When the Rich Get Richer: Class, Globalization, and the Sociotropic Determinants of Populism.

The article investigates how perceptions of globalization's uneven economic effects contribute to populist beliefs in the United States. It argues that populism—defined as an attitudinal syndrome combining anti-elitism, people-centrism (trust in ordinary people), and popular sovereignty (desire for government to reflect the people's will)—is linked not to individuals' personal economic situations but to sociotropic beliefs that globalization disproportionately benefits wealthy Americans. Using data from a 2017 US survey and a 2022 pre-registered experiment exposing participants to an article about billionaires benefiting from globalization at the World Economic Forum, the authors find that perceiving globalization as enriching the rich correlates with and causally increases populist attitudes, particularly anti-elitism and popular sovereignty. The findings highlight class-based resentment as a key driver of populism and suggest that international political economy research should consider the distributional and sociotropic dimensions of globalization's political impact.