7 - Who Are the Cosmopolitans and the Communitarians? Claims-Making across Issues, Polity Levels and Countries

Summary

offers a comprehensive analysis of political claims-making in the age of globalization, investigating issue positions of collective actors across countries and polity levels and distinguishing between economic, cultural and political dimensions of globalization. The cultural dimension is centred on migration, human rights and climate change, and the economic dimension is centred on international trade. Positions on political globalization vary between NAFTA members Mexico and the USA, where it is a trade issue, and EU members Germany and Poland, where it is part of the cultural dimension. Global actors (mostly NGOs and UN orgs) take cosmopolitan positions. Among domestic actors there is a marked differentiation between predominantly cosmopolitan executive and administrative state actors and experts, and legislative and civil society actors with more strongly communitarian leanings. On trade and regional integration issues, we find more classic economic-interest explanations. Here, labour unions and farmers are found on the communitarian side, whereas business associations and representatives of large firms strongly favour free international trade and regional integration.