Does globalization matter? A qualitative comparative analysis of citizens’ perceptions of globalization over time

In the globalization literature, we can find different conceptualizations of economic globalization. On the one hand, Kriesi et al. (2008, 2012) define (economic) globalization as a process that challenges prior structural cleavages, eventually creating losers and winners which benefit differently from the movement toward economic openness. On the other hand, many scholars, mostly from the political economy literature, approach economic globalization mainly as a process that limits the autonomy of governments in their economic margins of manoeuvre, eventually leading to apathy or relocation of blame. Even though these perspectives are not mutually exclusive, they yield consequences that can alter political behaviour differently. Hence, there is a need to know more about how citizens perceive economic globalization in the first place. To do so, we perform a qualitative reanalysis of different individual and collective interviews (focus groups) that took place in three different countries, i.e. from the early nineties to 2016. Interestingly, these focus groups were not specifically directed to the study of globalization at the individual level, but the subject was highly discussed among focus groups