The Backlash against Globalization

In recent years, the world has seen a rising backlash against globalization. This article reviews the state of the art on the nature, causes, and consequences of the globalization backlash. It shows that contrary to a popular narrative, the globalization backlash is not associated with a large swing in public opinion against globalization, but rather a result of its politicization. The increasing influence of globalization-skeptic actors has resulted in more protectionist, isolationalist and nationalist policies, some of which fundamentally threaten core pillars of the contemporary international order. Both material and non-material causes drive the globalization backlash, and these causes coexist, interact, and mediate each other. The consequences are shaped by the responses of societal actors, national governments, and international policymakers. These responses can either yield to and reinforce, or push back against the globalization backlash. Understanding the dynamics this produces will be an important task for future research. I would like to thank Ryan Brutger, Lori Crasnic, Silvia Decadri, Giorgio Malet, Marco Martini, Tabea Palmtag, Valentin Lang and Rachel Wellhausen for helpful comments and the students in my “Understanding the antiglobalization backlash” seminar for inspiring discussions. Lisa Rogenmoser and Reto Mitteregger provided excellent research assistance. This paper has benefitted from funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme grant agreement No 817582 (ERC Consolidator Grant DISINTEGRATION). 1 Affolternstr. 56, 8050 Zurich, Switzerland


Introduction
In recent years, the world has seen a rising backlash against globalization. Growing protectionism, the dismantling of the WTO's Dispute Settlement system, or protests against international financial institutions such as the IMF are expressions of a backlash against economic globalization. Political globalization is also experiencing pushback as voters and politicians are criticizing the constraints international institutions place on national sovereignty. International organizations as diverse as the World Health Organization, the International Criminal Court, or the European Union have lost important member states, and initiatives for new international agreements have been hard to conclude. Finally, there is also growing backlash against social and cultural globalization, such as anti-immigrant backlash, anti-tourism protests, or a general concern about the loss of local cultures in a globalized word.
Not surprisingly, research on the globalization backlash is booming. This article reviews existing work on the globalization backlash broadly defined as a significant decrease in support for globalization. It starts with discussing the nature of the phenomenon: What exactly is the globalization backlash, what forms does it take, and what is new about it? This discussion shows that contrary to the popular narrative, the globalization backlash is not associated with a large swing in public opinion against globalization. Rather, existing preferences have been politicized and globalization skeptic actors have become more influential politically in recent years. This has resulted in more protectionist, isolationalist and nationalist policies, some of which fundamentally threaten core pillars of the contemporary international order.
The article next explores the causes of the globalization backlash. It argues that rather than debate about whether material versus non-material causes drive the backlash, it is more productive to explore how these factors coexist, interact, and mediate each other. This can be achieved by studying the relationship and the interplay between these causes, delving deeper into the role of hopes and expectations about what the "less globalized" counterfactual world would look like, and examining how political actors can strategically mobilize voters with globalization-skeptic attitudes into political action.
The final section turns to the consequences of the globalization backlash and examines the societal, policy and international-level responses to the backlash and the dynamics they bring about. I distinguish between responses that yield to and reinforce the backlash and those that push back against the backlash and try to mitigate its causes. The dynamics that unfold are complex, and assessing how these dynamics matter for the long-term consequences of the globalization backlash is a promising avenue for future research.

The globalization backlash: Exploring the phenomenon
What exactly is the nature of the globalization backlash? Surprisingly, the burgeoning literature on the phenomenon spends rather little time defining the phenomenon. Although most studies agree that Brexit, Trump and the success of populist nationalist parties are all manifestations of the backlash, the usage of this term varies widely, referring to phenomena ranging from individual support for protectionism, the electoral success of nationalist political parties, anti-globalization protests, to unilateral withdrawals from international institutions. I use the term "globalization backlash" broadly to denote a significant decrease in public, partisan, or policy support for globalization. This rather general conceptualization allows us to explore the backlash both with regard to the different dimensions of globalization -economic, political, and social/cultural globalization -and with regard to different relevant groups of actors: voters, political intermediaries, and governments. There is significant variation in the extent to which we can observe globalization backlash within and across these categories.
Moreover, considering the different dimensions of globalization is important, because they cannot always be clearly separated from each other: the dismantling of the WTO Dispute Settlement System, for example, pushes back against both economic and political globalization, just like the backlash against the European Court of Human Rights combines opposition to political and socio-cultural globalization. At the same time, however, backlashes against one dimension of globalization can go hand in hand with support for more globalization in other areas. The climate youth movement, for example, is often skeptical about economic globalization and the environmental costs associated with international trade, but is also pushing for more political globalization to facilitate a more effective and coordinated global fight against climate change. Others, such as market-liberal Brexiteers, oppose the constraints political globalization places on national sovereignty, but wholeheartedly embrace free trade.

A popular backlash against globalization?
An influential narratives holds that the globalization backlash is rooted in the mass public, where a growing share of losers of globalization increasingly lashes out against globalization This narrative invokes the image of major shifts in both public opinion directed against trade, international cooperation, and immigration and voting behavior. Up close, however, the picture of a large shift of public preferences is less clear than this narrative suggests. Studies that examine broad shifts in globalization-related public opinion over time are relatively rare and provide inconclusive evidence: Whereas some studies find a broad shift in public opinion against globalization, such as increasingly negative attitudes about international and supranational organizations (Bearce & Jolliff Scott 2019; Bølstad 2014), others show that attitudes towards globalization are surprisingly stable and sometimes even become more positive over time (Kiratli 2020;Mader et al. 2019;Nguyen & Spilker 2019). Figure 1 illustrates this inconclusive picture using average survey responses from 15 countries 2 at different levels of development across the world on globalization-related topics collected by the International Social Survey Project (ISSP) in 1995(ISSP) in , 2003(ISSP) in , and 2013. This data is useful because it asks the same questions repeatedly to representative population samples over a long period of time and therefore allows us to track change over time.
Despite considerable movement over time, there is no clear trend in the direction of a backlash. With regard to most dimensions, we see rising skepticism to some aspects of globalization, but not others. For example, although respondents have become more skeptical about the benefits of free trade, they have become less positive about limiting imports.
Likewise, although support for the right of international organizations to enforce solutions has decreased, it remains at high levels, and although concerns about immigration and support for more national content on TV have grown, these trends are not particularly pronounced.
There is also some interesting variation between more and less developed countries and between European and non-European countries, but no evidence that the globalization backlash -to the extent that it exists -is a developed-country or European phenomenon.
Rather, the public in developed countries has grown more skeptical especially with regard to socio-cultural globalization and to a lesser extent economic globalization, whereas in less developed and European countries, skepticism has significantly grown in particular with regard to political globalization. There is no clear backlash against economic globalization in any of these country groups.

Figure 1: Public opinion on different globalization-related issues, 1995-2013
Note: Mean responses to the different statements on a scale ranging from (1) strongly disagree to (5)  Overall, and despite this variation, this data provides little evidence for a large swing in public opinion against globalization. Although a considerable share of the mass public is skeptical of globalization, these assessments have been quite over the past two decades. Contrary to the prominent narrative, the "popular globalization backlash" thus does not seem to be caused by a major shift in public opinion.
What we can observe, however, is a clear backlash in political behavior. For one, there has significant civil society mobilization against globalization since the 1990s (e.g., Della Porta et al. 2015). This includes movements such as attac but also finds its expression in violent events Although voters' attitudes about globalization have not changed much, they increasingly vote for candidates, parties, or proposals that oppose globalization. What explains this apparent paradox? An important part of the answer is the increasing politicization of issues related to globalization. A growing body of research shows that the mass public has become increasingly aware of and polarized on these issues, and that these issues have become much more salient and contested in recent years (De Vries 2018;De Wilde 2011;Hutter et al. 2016;Zürn et al. 2012). While the underlying causes for this change are complex, as I will discuss below, once activated, anti-globalization attitudes can turn into powerful heuristics and identities (Grynberg et al. 2019;Hobolt et al. 2020), so that some authors even speak of a new cleavage between globalization winners and losers (Bornschier 2017;Kriesi et al. 2008

Political Parties: Politicizing the globalization backlash
To understand this increasing contestation and politicization of globalization-related issues, we need to look at the supply side of politics. In recent years, parties offering policy programs for those dissatisfied with globalization have flourished. (Bornschier 2017). As a second axis of party competition has emerged, that has profoundly reshaped party politics in the past decades (Hooghe & Marks 2018;Kriesi et al. 2006Kriesi et al. , 2008. Over time, European integration and globalization more generally have become more salient issues in this discourse (Hooghe & Marks 2009). At the same time, the tone of the debate has become more negative over time   By emphasizing issues such as immigration, national sovereignty or European integration as core components of their party programs, they have given voters who have always been opposed to globalization the opportunity to actually express this opposition at the ballot box.
This has allowed these parties to successfully challenge established parties and has been a core factor for their success. In recent years, globalization-skeptic parties and politicians increasingly participate in government (Mudde 2013).   Figure 3b shows that in some areas, such as the international investment regime, the backlash is particularly pronounced. The number of signed international investment agreements (IIAs) has decreased since the mid-1990s, whereas the number of IIA terminations has strongly increased in recent years (UNCTAD 2020; see also Peinhardt & Wellhausen 2016). In 2017 and 2019, the number of terminated agreements exceeded the number of newly signed agreements.
Rather than an across-the-board globalization backlash in policies, however, Figure 3 suggests that overall, de jure globalization has been stagnating at high levels or growing at a lower rate for some time. So far, in terms of policies, we have overall largely seen a slowdown, rather than a backlash, in globalization that came after a period of accelerated globalization in the 1990s. Notably, the policy slowdown started long before the more recent electoral successes of populist parties and politicians and likely represents a response to more structural developments, such as geopolitical change, changes in global production regimes, the increasing transfer of authority from nation states to international institutions, and more generally diminishing returns from further globalization (e.g., Constantinescu et al. 2020; Stephen & Zürn 2019). These developments seem have dampened enthusiasm for more liberalization across the world.
Two trends are new, however, and suggest that the road ahead may be more bumpy than this analysis suggests. For one, whereas unilateral withdrawals from or even the decay and dissolution of international organizations are nothing new (e.g., Eilstrup-Sangiovanni 2020; Gray 2018; von Borzyskowski & Vabulas 2019), in recent years there has been an growing backlash against major international organizations such as the WTO, the EU, the ICC, or the Paris Climate Agreement. The backlash thus increasingly targets the core institutions that underpin the architecture of the contemporary world order that allowed globalization to emerge in the first place. Moreover, whereas challenges to international institutions originate in countries across the world, more recently some of the principal drivers of the globalization backlash increasingly come from the erstwhile pillars of that order such as the United States and the United Kingdom. Figure 3c shows, for example, that the US has withdrawn from international agreements at a very high rate during the Trump presidency (Cooley & Nexon 2020). As central nodes in global economic networks, these countries have the potential to "weaponise" interdependence, which in turn creates incentives for other countries to retreat from these networks (Farrell & Newman 2019). These developments suggest that the current  (Rogowski 1989), facilitates inequality (Ha 2012;Lang & Tavares 2018;Menendez et al. 2017) and produces grievances (Palmtag et al. 2018;Rudra 2008) in both developed and developing countries, and these studies suggest that increasingly, this is met with a backlash reaction.
Despite this strong evidence that globalization-related regional developments are associated with backlashes against globalization, it remains contested whether globalization itself is the main driver of the globalization backlash, however. Other socio-economic transformations are equally -or perhaps even more -consequential in fostering backlash. For example, several studies find that support for radical right parties and nationalist projects such as Brexit is driven by exposure to automation and the digital revolution (Colantone & Stanig 2019;Frey et al. 2018;Im et al. 2019). In fact, the IMF (2019) concludes in a recent study that the effects of technology on local labor markets are much more pervasive and long-lasting than trade shocks. These trends have been augmented by a decline in corporate, income and wealth taxes fostered by financial globalization, that have not only contributed to a rise in inequality but has also restricted the state's ability to compensate the losers of these processes (Rodrik 2018). Taken together, these major economic transformations have together increased regional disparities and socio-economic inequality, which in turn have provided a breeding ground for backlash (Ansell &

Material or non-material causes?
A second major debate is more fundamental and revolves around the question whether the globalization backlash is predominantly driven by material or non-material concerns (for Naoi 2020). The background to this debate is the fact that individual-level research is far less conclusive about the importance of economic transformations in driving the globalization backlash than the regional-level analyses suggest.
One group of scholars argues that the globalization backlash is driven by material concerns of globalization losers. Several studies document that individuals who are more exposed to objective globalization risks are more supportive of protectionist and anti-immigrant policies (e.g., Dancygier & Donnelly 2013; Owen & Johnston 2016). Another robust finding is that lowskilled individuals, who face the highest globalization-related labor market risks, exhibit more globalization-skepticism (Bearce & Jolliff Scott 2019; Margalit 2012). However, the evidence that those directly hurt by globalization are more likely to vote for anti-globalization parties or proposals is mixed. For example, voters most exposed to negative offshoring risks are not more likely to vote for populist-right parties than low-skilled voters more generally . And in regions exposed to import competition, the unemployed or manual workers are not more likely to vote for nationalist and isolationist parties or projects such as

Going beyond the silos
Taken together, there is evidence for both material and non-material causes of the globalization backlash. Trying to adjudicate between both approaches is not the most fruitful endeavor, however. For one, there are methodological issues: Whereas identity, values, beliefs and subjective concerns are measured rather precisely on the individual level, identifying individuals' objective, respondent-specific material interest is much more difficult (Malhotra et al. 2013;Naoi 2020;Owen & Walter 2017). This coarse measurement of selfinterest makes it hard to adjudicate between the different approaches in a balanced manner.
It is also more promising to study how material and non-material causes relate, how they interact, and under which circumstances and for whom certain causes matter more than others. Researchers have begun to address these questions from three angles: Brexit referendum not only saw Brexit as an opportunity to limit political and socio-cultural globalization (especially immigration), but also as an opportunity to achieve greater economic globalization, especially more trade openness (Hobolt 2016;Owen & Walter 2017). A third approach examines when and how previously low-salience issues related to globalization turn into a noticeable globalization backlash (De Vries et al. 2021). It shows that political elites can strategically mobilize voters with globalization-skeptic attitudes by using anti-globalization messages (Naoi & Urata 2013;Vries & Edwards 2009). The effectiveness of elite cues on public opinion about international issues varies across issues (Guisinger & Saunders 2017) and the tone of the message (Dellmuth & Tallberg 2020). Media coverage that overemphasizes the costs of globalization can also induce backlash (Brutger & Strezhnev 2017). But politicization is also driven by external factors such as crises (Hutter & Kriesi 2019), or a changing decision-making context (Hooghe & Marks 2009;Zürn et al. 2012). And politicization can also create support for globalization (Risse 2010), so that it is important to understand it's overall effect.
For a better understanding of the causes of the globalization backlash, it is also useful to recognize their endogenous nature. The backlash may trigger responses that reinforce or mitigate these causes, and our understanding how this in turn effects the dynamics of the globalization backlash over time is still limited. The next section sketches out some ideas in this regard.

Responses and Dynamics
Turning to the consequences of the globalization backlash, this section examines responses to the backlash at the societal, governmental, and international level, and the dynamics these responses produce. The aim of this section is to suggest a framework on how to think about these responses and dynamics, rather than a comprehensive review of all possible ways in which this can play out. It classifies responses based on two dimensions: the locus of action and the type of response (see table 1). The first dimension classifies responses based on whether they are predominantly located on the societal level (responses by voters, civil society organizations, or political parties), policy responses on the national level, or whether they are situated on the international level (government behavior in international negotiations and responses by international organizations). The second dimension distinguishes between responses that yield to and reinforce the backlash and responses that mitigate and push back against the globalization backlash.

Enhancing legitimacy of international institutions
This classification is of course a simplification. Responses can straddle and have feedback effects across these categories, and it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between responses and the backlash itself. But it provides a useful heuristic for analyzing the vast and varied responses to the globalization backlash. This section illustrates how the framework helps to systematically think about some of these responses and the dynamics and feedback effects they produce.

An ever growing globalization backlash? Reinforcing dynamics
There is some concern that the backlash against globalization may turn into a fundamental challenge for the contemporary international order. This becomes more likely when societal, policy, and international responses reinforce the anti-globalization backlash and its underlying grievances, creating self-perpetuating dynamics in the process. There are a number of ways how such dynamics may come about.
There Finally, there are also international-level responses to the globalization backlash. Confronted with globalization-skeptic publics at home, governments often tread more carefully in international negotiations and show higher levels of responsiveness to their constituents' interests (Hagemann et al. 2017;Schneider 2019Schneider , 2020. While such a response may help address globalization-skeptic publics at home, it does make decision-making on the international level more difficult (Hooghe & Marks 2009 (Blauberger et al. 2018), and the European Commission withdraws legislative proposals more frequently when faced with backlash (Reh et al. 2020). These responses are double-edged swords, however, as they may invite further opposition in the long term by compromising the input and output legitimacy of these institutions.

Pushing back against the globalization backlash
Although the backlash against globalization has received much attention, the descriptive analysis at the beginning of this article showed that large groups of people and political parties remain supportive of globalization. It is thus not surprising that there is considerable resistance against the globalization backlash. Some of this pushback directly counteracts gloablization-skeptic positions and policies, whereas other responses try to mitigate the backlash by addressing the grievances that underlie the backlash.
On the societal level, one of the starkest developments in recent years has been the emergence of vocal civil society organizations that counter-mobilize in support of international cooperation, against xenophobia, and for progressive values more generally (Roth 2018 On the domestic policy level, the most prominent debate about how to push back against the globalization backlash revolves around compensatiion for the losers of globalization and other economic transformation. The goal is to "re-embed" liberalism (Ruggie 1982) into society and to thus regain losers' support for sustained globalization by redistributing its welfare gains (Mansfield & Rudra 2021). This could occur through a general expansion of welfare policies, more or better regulation, or place-based policies, which might be better suited to mitigating globalization-related grievances associated with regional economic decline (Broz et al. 2021;Rodríguez-Pose 2018). Several studies suggest that social welfare or public employment programs that cushion the risks of globalization and reduce the inequality it produces can increase public support for economic openness (Hays et al. 2005 Swank & Betz 2003). Moreover, globalization losers strongly support redistributive policies (Walter 2010(Walter , 2017. Nonetheless, the compensation strategy faces challenges: for one, globalization winners are often unwilling to share their gains from globalization (Linardi & Rudra 2020; Walter 2017), which is only one reason why governments' room to implement sweeping reforms is constrained (Beramendi et al. 2015). Perhaps more importantly, the effectiveness of this strategy is unclear. The globalization backlash has not been limited to countries without a strong welfare state. Rather European countries with mature welfare states such as Denmark or Sweden have also seen highly successful radical right parties.
Although there is no strong backlash against economic globalization in these countries, they do experience strong backlash against political and socio-cultural globalization. This suggests that it may be hard to find a "quick compensation fix" that will address grievances on all globalization dimensions (Goodman & Pepinsky 2021 To what extent these attempts to mitigate or push back against the globalization backlash will ultimately be successful, and how they interact with those responses that reinforce the backlash, is an open question and an important and promising avenue for future research.

Conclusion
What is the backlash against globalization, and what are its causes and consequences? This review has examined the backlash across different dimensions and has made three main arguments. First, the globalization backlash manifests itself in electoral successes of globalization-skeptic parties, in a more negative tone in partisan discourse over globalization, and an increase in policies designed to stop or curtail economic, political and/or socio-cultural globalization. However, contrary to the popular narrative, the globalization backlash is not driven by a large swing in public opinion against globalization. Rather, existing antiglobalization attitudes have been politicized and become more politically consequential in the process. Second, this implies that it is not just important to understand why voters oppose globalization, but also when and how this opposition becomes activated and when it becomes politically salient. Our understanding of the causes of the globalization backlash can be improved by moving moving the debate from a focus on the relative importance of material vs. non-material causes of the backlash to one on the interplay of these causes and their importance for the politicization of globalization-related issues. Third, to understand the consequences of the globalization backlash, we should focus on the responses it generates and the feedback effects these responses produce. Such societal, domestic policy, and international-level responses can either yield to and reinforce the backlash, or push back against it and aim at mitigating its underlying causes. Understanding the dynamics this produces will be an important task for future research.
Although this review has focused on the backlash against globalization, it is vital to recognize that this backlash does not stand in isolation. Rather, it is occurring amidst other major developments, such as the populist backlash against elites, growing threats against liberal democracy, and geopolitical changes like the rise of China. How these challenges are causally linked with the globalization backlash, how they interact with it, whether they fuel or quell the dynamics surrounding it, and whether this will turn the backlash against globalization into a serious threat for the contemporary international order are important questions that future research should seek to answer.
4. Both material and non-material causes drive the globalization backlash and it is important to understand how these factors coexist, interact, and mediate each other. This can be achieved by studying the relationship and the interplay between these causes, delving deeper into the role of expectations about what the "less globalized" counterfactual world would look like, and examining how political actors strategically mobilize voters with globalization-skeptic attitudes into political action.
5. The consequences of the globalization backlash are shaped by the societal, policy and international-level responses to the backlash and the dynamics they bring about. Some responses yield to and reinforce the backlash, whereas others push back against the backlash and try to mitigate its causes.
6. The globalization backlash is occurring amidst other major challenges to the contemporary global order, such as the populist backlash against elites, growing threats against liberal democracy, and geopolitical changes like the rise of China.