رسانه های جمعی و نسبت دادن اشتباه برای جهانی سازی Mass media and the attribution of blame for globalization

Introduction Although the relationship between economic globalization and the modern welfare state has been one of the most studied issues in political economy over the past three decades (e.g., Gourevitch 1978; Ruggie 1982; Garrett 1995; Rodrik 1998; Adsera` and Boix 2002; Oatley 2011, 316), recent research on public opinion and political behavior in open economies raises questions about the assumptions of this tradition (Hellwig 2007, 155). A fundamental assumption in globalization-welfare research, which dates back to Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation, is that policymakers who wish to liberalize economic markets are held accountable by those groups who would suffer the adjustment costs (Polanyi [1944] 2001, 79, 385). Scholars have shown that to sustain political coalitions in favor of opening national economies, national policymakers have to compensate protectionist domestic groups with side payments in the form of social welfare programs (Katzenstein 1985; Rodrik 1998; Adsera` and Boix 2002, 1028–1029). However, research in comparative political behavior shows that as domestic economies become increasingly integrated, citizens perceive that governments have less ‘‘room to maneuver’’ and accordingly shift their blame away from domestic policymakers to the unaccountable pressures of the global economy (Alcan˜iz and Hellwig 2010; Hellwig 2014). Citizens in countries highly exposed to the global economy are less likely to punish incumbents for a poorly performing economy (Hellwig and Samuels 2007) and more likely to base their vote on non-economic issues (Hellwig 2008). If domestic groups do not punish politicians for economic losses made possible by the political decisions to maintain open national economies, then an essential causal link in current accounts of the globalization-welfare nexus may not hold under certain conditions. Furthermore, this current of research has yet to take seriously that economic globalization does not inherently constrain policymakers’ ‘‘room to maneuver’’ but rather has been socially constructed as such by elites and typically through the mass media (Hay and Rosamond 2002; Hay and Smith 2005; Hay 2002). At the same time, previous research has shown that mass media have direct effects on perceptions relevant to how citizens are likely to understand the politics of globalization. Specifically, mass media are believed to have direct effects on perceptions of responsibility (Iyengar 1987, 1991), the politicization of economic hardship (Mutz 1992, 1994), and civic engagement more broadly (Putnam 1995; Norris 2000). I argue that by amplifying the dominant construction of globalization as an external imperative constraining policymakers, mass media exposure should shift citizen blame attributions away from governments and toward international forces.