Embedded Liberalism and Populism : A Cautionary Empirical Note

It has been argued that uncompensated exposure to economic globalization is a main driver of the recent rise in political populism, but empirical evidence is mixed. We empirically reevaluate the issue, where exposure to globalization is defined as deviations from Ruggie’s (1982) embedded liberalism bargain, specifying systems open to trade but with substantial state compensation for disfavored groups. Perhaps, countries that come close to this openness-compensation ideal, often exemplified by the Nordic welfare states, are also less prone to the rise of populist parties and politicians. To this end, we employ a novel indicator of populism at the party level for a sample of electoral democracies, which we combine with national level data on openness to globalization and government compensation. Results show no association between the degree to which a country presents a welfare state that is in-line with embedded liberalism, and political populism