Big government sentiment and support for protectionism in East Asia

DOI10.1177/0192512116682359
Date01 January 2019
Published date01 January 2019
AuthorWen-Chin Wu
Subject MatterArticles
https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512116682359
International Political Science Review
2019, Vol. 40(1) 73 –89
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0192512116682359
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Big government sentiment and
support for protectionism in
East Asia
Wen-Chin Wu
Academia Sinica, Taiwan
Abstract
While previous studies find that individual preferences for trade policies are shaped by economic and non-
economic factors, it is still unclear whether people’s perception of their government’s role in citizens’
lives affects their attitudes toward free trade. In view of the “developmental state” legacy in East Asia, I
investigate how the “big government sentiment” in East Asians’ mindset is associated with their support for
protectionism. Based on the data of the third-wave Asian Barometer Survey conducted during 2010 and
2012, I find that when people think that government should bear a major responsibility for the wellbeing
of its people, they are more supportive of protectionist policies. This finding contributes to studies of East
Asian political economy as well as the formation of individual trade policy preference.
Keywords
Trade policy preference, protectionism, developmental state, third-wave Asian Barometer Survey
Introduction
Recent scholarship has found a number of determinants of individual preferences concerning free
trade, including economic endowment (Mayda and Rodrik, 2005; Scheve and Slaughter, 2001), job
insecurity resulting from trade liberalization (Johnston, 2013; Naoi and Kume, 2011), nationalism
(Mayda and Rodrik, 2005), and social trust (Kaltenthaler and Miller, 2013). Nevertheless, most of
these influential studies overlook the following simple fact: it is the national government that
makes and implements trade policies. If an individual, for example, believes that the government
should play an active role in protecting its citizens’ welfare, she may be more supportive of protec-
tionism. By contrast, an individual who thinks that the government should not intervene in the
market to favor particular social groups would be more supportive of free trade. Unfortunately,
current comparative studies fail to investigate the relationship between people’s perceptions of the
role of government and their trade policy preferences.1
Corresponding author:
Wen-Chin Wu, Institute of Political Science, Academia Sinica, 128 Academia Road, Section 2, Nankang, Taipei 11529, Taiwan.
Email: wenchinwu@sinica.edu.tw
682359IPS0010.1177/0192512116682359International Political Science ReviewWu
research-article2017
Article
74 International Political Science Review 40(1)
This article aims to fill the gap mentioned above by examining whether citizens’ expectations
concerning government responsibility are associated with their preferences regarding free trade. I
hypothesize that people with “big government sentiment” are more likely to support protectionism.
When individuals think that the government should bear a major responsibility for the wellbeing
of its people, they are more willing to support limiting imports to protect farmers and workers. By
analyzing survey data collected by the third-wave Asian Barometer Survey (ABS3 hereafter) dur-
ing 2010 and 2012, I find strong empirical evidence to support this argument.
The key finding of this article advances the understanding of the relationship between people’s
expectation regarding their government and their trade policy preferences. Although a few studies
have found that citizens’ economic ideology shapes their support for economic policies, they
mainly use data collected in the United States and other developed countries (Hainmueller and
Hiscox, 2006; Kaltenthaler et al., 2004). Meanwhile, recent studies examine how non-economic
factors, such as political ideology, influence the formation of individual trade policy preferences
(Kaltenthaler and Miller, 2013; Mayda and Rodrik, 2005). Unfortunately, left/right political ideol-
ogy may not be universally applied to analyze people’s policy preferences due to the multidimen-
sionality of this issue space (Dalton, 2008). This article offers a more concrete measure of political
ideology to demonstrate that people’s expectations regarding their government’s role in the market
influences their support for protectionism.
Relatedly, this article links the literature of the “developmental state” to studies of individual
trade policy preferences in East Asian countries. The rapid industrialization and economic
development experienced by many East Asian countries, such as Japan and Taiwan, have been
the result of their governments’ interventionist industrial policies (Johnson, 1982; Wade, 1990).
Governments in East Asia adopted the strategy of export-oriented industrialization that suc-
cessfully created the extraordinary economic growth of the “Asian Tigers” after the 1970s.
Although these East Asian “developmental states” became less interventionist after the bursting
of Japan’s economic bubble in the 1990s and the 1997 Asian financial crisis (Hayashi, 2010),
the legacy of government intervention still plays a role in shaping citizens’ support for eco-
nomic policy in this region. As I will discuss in the empirical section, support for protectionism
among East Asians is associated with their countries’ political history, economic development,
and industrial structure.
Thirdly, this article contributes to the literature on the relationship between government size and
economic globalization. According to the thesis of “embedded liberalism” (Ruggie, 1982), govern-
ment size increases with a country’s degree of economic openness because public spending is used
as a safety net to compensate those citizens who lose out during the economic globalization process
when trade liberalization exposes them to external challenges and shocks. Numerous studies have
confirmed this “compensation hypothesis” (Adserà and Boix, 2002; Hays et al., 2005; Rodrik,
1998). While this research agenda focuses on the losers from globalization and the need for social
spending to promote the progress of economic globalization, this article claims that the provision
of such a safety net may derive from people’s perceptions of their government’s responsibility to
promote public welfare. Thus, countries embracing trade liberalization need to increase public
spending in order to pacify the concerns of globalization losers.
The fourth contribution of this article is the use of data that cover both developing and devel-
oped countries in East Asia after the 2008 global financial crisis. Previous studies rely on three
sources of data when investigating determinants of individual trade policy preferences: the
American National Election Studies (ANES); the World Values Survey (WVS); and the International
Social Survey Programme (ISSP). The ANES focuses solely on the United States, and neither the
WVS nor the ISSP covers more than five countries in East Asia when investigating individual trade

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