Abstract

There have been widespread claims in recent years about the effects of economic globalization on domestic politics. A number of recent studies have raised serious questions about the validity of claims that globalization of trade and financial markets leads to international convergence. This paper considers the impact of pre-existing institutional arrangements on national responses to globalization, investigating the impact of gloablization on union membership trends in sixteen industrial democracies between 1960 and 1989. We find that the effects of economic globalization are conditional on particular economic institutions, helping to explain divergent trends in union density among these countries.