser, Citation1974). The social well-being and general economic welfare scales, respectively α = 0.60 and 0.51, have a reasonable internal consistency. With short scales (for example scales with less than ten items), it is common to find quite low Cronbach's alpha values (Tabachnick & Fidell, Citation2001).
10 They range from (r =) 0.16 (social well-being) to −0.25 (general economic welfare) and include −0.19 (policing of globalisation).
11 The operationalisation of these dummy variables is subsumed in the appendix.
12 Residuals scatterplots and normal probability plots of the regression standardised residuals inter alia indicated that the regression assumptions of normality, linearity, and homoscedasticity have been met. There is also no collinearity within the data: VIF test values were all well below 10 and the tolerance statistics all well above 0.2.
13 More specifically, at least one of the coefficients for country direction is reaching statistical significance in all models.
14 The coefficient for “things are going neither in the right nor wrong direction in their country” is however relatively modest.
15 In view of the relative weakness of the coefficients for the occupation variable, this discontent also goes largely beyond occupational differences.
16 Regression results for the March–May 2008 period, that is to say a timeframe prior to the present recession, are moreover no different to the ones for 2009 and 2010.
17 Adding the interactions (education × country direction) has also not significantly increased the amount of variance explained by the models. The results of ANOVA tests were the following: F = 1.298, p > .05 (Model 1), F = 0.2585, p > .05 (Model 2), and F = 0.3235, p > .05 (Model 3). R2 results are relatively low but this is generally not unusual in individual level data analyses such as the present one. In the present research, maximising the explained variance is not an objective of the study and not directly relevant to the hypotheses. The focus of the research is in direct relation to previous research on the topic: the variables used provide continuity with previous research and hence enable us to compare the present results with previous findings. The incorporation of the interaction variables in the models has largely not affected the direction and strength of the individual education and country direction variables. This further confirms that these interaction variables have no impact on public support for (or opposition to) globalisation and therefore substantiates that there are widespread and entrenched economic and social concerns about globalisation among citizens.
18 This disquiet moreover largely predates the current recession.
19 Especially with partner emerging economies such as India, China, and Brazil which have a significant cost advantage.
20 A large majority of European citizens are thus in favour of a significant increase in customs tariffs for products and services imported from developing economies: respectively, 67%, 65%, 61%, 60%, and 45% of Spanish, French, German, Italian, and British citizens favour this option versus 27%, 21%, 33%, 34%, and 42% who oppose it (Ifop-AMDLE, Citation2011).
Additional information
Pierre P. Balestrini has widely published in the field of comparative European politics and more specifically on public attitudes towards socio-economic issues. Having worked for a number of years in academia, he now acts as a senior research consultant for organisations in the private and public sectors.