Doctoral Disseration Research in Political Science: Foreign Investment and Political Attitudes toward Social Policy

全球化与社会政策的关系日益成为学术界研究的焦点。全球化会增加不安全吗？如果是这样的话，谁受到的影响最大？各国政府是否能够通过提供足够的社会保护来应对？或者全球化本身限制了他们这样做的能力？到目前为止，这项研究的大部分都集中在政府支出和提供上；它没有调查全球化如何影响个人的政策偏好。这个项目探索个人是否以及如何？对外资公司的风险敞口导致他们倾向于更多的社会支出。这项研究位于后社会主义的乌克兰；因此，它侧重于一个也在向市场经济过渡的新民主国家的公民的态度；因此，这项研究将在这一重要案例中谈到重要的政治和经济问题。为了研究个人的态度，这个项目生成原始数据，使用调查设计，将现有调查中固有的许多问题降至最低。调查地点是四个较小的城市，两个在乌克兰西部，两个在乌克兰东部。在每个地区，选定的城市对根据人口和经济变量进行匹配，但它们的外国直接投资水平差异很大。这种设计在接近外国直接投资对政治态度的影响方面尤为突出。通过比较单个国家内的个人，这项研究避免了以下问题：是否特定国家的文化、社会或政治机构，而不是外国直接投资，解释了观察到的政治态度的差异。此外，这一设计还控制了影响外国投资者目的地选择的政治或地理变量。因此，这项研究设计使我们能够对个体之间的关系得出更准确的因果推断？对外国投资的风险敞口以及他们对政府社会政策的政治偏好。该项目对国际政治经济学中关于全球化对国内政治的影响的长期辩论产生了更广泛的影响。它在评估外国投资对公民的直接影响，而不是对精英和机构的直接影响方面做出了独特的贡献。此外，该项目衡量了“区域”人口的政治态度，这些人口在所有后共产主义国家的人口中占很大一部分，但在国家政治中的代表性往往较低，甚至在地区研究中也未得到充分研究。这项研究产生的原始数据将对其他感兴趣的学者有用，这些学者对新民主国家政治态度的形成、转型经济体的经济投票、社会政策偏好或全球化感兴趣。

The relationship between globalization and social policy has become an increasing focus of scholarly research. Does globalization increase insecurity? If so, who is most affected? Are governments able to respond by providing adequate social protections? Or does globalization itself limit their capacity to do so? To date, much of this research has focused on government spending and provision; it has not investigated how globalization affects the policy preferences of individuals. This project explores whether and how individuals? exposure to foreign-owned firms causes them to favor more social spending. The research is located in post-socialist Ukraine; it therefore focuses on the attitudes of citizens in a new democracy that is also in transition to a market economy; the research will therefore speak to important political as well as economic issues in this important set of cases. In order to study individual attitudes, this project generates original data, using a survey design that minimizes many of the problems inherent in existing surveys. The survey sites are four smaller cities, two in western Ukraine and two in Eastern Ukraine. In each region, the selected pairs of cities are matched along population and economic variables, but differ drastically in their levels of FDI. This design is particularly strong at approximating the effect of FDI on political attitudes. By comparing individuals within a single country, this research avoids questions about whether country-specific cultural, social or political institutions, rather than FDI, explain observed differences in political attitudes. Furthermore, this design controls for political or geographic variables that influence foreign investors' choice of destination. Thus, this research design allows us to draw more precise causal inferences about the relationship between individuals? exposure to foreign investment and their political preferences over government social policy. This project has broader impacts on long-standing debates in international political economy about the effects of globalization on domestic politics. It makes a unique contribution in assessing the direct effects of foreign investment on citizens, rather than on elites and institutions. In addition, this project measures political attitudes in "regional" populations, which are a significant portion of the population in all post-communist countries, yet tend to be underrepresented in national politics and understudied even in area studies. The original data produced by this research will be of use to other scholars interested in the formation of political attitudes in new democracies, "economic voting" in transition economies, social policy preferences or globalization.