Does Globalization Increase Economic Insecurity?
Abstract: Many political economists hold tenaciously to the claim that welfare states are needed to make globalization palatable because international openness breeds mass economic insecurity. However, whereas international openness is coupled with large welfare states in the developed countries, this "compromise of embedded liberalism" appears to have not reached the developing ones. I argue that the foundations of the scholarly commitment to embedded liberalism derive from an apprehensive view of globalization that many Third World citizens simply do not share. Using economic and survey data from Latin America, I demonstrate that globalization does not foment mass insecurity. Much to the contrary, globalization is far more likely to enhance economic security than to reduce it
The Sources and Dynamics of Partisanship in a New Democracy (with Anand E. Sokhey, Barry Ames, and Lucio R. Renno)
Abstract: Using an original, six-wave panel survey conducted in two cities, we find that 1) mass partisanship in Brazil shares important similarities with mass partisan identification in developed countries, and 2) that for many citizens, such identification is a social identity. Our findings are surprising given the relative newness of Brazil's party system, dovetailing with some aspects of the literature while challenging others. In particular, we find substantial stability in party identification (independence), yet evidence that short-term factors such as political evaluations and shifts in social networks shape these identities.
Are Democracies Cheaper? Regime Type, Electoral System, and Consumer Price Levels (with David S. Brown and Stefan Wojcik)
Abstract: According to various theoretical strains, democracy should shift power from the concentrated interests of organized rentier groups to the more diffuse interests of the broader population. If true, then democracies should favor consumers over producers. We demonstrate that this relationship holds across 154 countries and 48 years. On average, democratization leads to lower overall consumer prices as well as a decrease in the ratio of consumer prices to prices on capital equipment.
Racial Prejudice and Paternalism in Mass Support for Foreign Aid (with Jennifer L. Fitzgerald)
Abstract: Many proponents of foreign aid blame the alleged shortfall in Western funding on racial resentment and, in particular, the widely held mass belief that the non-white, foreign recipients of aid are by nature undeserving or unable to use it effectively. In contrast, aid skeptics claim that donor commitments are driven by widespread racial paternalism, whereby recipients are seen as unable to develop without the assistance of white, Western providers. These contradictory charges raise an important unanswered question about the motivations behind mass attitudes toward development aid in donor countries: Does prejudice, of either variety, shape the way people reason about foreign aid, and might racial paternalism shape attitudes toward foreign aid more than it does attitudes about domestic anti-poverty programs? Scholarship in behavioral economics, mass political psychology, the sociology of race, and psychology has produced no evidence regarding the directional impact, if any, of prejudice on mass attitudes toward government assistance for impoverished foreigners. More generally, the aid skeptics’ assertion that racism may manifest itself as paternalism, rather than sheer resentment, has been largely overlooked by scholars of mass prejudice. We find that racial paternalism shapes Americans’ attitudes toward foreign aid, thus making them more supportive of aid to poor black Africans than to poor white Eastern Europeans.
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