Winners and losers of globalization in Europe: attitudes and ideologies

Abstract

Globalization pressures result in a new ideological conflict among Europeans. We use detailed items from the Eurobarometer survey on issues of immigration and European integration that measure the ideological perspective underpinning positions toward the EU. This provides a fine-grained analysis of the ideologies underlying the poles of the new globalization-centered conflict line, which we define as cosmopolitan and communitarian. Our results show that, next to socio-demographic characteristics, subjective measurements have a considerable additional power in explaining the divide among Europeans along the communitarian–cosmopolitan dimension. Subjective deprivation, evaluation of globalization as a threat, and (sub)national and supranational identities play an important role in dividing Europeans into groups of winners and losers of globalization in both Western and Central and Eastern European countries. At the country level, the national degree of globalization is associated positively with the communitarian pole and negatively with the cosmopolitan pole in all EU countries.

How Denationalization Divides Elites and Citizens

“…43, Heft 4, August 2014, S. 258-271 2 The unidimensionality of this set of identification variables among elites sharply contrasts with the bidimensionality of these identification variables among the general population. Various studies have indeed shown that supranational identification is independent of national identification among the general population (e. g., Hanquinet & Savage 2012;Pichler 2009a;Teney et al 2013). Our results shed light on a further potential elite-mass gap related to the relationships between national and supranational identifications.…”

“…Our study can therefore push forward the debate on the rise of a new globalization cleavage: denationalization issues not only polarize public opinion into groups of losers and winners (Teney et al 2013) but also create a severe divide between the general population and elites. In line with the arguments of Schimmelfennig (2001) and Calhoun (2003), our results suggest that support for further opening up national borders can be considered part of the dominant ideology supported by the elites, who hold relatively uniform positive attitudes toward denationalization issues.…”

“…For instance, transnational practices are positively associated with support for European integration (Kuhn 2011), global governance (Mau et al 2008), or favorable attitudes toward immigrants (Mau et al 2008). In addition, supranational identification has been shown to be positively related to support for European integration (Fligstein 2008;Teney et al 2013) and to tolerance toward immigrants (Phillips 2002;Pichler 2009b;Pichler 2012;Teney et al 2013). These positive associations of transnational practices and supranational identity with the support for the opening up of national borders are likely to be present among elites as well.…”

“…Individuals holding a leading position in society are assumed to represent the ideal type of winners of globalization: they are highly likely to perceive globalization as an opportunity and thus support further integration into the global system. By contrast, individuals in insecure socio-economic positions are expected to think of globalization as putting their economic security at risk and thus to oppose the opening up of borders (Teney et al 2013). Such a new conflict line due to globalization pressures would lead to a larger salience of the elite-mass divide on denationalization issues.…”

The consequential Nationalist–Globalist policy divide in contemporary Britain: some initial analyses

“…Scholars are aware of the role of citizen differences on aspects of the Globalist divide on political choice. Van der Brug and Van Spanje (2009) and Teney, Lacewell, and De Wilde (2014) argue that the Globalist-Nationalist cleavage is a second and emergent dimension of political conflict in Europe. Kriesi et al (2008) and Azmanova (2011) see the potential for the Globalist-Nationalist conflict to supplant the left-right economic cleavage in European politics.…”