6: Globalization

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Our understanding of democratic backsliding would be incomplete without an exploration of the global context propelling discontent. Globalization was supposed to benefit developed and developing countries around the world. Instead globalization has been reviled (and loved) almost everywhere. In 2002, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz (2002) sought to explain in his book Globalization and Its Discontents why there was so much dissatisfaction with globalization in developing countries. Today globalization is facing a political, economic and cultural backlash even in developed countries.

With globalization, voters in developed countries face more uncertainty, social dislocation and economic duress, such as the loss of jobs and industries. The response to economic anxiety brought about by globalization is channelled in different ways (Voorheis et al, 2015; Duca and Saving, 2016; Grechyna, 2016). More importantly, these anxieties and the different responses to them has fostered polarization. Neither the left nor the right believes that globalization is being managed properly, but there is little common ground in terms of how to tackle this problem. Globalization generates a highly emotional response from voters, who have become more willing to vote for extreme candidates and parties that polarize the electorate. In consolidated Western democracies, globalization has fuelled waves of authoritarian populism.

Indeed, international economic factors create a ripe environment on which political entrepreneurs in authoritarian regimes can capitalize. The goal of this chapter is not to explain how globalization has caused autocratization in Western democracies. Instead, the chapter lays out how globalization has impacted polarization and apathy, creating a context that would-be autocrats can seize upon.

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