The link between globalization and populisms: Rodrik and Boeri

Dani Rodrik has published a working paper where he presents a summary of research about the link between globalization and the diversity of populist movements that have surged in different parts of the globe in the recent past. This economist argues that we should not be surprised by the backlash against hyper-globalization, because economics predicts that global economic integration has very significant distributive effects, that are naturally channelled through the political process, as it has happened in the past. Although these distributive effects could be mitigated by compensatory mechanisms, many times these are not put in place because of a political commitment problem: although politicians may promise that they would compensate the losers to have their acquiescence to liberalize, once they approve liberalization, they don't have ex post the incentives to carry through the promise. I agree about the distributive effects of globalization and I agree that compensation does not always happen (although some societies have gone quite far in that), but I am not sure that the political commitment problem is a very good explanation: why would voters do not learn from history? Then the article has a second part where he explains that populism can be right wing or left wing, and that although demand for redistribution is strong, the supply can be nativist or truly redistributive depending on the supply of narratives, and this in turn depends on objective characteristics of each community. For example, in Spain we don't have right-wing racist populism presumably because our immigrants are mostly Latin American, therefore more or less culturally like us. However, most populism in central and northern Europe (UK, France, ...) is right wing according to Rodrik. Here I think the correlations and causal links are more complex. France and the UK also have a strong populist left wing, and part of the populism in Spain is expressed through nationalist movements in Catalonia and the Basque Country that have significant right-wing components. Tito Boeri in a book in Italian where he collects previous research work of his and others provides a more complex perspective on populism, but I am afraid that some conclusions are still exaggerated. For example, he shows a negative correlation between support for populist parties and belonging to associations. First, in a lot of this empirical work support for populism is measured only as voting for parties that are pre-tagged as populist (in Spain, only Podemos!), and second, it is not clear which type of associations are considered. There is work by historians suggesting that those regions with more associations and civic movements supported nazism more than others, not less. OK, nazism and populism are not the same, but it doesn't look like associations are a guarantee of a better deliberative democracy, as Boeri seems to suggest. In Catalonia, civic movements (whose leadership is not a random selection of cultural traits and income distribution) are being used by leaders of national-populism to promote their populist cause: direct democracy, hispano-phobia, etc. There is much work to be done before we know better about the links between globalization and politics.