The Globalization Backlash Revisited: Evidence from the United States

Popular backlash against globalization is widely considered a defining challenge to the international order. This article revisits the backlash thesis using a new survey of 1,196 likely voters in the United States and their preferences over globalization. The survey results challenge underlying assumptions of prevailing accounts of the globalization backlash. The findings suggest that, while citizens have indeed become more critical of international organizations, these criticisms do not necessarily translate into a preference for their disintegration. On the contrary, a large majority of voters—many of them critical of the performance of globalization—advocate for the US government to increase engagement with other countries on issues like the environment, the economy, and public health. Against the widespread perception of the United States as both the heartland of backlash and its key exporter to the world, we find little evidence of rising “anti-globalization” sentiment in the survey data; rather, findings point to increasing contest over its terms and conditions. The article thus calls for greater consideration of the depth, complexity, and multidimensionality of voters’ views of globalization, going beyond binary measures like pro/anti and in/out to consider the programmatic preferences that will shape the reconstruction of the international order in years to come.