Globalization and Support for Unemployment Spending in Asia: Do Asian Citizens Want to Embed Liberalism?

Scholars have long debated whether economic globalization increases citizen support for welfare policies to compensate for or insure against the new economic risks. The vast majority of what we know about such issues is gleaned from study of Western polities. We know little of such dynamics in Asia, the continent harboring much of the world’s population and having experienced the most extensive development in economic globalization. This article remedies such silence by focusing on public opinion in Asian countries to substantially rethink whether and under what conditions globalization exposure generates support for welfare spending. We argue that two such conditions are crucial: (a) levels of economic development influencing who wins and loses under globalization and (b) existing institutions for social protection that influence whether globalization’s losers look to public forms of compensation. We find support for our rethinking of embedded liberalism using five rounds of the Asiabarometer survey covering 28 Asian countries.