More from these Authors

• Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2020

  Dignity, Inequality, and the Populist Backlash: Lessons from America and Europe for a Sustainable Globalization

  Rawi Abdelal

  The greatest challenge to the sustainability of our current era of globalization comes from within the United States. The United States is at the center of global system. No single country has played a larger role in creating—and then cheerleading for—this era of global capitalism than has the United States. Yet most Americans have come to reject globalization: according to some polls, as few as forty percent of U.S. citizens believe that globalization is a force for good. As developing countries around the world came enthusiastically to embrace globalization, global capitalism began to face its fiercest critics in the developed world.
  What can be done to restore the legitimacy of global capitalism within a country that, perhaps paradoxically, continues to embrace its national model of capitalism? We must discern the lessons from the parts of the developed world where the backlash is also profound—France, for example—and where it has been more muted—such as Germany.
  Resolving these challenges has taken on an even greater urgency in the midst of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. The American fiscal policy response has reproduced some of the American system’s inherent failings and allowed for the emergence of mass unemployment, while the German fiscal policy response has preserved both the stability of firms and employment patterns. Now more than ever we should examine how to cultivate the legitimacy of the system in the eyes of its citizens.

  Keywords: globalization; Pandemics; populism; United States; Europe; France; Germany;

  Citation:

  Abdelal, Rawi. "Dignity, Inequality, and the Populist Backlash: Lessons from America and Europe for a Sustainable Globalization." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 20-123, June 2020.  View Details

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• Editorial | Valdai Discussion Club | May 28, 2020

  Populism, the Pandemic, and the Crisis of Globalization

  Rawi Abdelal

  Keywords: globalization; populism; coronavirus; Pandemics;

  Citation:

  Abdelal, Rawi. "Populism, the Pandemic, and the Crisis of Globalization." Valdai Discussion Club (May 28, 2020).  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | April 2020 (Revised April 2020)

  Unrest in Chile

  Vincent Pons, William Mullins, John Masko, Annelena Lobb and Rafael Di Tella

  In 2020, Chileans would head to the ballot box to decide their country’s future. Many international observers credited Chile’s decades of neoliberal governance with turning the country into Latin America’s “Tiger,” a prosperous, diversified economy on its way to becoming the continent’s first developed country. But in October of 2019, a mass protest movement ground the country to a halt and shocked its political class, showing the world a different Chile—one defined by inequality, social distrust, and a young generation of political activists. As Chile prepared to vote in the fall of 2020 on whether to adopt a new constitution, could it sculpt a more equitable society while remaining “the exception” on a continent known for its political instability? Or would Chile’s prosperity go the same way as its neoliberal experiment?

  Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Macroeconomics; Economy; Political Elections; Public Opinion; Social Issues; Equality and Inequality; System Shocks; Chile; Latin America;

  Citation:

  Pons, Vincent, William Mullins, John Masko, Annelena Lobb, and Rafael Di Tella. "Unrest in Chile." Harvard Business School Case 720-033, April 2020. (Revised April 2020.)  View Details

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