Public opinion regarding economic and cultural globalization: evidence from a cross-national survey

Empirical studies of public opinion regarding globalization have to date addressed only economic integration. By way of comparison, we know much less about public opinion regarding cultural globalization. In addition, there has been little head-to-head testing of alternative explanations for public opinions in these areas. I contrast four arguments: skills, partisanship, economic evaluations, and beliefs about the free market, consumerism, and modern life, which I test using survey information taken from 17 developed and developing countries from 2002. I find that values are a powerful and understudied explanation for variations in public opinion. Regardless of whether the question dealt with economic or cultural globalization, views about the free market, consumerism, and modern life had more explanatory power than evaluations of the economy or partisanship, and roughly the same explanatory powers as skill levels. These findings provide important insights into the sources of the globalization backlash and have important implications for how globalization should be both studied and theorized.