No abstract

What explains the backlash against the liberal international order? Are its causes economic or cultural? We argue that while cultural values are central to understanding the backlash, those values are, in part, endogenous and shaped by long-run economic change. Using an original survey of the British population, we show that individuals living in regions where the local labor market was more substantially affected by imports from China have significantly more authoritarian values and that this relationship is driven by the effect of economic change on authoritarian aggression. This result is consistent with a frustration-aggression mechanism by which large economic shocks hinder individuals’ expected attainment of their goals. This study provides a theoretical mechanism that helps to account for the opinions and behaviors of Leave voters in the 2016 UK referendum who in seeking the authoritarian values of order and conformity desired to reduce immigration and “take back control” of policymaking.

How do domestic and global factors shape governments’ capacity to issue debt in primary capital markets? Consistent with the ‘democratic advantage’, we identify domestic institutional mechanisms, including executive constraints and policy transparency, that facilitate debt issuance rather than electoral events. Most importantly, we argue that the democratic advantage is contingent: investors’ attention to domestic politics varies with conditions in global capital markets. When global financial liquidity is low, investors are risk-averse, and political risk constrains governments’ capacity to borrow. But when global markets are flush, investors are risk-tolerant and less sensitive to political risk. We support our argument with new data on 245,000 government bond issues in primary capital markets – the point at which governments’ costs of market access matter most – for 131 sovereign issuers (1990–2016). In doing so, we highlight the role of systemic factors, which are under-appreciated in much ‘open economy politics’ research, in determining access to capital markets.

Why does the contemporary backlash against globalization in the United States have such a substantial authoritarian character? We argue that sustained economic decline has a negative effect on the social identity of historically dominant groups. These losses lead individuals to be more likely to want to enforce social norm conformity—that is, adopt more authoritarian values—as a way to preserve social status and this effect is greater the larger the size of other groups in the population. Central to our account is the expectation of an interactive effect of local economic and demographic conditions in forging value responses to economic decline. The article evaluates this argument using an original 2017 representative survey in the United States. We find that individuals living in relatively diverse regions facing more intense competition from Chinese imports have more authoritarian values. We further find that the greater effect of globalization-induced labor market decline in more diverse areas is also evident for vote choice in the 2016 Presidential election.