Fact, Fiction, or Fragile: The Globalization and Populism Hypothesis

Abstract

A dominant claim in political science is that globalization in advanced democracies is the culprit for the rise in populism and far right nationalism. The hypothesis has been tested dozens of times in economics and political science and with the many rigorous methodological approaches. But as advanced as the models are there are plenty that do not account for issues like worker selection into trade-exposed industries or exogenous political environments like the terrorism atmosphere of the 2010s and the creeping threat of Russia into Eastern Europe. Moreover, many of the studies confuse core concepts like populism and far right nationalism, which usually interferes with how the primary dependent variable is measured in empirical studies. I take these issues in mind and design a series of research papers that alternatively test the globalization and populism hypothesis. I study (1) voting just before and after the global financial crisis of 2008 when there was no threat of terrorism or Russian aggression, (2) decentralization and populism after 2008 but before 2013, and (3) populism, nationalism, and immigration preferences after defining “populism” in a more suitable fashion. I find overwhelmingly that globalization and populism have a fragile relationship at best and a fictional relationship at worst.