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This paper investigates political-economic backlash to economic globalization in industrialized polities. It analyzes data on the content of party platforms to develop measures of party support for, or opposition to, political-economic closure, anti-democratic nationalism, and xenophobia in all party platforms of 23 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries for all national elections between 1960 and 2003. These allow broader judgments of trends in autarky and autarchy than focusing on electoral success of particular extreme-right parties. Based on these measures, the paper quantitatively analyzes how international trade and capital openness and flows, and immigration flows, all influence the embrace or rejection of political-economic backlash among parties. The main explanatory finding is that immigration and capital flows and openness tend to increase marginally such backlash when national welfare compensation is very modest, but to reduce it when national compensation is generous, cushioning citizens from globalization's economic risks. This finding provides evidence that the current wave of globalization only marginally resembles the dark politics ending its nineteenth-century predecessor, and that welfare protection may help make the difference between political-economic backlash and liberalism in contemporary globalization.

We challenge recent findings by Abiad and Mody (2005) which suggest that financial liberalization has little to do with political variables. This analysis is at odds with some of the established literature, and only with difficulty comes to terms with the considerable cross-national variation in the pace, phasing, and extent of financial reforms over time. Using Abiad and Mody's own index of financial liberalization, but slightly unbundling and refining their measures of 'ideological affinity' and 'regime type', we examine what Abiad and Mody call the 'triggers' of liberalisation and the dynamics of the subsequent 'cumulative transformation'. We demonstrate the role of political variables in relation to initial liberalisation episodes, and as variables affecting the cumulative dynamics and sustainability of ongoing financial reform processes, including those which affect the acceptability and costs of liberalization. These factors include (i) shifts to - as opposed to levels in - Left government; (ii) the incidence of Left governments combined with low levels of democracy; (iii) international voter support for free markets; (iv) the extent of social safety nets; (v) the presence of multilateral and bilateral aid programs. Our empirical investigation confirms these factors as statistically significant determinants of financial liberalization, and reveal what Abiad and Mody identify as 'learning' to be a highly political process.

This paper examines how economic globalization affects work-place arrangements regulating working time in industrialized countries. Exposure to foreign direct investment and trade can have off-setting effects for work-place bargaining over standard hours and work-time flexibilization, and can be expected to more strongly spur the latter than the former given stronger employer support for and weaker employee opposition to flexible time management in open economies. The paper also considers, however, how works council or other work-place representation likely mediate which of globalization’s effects dominates the shaping of work-time. Based on enterprise-level panel data from the German Federal Labor Office, the analysis supports two major findings consistent with such expectations. First, globalization measured at the establishment or branch level – including total foreign direct investment (FDI), trade, and export orientation (share of foreign sales) – tends to have either no or weakly negative effects on total standard working hours, but to yield higher incidence of overtime, temporary and fixed-contract work. Second, works councils mediate these effects in ways that differ between standard hours and flexibilization. With respect to standard weekly hours, globalization measures tend to trigger more standard hours among firms without works councils, but fewer hours among firms with works councils. With respect to flexibilization, however, globalization tends to modestly spur incidence of temporary- or fixed-term contracts and overtime, and to do so more strongly where works councils are present than when they are not. These results suggest how economic openness can have important, uneven consequences for working time, and that firm-level institutional context can channel those consequences, highlighting an area of agency in responses to globalization.