摘要
本文通过政策偏好的视角解读了美国民意长达40年的转变过程。通过分析1973年至2014年美国的微观和宏观数据,本文发现贸易影响着美国公众的政策偏好。具体来说,低技能蓝领工人和高技能劳工阶层相比,前者面临着更激烈的进口竞争,后者则更容易在贸易中受益,因此后者相比前者对政府福利支出的要求更少。另外,在对外政策上,高技能劳工阶层作为全球化的受益者更支持对外援助的政策,而低技能蓝领工人则更倾向于要求扩大国防开支以更多地维护本国利益。本文提供了经济全球化和美国民意之间的耦合证据,为理解美国国内政治带来一定的启示。
How should we understand ideological transformations in Western societies?From the perspective of policy preferences,this article presents the evolution of public opinion in the United States spanning more than four decades.We contend that the conventional wisdom,with a mere focus on the domestic political mechanisms and the macro social economic factors,cannot account for the overall shifts in policy preferences during the era of globalization.Thus,based on the international political economy(IPE)literature,we put forth a conceptual framework and derive three hypotheses based on an empirical analysis.We argue that the division of labor in the globalized world economy has had a significant impact on the policy mood in the U.S.Specifically,as the U.S.has dominated the upstream industrial chains,it boasts a comparative advantage in the highskilled economic sectors.In contrast,because of the expensive costs of labor and other factors,the U.S.suffers from a lack of low-skilled industries,which then inevitably bear the brunt of fierce international competition.On balance,international trade should give rise to winners and losers,which in turn should lead to a disparity in preferences regarding various policy issues.With this in mind,we empirically investigate how high-and lowskilled imports shape aggregate policy preferences as measured by the policy mood,which is recognized as an effective and vital proxy to represent public opinion.Specifically,we examine the impact of trade in three policy realms,including social policy,foreign-aid policy,and defense policy,by regressing error correction models spanning from 1973 to2014.The results indicate that,as opposed to high-skilled workers,low-skilled workers who are exposed to the fierce competition from imports perceive much more job insecurity and unemployment risks,thus leading them to seek more social expenditures from the government to compensate for their losses from international trade.Moreover,with regard to foreign policies,low-skilled workers prefer to reduce foreign aid to ease their economic burdens,and they favor enlarging the defense budget so as to protect their own interests.This article contributes to several strands in the literature.First,it contributes to the strand in IPE literature that connects domestic policies with international trade by providing evidence for the U.S.over a long period of time.Second,this article relates to recent work on those factors that shape shifts in public opinion in the Western democracies,including the U.S.and the countries of the EU.Third,this article sheds new light on the political process in the U.S.by surpassing the limitations of the macro socioeconomic or partisan frameworks that dominated our understanding in the past.For sure,this article also has some limitations.First,the data limitations do not allow us to precisely assess the heterogeneity of the impact of trade on different regions.It is simple to conjecture that states with differing industries may vary to a certain degree in terms of their policy preferences.Second,the mechanisms behind the links between trade and public opinion also merit further investigation.
作者
范世炜
杨文辉
FAN Shiwei;YANG Wenhui(School of Government,Central University of Finance and Economics,Beijing,China;Department of Political Science,University of Texas,Austin)
出处
《公共管理评论》
2020年第1期25-45,共21页
China Public Administration Review
基金
国家自然科学基金项目“中国公共政策议程的动力学研究——基于‘信息—注意力’动态系统模型的理论与实证”(项目批准号:71603301)资助
关键词
政策偏好
政策氛围
国际贸易
全球化
policy preferences
policy mood
international trade
globalization
作者简介
范世炜,中央财经大学政府管理学院讲师,shiwei.fan@outlook.com;通讯作者:杨文辉,美国得克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校政治学系博士研究生,yangwh11@gmail.com。
