Introduction
We are living in an increasingly interconnected world, where capital, people, information, technology, culture, commodities, and services can move easily, rapidly, and massively across national boundaries. In the past two decades, not only have the size of the global economy and the economic ties between countries increased enormously,Footnote 1 many Western products ranging from food, clothes, films, music, and technology to architecture have become widespread. This is an age of globalization, although globalization is hardly a new historical phenomenon (Gills and Thompson, Reference Gills, Thompson, Gills and Thompson2006). The distinctiveness of contemporary globalization lies in the convergence of revolutionary technological advances and socioeconomic forces that have collapsed time and space, deterritorialized social activities, and drawn more and more countries, cities, and people into interdependent economic, political, cultural, and ecological relationships of increasing intensity.Footnote 2 In step with globalization, regional cooperation has been thriving, which has transformed the architecture of the region.Footnote 3 To ordinary people, never before have the forces of globalization appeared so vividly and intensely in their daily lives: the American financial crisis triggered by the bursting of the nation's housing bubble is hitting all major sectors of the global economy and the majority of countries; and food and product safety problems involving Chinese products have spread beyond the country's borders, endangering the health of people and pets all over the world.
The relationship between international relations, or globalization in the present era, and national government policies has always been a major concern of both scholars and policymakers. In the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith (1776: 373–379) stated that the imposition of taxes by national governments can provoke capital flight. In The Great Transfomation, Karl Polanyi (1944) contended that high levels of international economic openness are politically sustainable only when national governments insulate and compensate vulnerable groups in society (both quoted in Mosley, Reference Mosley, Held and McGrew2007: 110). Without such policy intervention and/or state capacity, states may resort to closing their economic borders, as some did in the 1920s. In the present era, when practically every government is expected to provide its citizens with social services, welfare, and security, concerns have been mounting about the growing influences and pressures of external forces on the autonomy and authority of governments as well as on their national policymaking. In addition, globalization has led to a redefinition of the functions and roles of the state. What citizens expect and demand of their government are changing and growing. Apart from providing services and protection, the state has to be a strategic planner and a ‘competent state’ (Blind, Reference Blind2006: 15). It has to be able to pursue fiscal conservatism, create wealth by offering an open and attractive environment for domestic and global capital, achieve proficiency in governance, ensure that market mechanisms and globalization result in win–win outcomes for all, be endowed with political legitimacy and accountability, and so forth. As stated by Angel Gurría (Reference Gurría2007), the Secretary-General of the OECD, ‘governments are more important today than ever’ and ‘governments in today's world have very little margin for error’.
Global structurations are still embedded inside national domains (Sassen, Reference Sassen, Held and McGrew2007: 99). Globalization is also ‘a multicivilizational and technologically sustained process that is driven by conflicts among different cultural traditions and by competing interests among nations and among social strata within nations’ (Rossi, Reference Rossi and Rossi2007: 27). In view of these developments, we aim to compare the influences of globalization on the attitudes of the public towards their state in six countries that participated in the 2008 AsiaBarometer Survey – Australia, China, India, Japan, Russia, and the United States. The influences of globalization will be compared on both the societal and individual levels. Our major research question is: whether and to what extent do countries and individuals of different levels of globalization vary in their appraisal and expectations of the state? Specifically, after a brief review of related studies, we compare the six countries with respect to their socio-technological situations as well as the experiences of their people with globalization and whether they view globalization positively or negatively. We then examine the impact of globalization on the public's appraisal and expectations of the state by focusing on the extent to which they are satisfied with their government's performance and what they demand of the government. These countries differ in their socioeconomic and political situations, and are linked to the global community in different capacities. A comparison of their experiences would provide valuable information in the attempt to understand the dynamic relations between globalization and public attitudes towards the state.
Globalization and its consequences on public attitudes
Since the concept of ‘globalization’ burst onto the field of social sciences in the 1990s, there has been increasing discussion about the consequences of globalization for the state, including debates over such topics as how globalization affects sovereign autonomy (Hardt and Negri, Reference Hardt and Negri2000; Balakrishnan, Reference Balakrishnan2003); macroeconomic management (Boix, Reference Boix2000; Gilpin, Reference Gilpin2001; Polillo and Guillén, Reference Polillo and Guillén2005); fiscal governance (Mosley, Reference Mosley2003; Campbell, Reference Campbell2004; Dreher, Reference Dreher2006); government expenditure, social policy, and the welfare state (Rodrik, Reference Rodrik1998; Garrett and Mitchell, Reference Garrett and Mitchell2001; Huber and Stephens, Reference Huber and Stephens2001; Korpi and Palme, Reference Korpi and Palme2003; Brady, Beckfield and Seeleib-Kaiser, Reference Brady, Beckfield and Seeleib-Kaiser2005; Dreher, Sturm and Ursprung, Reference Dreher, Sturm and Ursprung2006); domestic politics (Berger, Reference Berger2000; Rieger and Leibfried, Reference Rieger and Leibfried2003); and so forth.
Notwithstanding the diversity of scholarship on globalization and the state, these studies tend to share the assumption that the global and the national are mutually exclusive (Sassen, Reference Sassen, Held and McGrew2007: 94). And globalization poses additional challenges for governments. First, as mentioned earlier, globalization has led to the growing importance of international and global arrangements on governance as well as to a redefinition of the functions and roles of the state. Second, in Henry Kissinger's (Reference Kissinger2001: 24) words, ‘Globalization has produced unprecedented prosperity, albeit not evenly.’ The persistence and even growth of inequality and poverty is one of the outstanding features of globalization (Lister, Reference Lister and Carling2006: 37–38). As global integration proceeds, even though developing countries have also expanded their share of the global economy,Footnote 4 public concerns about globalization and its consequences are growing.Footnote 5 Public unease about globalization is related to perceptions of unfairness in the distribution of the benefits and burdens of economic growth (BBC, 2008). Indeed, over the past two decades, the share of wages in national income has fallen and workers are increasingly worried about their ability to keep their jobs. The deepening of trade and the relocating of jobs offshore has been found to be one of the driving forces for this increase in feelings of vulnerability regarding wages and jobs (OECD, 2007). It is crucial for governments not only to make the most of globalization, but also to shelter their citizens from the related threats and damages. Third, globalization enables people to connect instantly and continuously with local, national, and international communities. Citizens are better informed and more aware of achievable policy alternatives that are practiced in different countries, ready to compare the performance and policies of governments around the world, and to demand that their government increase its efficiency and effectiveness.
Apart from these basic understandings, the extant literature yields no consensus on the specific impact of globalization on the major concerns in this article, i.e. satisfaction with the government's performance and demands on the government. The theoretical perspectives and empirical findings are similarly diverse. At their simplest, the prevailing views can be categorized into three contending perspectives.
First, globalization has no significant effect on the state; its direct influence on public attitudes towards the state is thus either limited or exaggerated. For example, Castles (Reference Castles2004), using empirical data from 21 OECD countries over the period 1980–1998, concluded that the supposed significant impact of globalization on national social policy is a myth. Its effect on social expenditure is much less important than the domestic effects of programme maturation, economic growth, deindustrialization, and the legacy of leftist policies. Castles argued that the strongest tendency has been an intra-type convergence towards a ‘steady-state’ welfare state. Wilensky (Reference Wilensky2002) studied the development of 19 affluent democracies and found that globalization is not a major threat to labour standards, job security, stable economic performance, and the welfare state. National histories, cultures, and institutions continue to dominate the politics and system performance of each country. Furthermore, the obituaries to globalization, such as pronouncements on ‘the end of globalization’ (Rugman, Reference Rugman2001), ‘sinking globalization’ (Ferguson, Reference Ferguson2005), that ‘the “age of globalization” is unexpectedly over’ (Rosenberg, Reference Rosenberg2005: 2), and on ‘the collapse of globalism’ (Saul, Reference Saul2005), have been appearing with increasing frequency, particularly after the catastrophic events of 9/11. Scholars arguing for this ‘post-globalist’ turn concur that borders and boundaries, nationalism and protectionism, localism and ethnicity are going to define the following epoch of radical de-globalization (Held and McGrew, Reference Held, McGrew, Held and McGrew2007: 1–2).
What the second and third perspectives on globalization have in common is the view that globalization is increasing and that it remains essential to any understanding of the contemporary human condition, including political satisfaction and demands. They differ in that proponents of one perspective claim that the effects of globalization on domestic social protection are negative, and the other that they are positive.
Those holding that the effects of globalization on domestic social protection are negative, e.g. proponents of the ‘efficient’ hypothesis (Garrett and Mitchell, Reference Garrett and Mitchell2001) and the ‘race to the bottom’ perspective (Mosley, Reference Mosley, Held and McGrew2007: 110–112), emphasize the imperatives of cross-national market competition and economic efficiency. Globalization reduces the public's satisfaction with their government's performance as well as increases the public's demands on the government. There are three basic interrelated reasons for this. First, the significant increase in global capital flows has produced powerful incentives to engage in social dumping, by which governments are under pressure to reduce imposts so as to prevent capital flight and to attract more capital. A high level of participation in the global economy also creates pressures to cut social expenditure and initiate neoliberal restructuring to foster flexibility and competitiveness in world markets. Second, as claimed by the theories of issue-ownership, the public's appraisal of their government depends on its ability to build and maintain a reputation for policy competence. Economic openness constrains administrative control over policy outcomes, moderates the capacity of policymakers to manage performance outcomes, and, as a consequence, to signal the government's competence to the people. For example, Hellwig (Reference Hellwig2007) examined French public opinion and economic data from 1985 to 2002 and demonstrated that economic globalization does reduce the public's confidence in its national policymakers. Third, globalization increases the individual's awareness of economic insecurity and generates a demand for social protection and redistribution. Greater foreign direct investment by multinational enterprises increases labour-demand elasticity through the substitution effect and the scale effect, which in turn can raise the volatility of wages and employment and individual perceptions of economic insecurity (Scheve and Slaughter, Reference Scheve and Slaughter2004).
Economic self-interest is a crucial determinant of redistributive preferences and demands. The higher the perceived exposure to occupational risk, the greater the demand for redistribution (Rehm, Reference Rehm2009). In sum, globalization has led to a growing sense of economic insecurity and thus an increasing demand for government protection and redistribution. However, national policy choices are severely constrained by economic forces beyond the control of the states. Global competition not only reduces the willingness and ability of governments to provide economically uncompetitive goods and services to their citizens, but also renders governments more accountable to external actors than to their own citizens. Globalization would thus lead to the stagnation or retrenchment of social policies and an adverse perception of policy efficacy, which inevitably fosters public dissatisfaction with governments.
By contrast, those holding that the effects of globalization on domestic social protection are positive, e.g. proponents of the ‘compensation’ hypothesis (Garrett and Mitchell, Reference Garrett and Mitchell2001) and the ‘embedded liberalism’ thesis (Hays et al., Reference Hays, Ehrlich and Peinhardt2005), suggest that every government is expected by its citizens to limit the costs and distribute the benefits of globalization through some form of government intervention and government spending, and that public support for the government and globalization depends on the willingness and ability of the government to fulfil such expectations. On the one hand, as mentioned earlier, globalization increases volatility, uncertainty, material inequality, and economic insecurity. These, in turn, would create political incentives for governments to appease citizens and to compensate the losers from globalization by expanding social policies, especially in representative democracies with competitive elections.Footnote 6 Furthermore, in order to avert a protectionist backlash that would endanger the aggregate gain from globalization, policymakers are obliged to build a stable foundation for their engagement in globalization by sharing the gains more widely. The data on policy experience and public opinion in many countries reveal that there is greater support for open borders in countries that spend more on programmes for dislocated workers (Scheve and Slaughter, Reference Scheve and Slaughter2007: 46–47).
On the other hand, models of economic voting assert that people continuously evaluate the economic outcomes of government policy and hold policymakers accountable for them. When objective indicators (e.g. unemployment, economic growth, inflation) suggest that the economy is good, subjective evaluations (e.g. personal financial and sociotropic economic expectations and retrospections) become more favourable and then are translated into political satisfaction and support (Duckett and Miller, Reference Duckett and Miller2006: 174–179; Sattler et al., Reference Sattler, Freeman and Brandt2008: 1214). For example, Scheve (Reference Scheve2004) analysed longitudinal data for elections in 19 advanced industrial democracies and concluded that globalization facilitates voter choice by increasing access to information about incumbent governments and enhancing democratic governance. Voters weigh economic performance more heavily in more open economies than in less open ones. Since trade openness contributes to more stable economic growth and aggregate benefits, globalization will increase the relationship between economic growth and support for the incumbent government if the incumbent government has control of the policy levers. The evidence for this is particularly strong in developing countries where the benefits from liberalizing trade and investment are substantial and extensively distributed. For example, Chen et al. (Reference Chen, Zhong, Hillard and Scheb1997) found that the level of political support in China is not low and that evaluations of policy performance are important determinants. Wang (Reference Wang2005) also argued that the legitimacy of the Chinese government currently largely depends on its economic performance. Economic success has been accompanied by a steady improvement in living standards for the people, growing regional and global political influence through the promotion of multilateralism, economic diplomacy, and ‘good neighbourliness’ (Ikegami, Reference Ikegami, Hsiao and Lin2009), an increasing emphasis on social stability and social harmony (Wang, Reference Wang2006), a significant rise in nationalism (Zhao, Reference Zhao2004), and then the perpetuation of one-party authoritarian rule.
There are two basic reasons for the diversity in the debates over the influences of globalization. First, measuring globalization is difficult and the measurement methods are contested. Second, it is difficult to draw inferences about cause and effect between globalization and its outcomes, as the two tend to trend together (Brune and Garrett, Reference Brune and Garrett2005: 400). In view of this, we do not put forward definite hypotheses about the influences of globalization on public attitudes towards the state, but aim to portray a general picture of the matter as well as to explore the similarities and differences among the six Asia-Pacific countries in this respect.
Globalization: differential opportunities and experiences
The locality: gateway to globalization
The six countries differ to varying degrees in their ethnic, historical, cultural, socioeconomic, and political situations (Table 1). China, India, and Russia, who, along with Brazil are members of the grouping known as the BRICs, are the developing-country heavyweights and globalization's newest frontier.Footnote 7 Yet they all place relatively low on the Human Development Index, the Democracy Index, the Economic Freedom Index, and the World Press Freedom Index.Footnote 8 Japan and the United States are two members of the G6 and the leaders of the world's wealthiest countries; while Australia's GDP per capita and its ranking on the above four indexes are among the highest in the world.
Table 1. Socio-technological circumstances, 2008
Notes: 1 = 2006 data. 2 = 2007 data.
Sources: a. International Monetary Fund (2009).
b. Norris and Inglehart (Reference Norris and Inglehart2004: 140–141).
c. United Nations (2009: 171–175).
d. The Economist (2008b).
e. Gwartney and Lawson (Reference Gwartney and Lawson2008: 8).
f. Reporters Without Borders (2008).
g. International Telecommunication Union (2009b).
h. World Bank (2009b).
i. International Telecommunication Union (2009c).
j. International Telecommunication Union (2009a).
Globalizing localities
Two multi-dimensional composite indexes of globalization, i.e. the A.T. Kearney/Foreign Policy Globalization Index and the KOF Index of Globalization, were adopted to estimate the level of globalization of these six countries.
The A.T. Kearney/Foreign Policy Globalization Index is an annual study that assesses the extent to which the world's most populous countries are becoming more or less globally connected. It does this by means of 12 indicators such as international trade, foreign direct investment, international travel and tourism, remittances and personal transfers, Internet users, Internet hosts, membership in international organizations, personnel and financial contributions to United Nations’ peacekeeping missions, international treaties ratified, and others. These indicators are grouped into four categories: economic integration, personal contact, technological connectivity, and political engagement. The 2007 Index, which drew on data from 72 countries that accounted for 97% of the world's GDP and 88% of the world's population, ranked Singapore as the most globalized country in the world. The respective rankings for the United States, Australia, Japan, Russia, China, and India are 7th, 13th, 28th, 62nd, 66th, and 71st (A.T. Kearney/Foreign Policy, 2007).
The KOF Index of Globalization, constructed by the Swiss Institute for Business Cycle Research, measures the economic, social, and political dimensions of globalization by means of 24 variables including trade, foreign direct investment, the mean tariff rate, taxes on international trade, outgoing telephone traffic, international tourism, foreign population, Internet users, the number of McDonald's restaurants, the number of embassies, membership in international organizations, and so forth. The KOF Index of Globalization 2008 is available for 122 countries. According to its calculations, Australia, the United States, Russia, China, Japan, and India rank 21st, 22nd, 33rd, 43rd, 51st, and 81st, respectively. Figure 1 traces the development of these six countries in the index over the period 1990–2006. It clearly shows that the rates of increase of the indexes for India (80.1%), Russia (74.4%), and China (72.2%) have surpassed those of Australia (9.4%), the United States (9.6%), and Japan (26.9%) to a remarkable degree (KOF Swiss Economic Institute, 2009).
Figure 1 KOF Index of Globalization, 1990–2006.
Note: The KOF Index measures globalization on a scale of 1–100.
These two indexes give different rankings for the six countries. The differing rankings for Japan, in particular, are not at all unexpected.Footnote 9 Yet there are two common findings on which our analysis, which follows below, can be based. First, the six countries can be classified into two broad groups: (1) the highly globalized, which includes Australia and the United States; and (2) the moderately globalized, which includes Japan, Russia, China, and India. Second, among the six countries, India is undoubtedly the least globalized. We assume that people in less globalized countries tend to be more deprived of opportunities to connect with the world.
Differential access to the new media
Having the capability to access information and communicate with others beyond a locality is a primary prerequisite for engaging in global networks of flows. In this regard, the role of the interactive, digital media is much more important than that of the ‘old media’ (such as printed newspapers, magazines and, to some extent, television). Obviously, not everyone is capable of having this kind of anytime, anywhere, on-demand access to the global community. One's capacity to access global information via electronic communication depends first and foremost on online freedom. According to the assessment of Reporters Without Borders (2008), China is still listed as one of the ‘enemies of the Internet’. However, with China enjoying increasing geopolitical influence, people are worrying that its Internet model, based on censorship and surveillance, may one day be imposed on the rest of the world. The United States was on the list of ten ‘Countries to Watch’ in 2005.
Apart from the regulatory environment, network infrastructure and equipment are indispensable for driving on the information superhighway. As Table 1 shows, there is clearly an infrastructural divide between developed and developing countries, as well as a digital divide within developing countries. The ubiquity of broadband is the way to a new era of personal or participatory media. Japan and Australia take the lead in Internet and broadband penetration rates, respectively. By contrast, although India has the lowest price basket for the mobile phone, as well as a flourishing information technology industry with global leading firms (e.g. Infosys), it lags far behind the other five countries in the diffusion of information and communications technologies (ICTs). The gap is particularly glaring for international Internet bandwidths – while there is a mere 32 bits per second per person in India, 280 bits in China, and 573 bits in Russia, the amount of international cybertraffic is as high as 5,472 bits in Australia and 11,277 bits in the United States.
The individual: no longer local in a globalizing world
Connectivity with the world: digital and personal
The Web-enabled platform that facilitates the global sharing of information, communication, and collaboration irrespective of time and distance has the potential to affect everyone on earth. As Thomas Friedman (Reference Friedman2005) succinctly expressed it: ‘More people from more places, on more days, in more ways, are going to be able to collaborate on more different kinds of work and compete for more different kinds of work than any time before in the history of the world. It is this leveling of the competitive and collaborative playing fields on the individual level, rather than the level of the country or the company, that I think defines the next stage of globalization.’ This era of globalization is about the necessity and opportunity for individuals to globalize themselves and to collaborate and compete globally with other individuals. ‘Being local in a globalized world is a sign of social deprivation and degradation’ (Bauman, Reference Bauman1998: 2).
Being connected to the world is a prerequisite to globalization at the level of the individual. In this article, connectivity beyond locality in daily life is examined in terms of two aspects: digital connectivity and personal contact. First, being connected to the world via ICTs is crucial if one is to surpass the constraints of time and space.Footnote 10 In addition to the sharing of information, the American experience reveals that online participation has the functions of both bridging and bonding: it has the capacity to deepen linkages among people who share similar beliefs and to serve as a virtual community that cuts across some traditional social divisions (Norris, Reference Norris2002). We assume that the frequency of use of ICTs is positively related to global connectivity. Three forms of digital media use – Internet browsing, the use of email, and the use of mobile phone messaging – were used to reflect the level of digital connectivity. Scoring standards for the frequency of use were as follows: the respondents received two points for using such digital media ‘almost every day’ or ‘several times a week’, and one point for ‘several times a month’. The score for each medium ranged from ‘0’ to ‘2’. The score range for the ‘digital connectivity index’, a simple composite index of the above three items, is ‘0’ to ‘6’ (Cronbach's alpha = 0.79). The higher the score is, the stronger is the digital connectivity of the respondent.
Second, international ties and contacts are believed to offer people greater opportunities to reach beyond local experiences. To explore the range of their personal contacts with overseas people and foreign cultures, the respondents were asked whether they had the following connections or practices: (1) family members or relatives living abroad; (2) experience with international travel (at least three times in the past three years); (3) local foreign friends; (4) often watch foreign television programmes; (5) often communicate with overseas people via the Internet or email; and (6) maintain business contacts with foreign organizations or people. The following scoring standards for international ties and contacts were used: A positive response received one point. Each score ranged from ‘0’ to ‘1’. The score range for the ‘personal contact index’, a simple composite index of the above six items, is ‘0’ to ‘6’ (Cronbach's alpha = 0.70). The higher the score is, the stronger is the respondent's international ties.
An analysis of individual data confirms what is already known from data relating to the infrastructural digital divide between highly and moderately globalized countries: levels of digital connectivity are much higher in the highly globalized countries (Table 2). The gaps are particularly wide in the areas of Internet browsing and the use of email services. For example, while 67.3% of Americans and 65.4% of Australians use the Internet at least several times a week, only 13.9% of Indians and 19.0% of Russians show the same pattern of usage. As for the four moderately globalized countries, people in Japan and China browse the Internet and use email much more often than those in Russia and India. It is noteworthy that although the mobile phone penetration rate in China is very much lower than in Australia, the United States, and Japan, Chinese people are relatively more active in using mobile phone messaging. On the whole, according to the digital connectivity index, Australia tops our ranking of digital media use (3.95), followed by the United States (3.65), Japan (2.98), China (2.74), Russia (1.70), and India (1.59).
Table 2. Digital connectivity: frequency of use of digital media (%)
Notes: Frequency of use: Low = seldom or less (0 point); Medium = several times a month (1 point); High = several times a week or more (2 points).
Digital connectivity index: 0 = lowest; 6 = highest.
Source: 2008 AsiaBarometer Survey.
The disparity in personal international ties and contacts between highly and moderately globalized countries remains wide (Table 3). People in highly globalized countries generally have more personal contacts with overseas people and foreign cultures. Yet inter-country variations are larger here than those in the area of digital connectivity. In this comparison, Australia stands out, with 55.4% having family members or relatives living abroad, 19.5% having travelled internationally, 54.2% having local foreign friends, 54.4% often watching foreign television programmes, 39.4% often communicating with overseas people via the Internet or email; and 15.8% maintaining business contacts with foreign organizations or people. The respective percentages for Russia are only 7.0%, 5.6%, 5.5%, 17.4%, 2.9%, and 2.6%. In the personal contact index ranking, Australia heads the list again (2.39), followed far behind by the United States (1.36), Japan (0.77), China (0.51), India (0.42), and Russia (0.41).
Table 3. Personal international ties and contacts (% giving a positive response)
Note: Personal contact index: 0 = lowest; 6 = highest.
Source: 2008 AsiaBarometer Survey.
English language capacity: a tool to globalize
English has become a dominant international language in nearly all areas of life, for example, communications, science, business, the professions and occupations, entertainment, and the Internet. Although the English-speaking bloc is not the sole socioeconomic centre in the world, proficiency in the English language is critical if one is to access the global flow of information. In this article, fluency in spoken English was used to reflect a respondent's overall English language capacity. The repondents were asked, ‘How well do you speak English?’ The scoring standards for fluency in spoken English were as follows: the respondents received three points for being able to speak fluently, two points for being able to speak well enough to get by in daily life, and one point for being able to speak very little English. Scores ranged from ‘0’ to ‘3’.
As Australia and the United States are English-speaking countries, their people naturally stand out for their English language capacity, with 95% or more able to speak English fluently (Table 4). India, a former British colony, comes third, but a significant 54.0% of the respondents believe that they do not speak English well enough to get by in daily life. Lower down the list are Japan, China, and Russia. Nearly nine out of ten of the respondents in these countries indicated that they speak very little or no English.
Table 4. Fluency in spoken English (%)
Note: Scoring standard: 0 = not at all; 1 = very little; 2 = well enough to get by in daily life; 3 = able to speak fluently.
Source: 2008 AsiaBarometer Survey.
We conducted ordinary least square (OLS) regressions to examine the contribution of personal sociodemographic attributes (including gender, age, marital status, educational attainment, and household income) and English language capacity to explain an individual's digital connectivity index and personal contact index scores. In order to take into account the presence of unobserved country-specific variations, we began with a fixed-effects regression for the pooled sample of societies. India, which has the lowest level of globalization, was taken as the baseline for comparison, and five country dummy variables were included in the regression. We then performed the regression in each country to test whether the results in the pooled analysis are driven by any particular country and whether the results are consistent across the six societies. Both the results of the fixed-effects and the country-level regressions are briefly listed in Table 5.
Table 5. Standardized regression coefficients of sociodemographic variables and English language capacity on digital connectivity index and personal contact index (β)
Notes: *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.
Gender: 0 = female; 1 = male; Age: 1 = under 30; 2 = 30–50; 3 = over 50; Marital status: 0 = unmarried; 1 = others; Educational attainment: 1 = low; 2 = middle; 3 = high; Household income: 1 = low; 2 = middle; 3 = high; English language capacity: 0 = not at all; 1 = very little; 2 = well enough to get by in daily life; 3 = able to speak fluently.
Source: 2008 AsiaBarometer Survey.
In the pooled sample, almost all of the country dummies, which represent the difference in the level of globalization between each society and India, are positive, as expected. When country-specific variations are allowed, personal sociodemographic attributes and English language capacity can explain 43.9% and 31.9% of the variance in the digital connectivity index and the personal contact index scores, respectively. Only age and marital status have no significant independent influence on personal contacts with overseas people and foreign cultures.
In the country-level regressions, these six independent variables can explain 27.4% (the United States) to 51.4% (China) of the variance in the digital connectivity index. Age, educational attainment, and household income are found to have a significant independent effect on digital connectivity in all of the six societies. English language capacity is also positively related to digital connectivity, except for Australia: the lower the age and the higher the educational attainment, household income, and English language capacity are, the higher is the level of an individual's digital connectivity. Yet the relative effect of these variables differs across societies. In the three developed countries, i.e. Australia, the United States, and Japan, age has the strongest inhibiting effect on digital connectivity. In other countries, the most influential variable is significantly different. In Russia, household income turns out to be the most influential variable. In China, educational attainment has the strongest explanatory power, whereas in India, it is English language capacity. In Russia, China, and India, married people tend to be less digitally connected than those who are unmarried. As expected, gender inequality is most prominent in India. Only in this country does gender exert an independent effect – women are less digitally connected than men.
Second, sociodemographic variations in personal contacts with overseas people and foreign cultures are found to be not as pronounced as those in the area of digital connectivity. The six independent variables together can only explain 7.0% (India) to 18.1% (China) of the variance in the personal contact index. Gender and marital status exert minor effects only in China. Age is negatively related to the personal contact index only in the United States. Educational attainment has a significant positive effect, except for Japan and Russia. Household income and English language capacity are significantly related to the personal contact index, with the exception of India and Australia, respectively. English language capacity is also the most influential variable in the four non-English-speaking countries: the higher a person's level of English proficiency is, the more international ties and contacts he/she has. The relationship is opposite in the United States.
Support for the forces of globalization
Globalization involves actors at the local, regional, national, multinational, and international levels. Along with the processes of globalization, the authority of supranational agencies to govern the emerging global community as well as their influences on actors at the other levels have progressively increased. We assume that people who look favourably on supranational agencies should be more supportive of the forces of globalization. We chose the following three sets of questions to measure the respondents’ support for the forces of globalization:
1 ‘Do you think the EU has a good influence or a bad influence on your society?’
2 ‘To what extent do you trust (1) the World Trade Organization (WTO), (2) the United Nations (UN), (3) the World Bank, and (4) the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to operate in the best interests of your society?’
3 ‘To what extent do you trust multinational companies operating in your country to operate in the best interests of your society?’
A positive response received one point. Each score ranged from ‘0’ to ‘1’. The score range for the ‘support for globalization forces index’, a simple composite index of the above six items, is ‘0’ to ‘6’ (Cronbach's alpha = 0.79). It was assumed that those who favour globalization tend to judge the EU's global reach positively, and to trust the WTO, UN, World Bank, IMF, and multinational companies. The higher the index score is, the greater is the support for the forces of globalization.
As Table 6 shows, the variations among levels of trust in these supranational agencies and among countries are both remarkable. First, with the exception of Russia, public attitudes towards the EU are generally less positive than towards the other international organizations. The most favourable evaluation is found in the highly globalized countries (Australia: 40.4%; the United States: 37.1%), and the least in India (19.2%) and Japan (22.9%).
Table 6. Support for the forces of globalization (% giving a positive response)
Note: Support for globalization forces index: 0 = lowest; 6 = highest.
Source: 2008 AsiaBarometer Survey.
Second, although international organizations enjoy a relatively higher level of public trust, cross-national variations are most remarkable in the public's trust in the WTO, the only international organization that deals with the rules of trade between nations. In Australia, China, and India, about half of the respondents trust the WTO to operate in the best interests of their societies. About four out of ten Japanese and Americans also have trust in the WTO. Russia, which applied for accession in 1993 but which is still barred from joining the organization, is the only exception: 15.7% of Russians gave a positive response when asked whether they trust the WTO.
Third, multinational companies have always been regarded as self-interested superpowers that profit by exploiting the resources of developing countries. National differences in trust in multinational companies are obvious: trust is strongest in China (53.6%) and India (51.8%); and weakest in Russia (19.8%) and Japan (28.1%). That Chinese and Indians have a more favourable view of multinational companies than the respondents from the other four countries is indeed supported by findings reported in the OECD Employment Outlook 2008. The OECD found that foreign-owned affiliates of multinational firms tend to provide better pay and working conditions than their domestic counterparts, especially when they operate in developing and emerging economies (OECD, 2008: Chapter 5).
Overall support for globalization, as measured by the support for globalization forces index, is strongest in China (3.16), followed by Australia (2.80) and India (2.77). Far behind are the United States (2.31), Japan (2.17), and Russia (1.27). The cases of China, India, and Japan have illustrated that the circumstances of possessing the technological capacity for globalization and supporting the forces of globalization are not necessarily related.
We then conducted both fixed-effects and the country-level OLS regressions to examine the contribution of the five personal sociodemographic variables and three globalization-related variables (i.e. English language capacity, digital connectivity, and personal contact) to explain an individual's support for the forces of globalization.
The pooled analysis indicated that when country-specific variations are allowed, these independent variables can only explain 11.9% of the variance in the support for globalization forces index. People of different gender, age, marital status, and educational attainment vary slightly in this respect. The positive effects of personal contact and English language capacity are stronger than those of household income and digital connectivity. All of the countries are significantly different from India, with only people in China being more supportive of the forces of globalization than those in India.
The country-level analyses further confirmed that the explanatory power of these variables is very weak, with the highest variance seen for Japan and the lowest for China. The independent effects of these sociodemographic and globalization-related variables are sporadic and relatively weak. For example, except for household income in India and the United States, educational attainment in Australia and Japan, and gender in Russia and China, variations among the sociodemographic groups are negligible. The positive effect of English language capacity is significant only in Japan, and digital connectivity only in Russia and India. However, with the exception of Australia, personal contact is positively related with an individual's level of support for globalization (Table 7).
Table 7. Standardized regression coefficients of sociodemographic and globalization-related variables on support for globalization forces index (β)
Note: * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001.
Source: 2008 AsiaBarometer Survey.
Public attitudes towards the state
Satisfaction with government performance
Government administration covers different domains. Therefore, we chose the following ten domains for respondents to evaluate: (1) dealing with the economy, (2) dealing with the problem of unemployment, (3) dealing with problems of political corruption, (4) dealing with the problem of crime, (5) dealing with human rights problems, (6) dealing with public services problems, (7) dealing with the increase in immigration, (8) dealing with ethnic conflicts, (9) dealing with religious conflicts, and (10) dealing with environmental problems. A positive response received one point. Each score ranged from ‘0’ to ‘1’. The score range for the ‘satisfaction with government index’, a simple composite index of the above ten items, is ‘0’ to ‘10’ (Cronbach's alpha = 0.83). The higher the index score is, the higher is the level of satisfaction with the government's performance.
The six countries differ notably in their public's ratings of their government's performance in several ways. First, the order of ranking in terms of the satisfaction with government index is: China (5.90), Australia (5.34), India (4.43), the United States (3.57), Russia (2.88), and Japan (2.54) (Table 8). Second, variations among the four moderately globalized countries are also wider than the variations between highly and moderately globalized countries. At one extreme, in China, over half of the respondents (ranging from 53.4% to 73.9%) gave positive evaluations of the government's performance in nearly all of the examined domains, except for unemployment (40.1%) and political corruption (34.7%). At the other extreme, in Japan, in none of these domains did the government's performance receive a positive evaluation from over half of the respondents, with positive evaluations ranging from 9.3% (political corruption) to 45.5% (environmental problems).
Table 8. Attitudes towards the state (% giving a positive response)
Notes: Satisfaction with the government index: 0 = lowest; 10 = highest.
Demands on the government index: 0 = lowest; 10 = highest.
The figures inside the parentheses denote intra-country ranking in descending order.
Source: 2008 AsiaBarometer Survey.
Third, there are huge disparities in the intra-country rankings of the ten domains. China and India have relatively similar rankings, with the exception of the ethnic conflicts rating, which is ranked third in China and sixth in India. Among the six countries, there is greater diversity in the public's ratings of their government's performance in dealing with the economy, the problems of unemployment, crime, public services, and the environment. For example, the government's performance in dealing with the economy leads the ratings in Russia, China, and India, but ranks at the bottom in the United States.
Fourth, although China and India are generally regarded as the winners in economic globalization, a prevailing sense of economic insecurity has accompanied economic progress in these countries. The evidence for this is the gap between the rating of the government's performance in dealing with the economy and that with the problem of unemployment. This gap is apparently narrower in Australia, the United States, Japan, and Russia.
Apart from the above inter-country differences, it is noteworthy that the public's ratings of their government's performance in dealing with political corruption rank at the bottom in Japan and China and almost at the bottom in the United States, Russia, and India. This is the only domain in which none of the governments of any of the six countries received a positive evaluation from over half of the respondents, with positive evaluations ranging from 9.3% (Japan) to 49.3% (Australia). Perceived corruption in politics is found to be one of the most important factors contributing to the decline in levels of trust in the governments of both the developed and developing countries (Catterberg and Moreno, Reference Catterberg and Moreno2005; Blind, Reference Blind2006: 11–14).
Demands on the government
As mentioned above, empirical work has produced inconclusive results on the influences of globalization, economic globalization in particular, on government spending. Since the focus of our research is on the subjective perceptions and expectations of the people, we chose the following set of questions to measure the respondent's demands for government spending: ‘Listed below are various areas of government spending. Please indicate whether you would like to see more or less government spending in each area. Please bear in mind that more spending may require a tax increase.’ The respondents were asked to give their response to spending in ten areas: (1) policing and law enforcement, (2) the military and defense, (3) unemployment benefits, (4) old-age pensions, (5) health, (6) education, (7) public transport, telecommunications infrastructure, (8) culture and the arts, (9) improvement of the social status of women, and (10) the environment. A positive response received one point. Each score ranged from ‘0’ to ‘1’. The score range for the ‘demands on the government index’, a simple composite index of the above ten items, is ‘0’ to ‘10’ (Cronbach's alpha = 0.77). The higher the index score is, the higher the level of demand for more government spending.
It is clear that the people of all six countries, especially those of Russia, China, and Australia, are quite positive about expanding government spending. Out of a total of 60 responses, 38 (63.3%) received a positive response from over half of the respondents and another 9 (15.0%) received a positive response from over 40% of the respondents. Russia tops the rankings in the demands on the government index (7.09), followed by China (6.83). Trailing behind are Australia (6.11), India (5.46), the United States (4.56), and Japan (3.91) (Table 8). The following results are noteworthy.
First, the Japanese are very consistent in their attitudes towards the state. They are the least likely to be satisfied with their government's performance, as well as to demand government intervention.
Second, Australia is rather exceptional within the group of highly globalized and developed countries in terms of its public's demand for government provisions and intervention. As a result, the variations among the four moderately globalized countries are again wider than those between the highly and moderately globalized countries.
Third, inter-country variations regarding the intra-country ranking of the ten domains are smaller than those of satisfaction with the government's performance. The demand for more government spending in the area of health, ranging from 67.1% to 91.2% of the respondents, ranks at the top in four countries (Australia, the United States, Japan, and China) and comes second in Russia and India. Public demand for government intervention in the areas of education and old-age pensions is also rather consistent, with the exception of old-age pensions in India. In contrast, the people of all six countries tend to accord the lowest priority to the area of culture and art – with this category ranking at the bottom in Australia, the United States, China, and India; eighth in Russia and ninth in Japan.
Fourth, despite widespread dissatisfaction with the government's performance in dealing with the problem of unemployment, people, particularly those in the developed countries as well as India, do not expect their government to spend more on unemployment benefits. The intra-country ranking of unemployment benefits ranges from fifth (Japan, Russia, and China) to eighth (Australia and India).
Fifth, India is a unique case with respect to the relative ranking of the military and defense. While this area ranks sixth (Russia) to tenth (Japan) in the other five countries, it comes only after education and health and occupies the third position in India.
Finally, notwithstanding the growing importance of developing public transport and telecommunications infrastructure to socioeconomic progress and globalization, people in the moderately globalized countries all accorded this category a lower priority – it ranks either eighth or ninth in the moderately globalized countries, as compared with fourth in Australia and sixth in the United States.
Conclusion: the influences of globalization
Two sets of fixed-effects and country-level regressions were conducted to explore how personal sociodemographic attributes, globalization capacity, experiences, and preference, after controlling for state-related attitudinal orientations (including national identity and trust in government),Footnote 11 affect an individual's satisfaction with the government's performance and demands on the government.
On satisfaction with the government's performance, the results of the pooled analysis confirmed that Australians and Chinese report a higher level of satisfaction with the government's performance than Indians, while Americans, Russians, and Japanese are significantly less satisfied. When country-specific variations are allowed, those who are male, younger, have a lower English language capacity, and are more supportive of the forces of globalization are more likely to report a higher level of satisfaction with the government's performance than their counterparts. In the country-level regressions, these independent variables can explain 14.1% (China) to 22.2% (the United States) of the variance in the satisfaction with government index.
When individual societies are examined, first, support for the forces of globalization turns out to be the most influential variable in predicting satisfaction with the government's performance in all of the six countries. Second, the influences of personal sociodemographic attributes are weak and vary across societies – gender exerts a significant independent effect only in Australia and Japan; and age and educational attainment have a minor effect in India and Russia, respectively. Third, the three individual variables of globalization have either a sporadic or insignificant independent effect in all of the six countries – English language capacity is negatively related to satisfaction with the government's performance in the United States, digital connectivity has a weak positive effect in India, and personal contact has a minor negative impact in China and India (Table 9).
Table 9. Standardized regression coefficients of sociodemographic and globalization-related variables on the satisfaction with government index (β)
Notes: *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.
Coefficients for control variables, including national identity, trust in government, and demands on the government index, are not shown.
Source: 2008 AsiaBarometer Survey.
On demands on the government, the results of the pooled analysis also confirmed that Russians and Chinese demand significantly more of their government than do Indians, while Australians have a similar level of demands, and Americans and Japanese a lower level. Those who are female, have a lower household income, a higher English language capacity, and are more supportive of the forces of globalization tend to report a higher level of demand for government spending than other groups.
The results of the country-level analysis reveal that, with the exception of India, these independent variables are definitely insufficient to predict the public's demand for government spending (the adjusted R2 values range from 0.012 in Russia to 0.200 in India). None of the variables studied exerts a significant independent effect in all of the six countries. Support for the forces of globalization is the only variable that has a significant positive influence on demands on the government in five countries. In this respect, Russia is an exceptional case. There seems to be no consistent pattern regarding the influence of other variables. For example, in the United States, Russia, and China, females are more likely to demand more from the government than males. But the effect of gender is negligible in Australia, Japan, and India. The effect of age is positive in Japan, but negative in India. Educational attainment is negatively related to demands on the government in India; but its effect is negligible in the other five countries. Personal contact with overseas people and foreign cultures has a positive, minor effect in Russia and China, but not in Australia, the United States, Japan, and India (Table 10).
Table 10. Standardized regression coefficients of sociodemographic and globalization-related variables on the demands on the government index (β)
Notes: * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001.
Coefficients for control variables, including national identity, trust in government, and satisfaction with government index, are not shown.
Source: 2008 AsiaBarometer Survey.
In sum, our analysis seems to suggest that, although these six Asia-Pacific countries differ extensively in their sociopolitical and technological situations, both intra- and inter-country variations in the influences of globalization on public attitudes towards the state are not particularly prominent. The most consistent finding is that support for globalization turns out to be the only variable that exerts an independent influence on the two state-related attitudinal variables in almost all of the six countries under study – that is to say, those who support globalization are more inclined than others to be satisfied with the government's performance and to demand more government intervention. The only exception is the effect of support for globalization on the demands on the government in Russia.
In the final analysis, the central concern is whether or not the degree of globalization at the level of the individual has actually affected the attitudes of individuals towards the state, including their satisfaction with their government's performance and the extent of their demands on their government. The empirical analysis in this paper has so far yielded the following findings.
First, factors related to globalization at the individual level have no uniform or directional effects on a person's satisfaction with the government's performance. In other words, in different countries the more globalized a citizen tends to be, he or she can be either more positive or more negative towards the performance of his/her own government. That means the impact of globalization can be complex and it is not either positive or negative.
Second, concerning the relationships between individual globalization experiences and demands for government spending, again, no conclusive findings can be made. However, it seems that the more one is inclined to support the forces of globalization, the greater one's demands on the government. To come to this tentative assertion is not really surprising, as exposure to the forces of globalization can actually facilitate the public's ability to demand that their government make better use of the public's resources. That also means that globalization does make a difference on a citizen's changing expectations and demands on his/her government.
Finally, contrary to the notion prevailing in some of the literature on globalization, this study suggests that support for globalization not only is related to satisfaction with the government's performance, but also connected with a demand for more government intervention. Globalization is obviously not antithetical to the image that the public has of the state and its attitudes towards the state. On the contrary, the more one supports globalization, the more one may first be demanding that the government take greater responsibility in various areas and be more responsive towards the public. Then, once the state has indeed acted on the public's demands, the greater the support that more globalized citizens will render to their government. This finding in one way or another does shed some light on the existing contradictory hypotheses concerning globalization and public response to the state.
About the authors
Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao is currently the Director of Institute of Sociology and former Executive Director of the Center for Asia-Pacific Area Studies (CAPAS), both at Academia Sinica, and Professor of Sociology at National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan. He served as a national Policy Advisor to the President of Taiwan between 1996 and 2006. His areas of specialization include civil society and new democracies, middle class in the Asia-Pacific, sustainable development, and NGO studies. His most recent publications include: Non-Profit Sector: Organization and Practice (co-editor, 2009), Rise of China: Beijing's Strategies and Implications for the Asia-Pacific (co-editor, 2009), Deepening Local Sustainable Development in Taiwan (co-editor, 2008), and Asia-Pacific Peace Watch (co-editor, 2008).
Po-san Wan is a research officer at the Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She has published a number of books and has contributed to such journals as Asian Perspective, International Journal of Social Welfare, Japanese Journal of Political Science, Journal of Contemporary China, Public Administration and Development, Social Indicators Research, Social Policy and Administration, and Sustainable Development.
Timothy Ka-ying Wong received his Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Manitoba, Canada. He is currently Associate Director of the Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. His major research interests include social and political development in Taiwan and Hong Kong and cross-Taiwan-Strait relations. He has published a number of books and has contributed to such journals as Nations and Nationalism, Journal of Contemporary China, Democratization, Asian Perspective, International Journal of Social Welfare, Social Policy and Administration, and Social Indicators Research.
