Towards a Fractured Global Order? Deglobalization Dynamics and the Distributional Conflict between Globalists and Nationalists (DEGLOBALIZE)

Research question/goal: 

The early 21st century shows signs that the era of ever-increasing globalisation may be coming to an end, at least for the time being. Political movements advocating deglobalisation in economic, social, and political terms are gaining ground in many democracies and have already acquired positions of power in some of them. Understanding the underlying deglobalisation dynamics is an important task for the social sciences. 

This project will tackle this task with a microfoundational perspective on the distributional conflict between supporters and opponents of globalisation. Focusing on the voter–elite nexus, it will examine how voter demands for deglobalisation emerge, how they affect political elites in international policymaking, and how anti-globalist elites in power influence politics and voters. The core objective is a comprehensive understanding of the voter–elite interactions that can give rise to deglobalisation dynamics.

Both the project’s theoretical framework and its empirical strategy will break new ground by integrating macro- and micro-level approaches. Its theory will connect recent insights into the moral foundations of individuals’ political behaviour, highlighting the tension between universalist and communitarian values, with research in international political economy on the societal effects of external globalisation shocks. This theoretical synthesis generates new hypotheses about the deep-rooted sources of the clash between globalism and nationalism.

Empirically, the project pursues a combination of studying real-world natural experiments with designing targeted survey-based experimental approaches. With an empirical focus on the member states of the European Union (EU) and EU institutions, it will leverage local globalisation shocks related to outsourcing, migration, EU-level redistribution, and the election of anti-globalist politicians. Survey experiments will then target the affected regions to trace the individual-level mechanisms behind the observed deglobalisation dynamics.

Fact sheet

Duration: 
2024 to 2029
Status: 
planned
Data Sources: 
European Social Survey, Eurobarometer, German Internet Panel, other national household surveys, custom surveys, etc.
Geographic Space: 
European Union, EU institutions, EU member states

Publications