Global Markets and Local Representation

How do global market pressures affect domestic politics? A well-established literature documents that import competition fuels the rise of populist leaders and right-wing parties. We shift attention to a thus far unexplored consequence: the place-based nature of globalization pressures moves voters towards candidates with local ties. These effects are most pronounced where import pressures raise the salience of pre-existing local identities, and where import pressures hit key industries in local economic clusters, creating spillovers throughout the community. We offer evidence from elections to the US House of Representatives from 2002 to 2016, focusing on candidates’ place of birth as expression of local ties. Our results provide a novel perspective on how economic globalization affects politics: local ties are a key dimension of descriptive representation, translating the place-based economic consequences of globalization into politics. Moreover, we highlight how indirect exposure to global markets through spillovers shapes the political response to globalization.