Mass Media and the Domestic Politics of Globalization

Abstract

Much is known about the domestic politics of globalization but political scientists have largely ignored one critical link between the international economy and most individuals around the world: the mass media. Considering the likely effects of mass media on public perceptions of responsibility, this article develops a simple model of the effects of mass media on individuals’ blame attributions and propensities to mobilize around the distributive conflicts of economic globalization. These effects of mass media on perception and mobilization alter the incentives of a national policymaker’s choice either to compensate or neglect domestic groups harmed by globalization. Individual-level implications of the theory are tested on survey data from France in 1992-1993 and state-level implications are tested on data from most countries around the world from 1960 to 2010. The evidence shows that mass media demobilize groups harmed by globalization, leading to weakened welfare-state responsiveness.

Keywords: media, mass media, globalization, welfare