Abstract
This article reviews the cumulation of evidence from survey experiments in the field of international political economy (IPE) and discusses their strengths and weaknesses in explaining the backlash against globalization. I first review the advancements made by the most commonly used survey experiment design in IPE, namely the Globalization-as-Treatment design, in which scholars randomly assign information about different features of globalization and solicit respondents’ attitudes toward protectionism. Then I discuss three issues with this design in addressing key puzzles in the emergence of globalization backlash: ( a) using a coarse informational treatment that stacks the deck against the economic self-interest hypothesis; ( b) overattributing globalization as a source of hardship; and ( c) neglecting heterogeneous room-to-maneuver beliefs across and within countries. The article suggests alternative designs and strategies to study these questions. Evidence from survey experiments suggests that much of the globalization backlash we witness today is deeply rooted in domestic politics.
Highlights
The durable commitment to an open economy that characterized the post–World War II order is no longer assured
To preview the findings, emerging evidence from survey experiments reviewed below suggests that much of the globalization backlash we witness today is deeply rooted in domestic politics
This article has reviewed the cumulation of evidence from survey experiments in the field of international political economy (IPE) and discussed their strengths and weaknesses in explaining the backlash against globalization
Summary
The durable commitment to an open economy that characterized the post–World War II order is no longer assured. Hainmueller & Hiscox (2010) use this design to test whether and to what extent concerns about labor market competition and the fiscal burden on natives drive immigration attitudes in the United States Their survey experiment randomly assigns two versions of the outcome question on opinion on immigration, in which the questions vary only in the skill level of the described immigrants (emphasis original): “Do you agree or disagree that the U.S should allow more highly skilled (low-skilled) immigrants from other countries to come and live here?” An economic model of factor proportions, which predicts that wages of low-skilled natives should fall with the entry of low-skilled immigrants (the same holds for high-skilled natives facing high-skilled immigrants), guides the design of these treatments (Borjas 1999). The only finding that lends support to the material interest hypothesis is that low-skilled respondents oppose low-skilled immigrants in high-fiscal-exposure states, which suggests that natives’ concerns about competition over public and welfare service provisions affect attitudes Another variant of this inquiry into economic self-interest is to randomly give respondents information about who benefits and loses from globalization that is essentially a summary of a well-established economic model.
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