Global Markets, Corporate Assurances, and the Legitimacy of State Intervention

Global Markets, Corporate Assurances, and the Legitimacy of State Intervention Matthew Amengual Associate Professor, Saïd Business School University of Oxford [email protected] Tim Bartley Professor of Sociology Washington University in St. Louis [email protected] January 6, 2021 *** DRAFT *** Abstract Collective perceptions of harm and impropriety channel the evolution of capitalism, as shown by research on the moral boundaries of markets. But how are boundaries perceived when markets cross borders, harms are distant, and individuals must navigate competing claims from advocacy organizations and corporations? These conditions are particularly salient in global supply chains, which have become central modes of production and exchange. Extending research on situational perceptions of objectionable markets, we analyze data from a conjoint survey experiment in which a national sample of American adults considered a range of labor and environmental problems in global supply chains. We find that claims from advocacy organizations increase the perceived importance of state intervention, though not for all parts of the political spectrum. Corporations’ voluntary assurances of responsibility have a widespread effect of undermining support for the state, though more symbolic prosocial statements do not. Moreover, different problems evoke distinct construals of harm. These findings move beyond stylized attitudes about international trade to reveal the contours of moralized global markets, the role of assurances in greasing the wheels of objectionable markets, and the legitimacy of state intervention in a period of withering neoliberalism. Keywords: economic sociology, globalization, environment, labor Acknowledgments: For comments on the research plan and/or earlier drafts of the paper, we thank Marius Busemeyer, Greg Distelhorst, Julian Garritzmann, Sebastian Koos, Akshay Mangla, Ethan Michelson, Ariela Schachter, Christi Smith, Emmanuel Teitelbaum, and audiences at the University of Amsterdam Center for Inequality Studies, University of Konstanz Cluster on the Politics of Inequality, and Society for the Advancement for Socio-Economics annual conference. We thank Kim Heinser for research assistance. 1 INTRODUCTION How do Americans perceive the moral boundaries of global markets? Despite four decades of globalization and repeated exposés of labor exploitation and environmental degradation, it is not clear how people decide what counts as objectionable and what can be dismissed as distant, negligible, or the normal working of the market. News about the poisoning of workers making smartphones in China or the burning of forests in Brazil to make leather footwear, for instance, could be perceived as unfortunate but inevitable, as best left to others to solve, or as requiring intervention. Under what conditions will a particular response predominate? When will “sympathy fatigue” (Hochschild 2016) be high, and when will a sense of global interdependence materialize? A large literature has revealed the economic and socio- cultural bases of “protectionist” attitudes (Mansfield, Mutz and Brackbill 2019), but this research reads popular perceptions of globalization narrowly through the lens of trade openness versus closure. Economic sociologists argue that markets are interpreted through morally-infused lenses. Objections to child labor, prostitution, pollution, life insurance, debt, and the trade in human organs and eggs have historically led to a range of laws to restrict markets or channel their growth (Anderson 2018, Fourcade 2011, Healy and Krawiec 2017, Quinn 2008, Zelizer 2013). Yet objectionable forms of market activity can be made more palatable through arrangements that obfuscate exchange by adding intermediaries or charitable frames (Almeling 2007, Chan 2009, Hoang 2018, Schilke and Rossman 2018, Wherry, Seefeldt and Alvarez 2019). Though rarely examined from this perspective, current architectures of global production raise questions about how markets are judged when harms are distant (Bair 2019), structures of production are fragmented (Davis 2009), and observers face competing claims about severity, responsibility, and benevolence (McDonnell, King and Soule 2015). Global supply chains organize large swaths of international trade but are most often studied from structural and firm-centered perspectives (Gereffi 2018). In this paper, we transpose a theoretical interest in the fluidity of popular judgments about market restriction with a focus on global supply chains as predominant but evolving modes of production. Specifically, we ask about the conditions under which individuals perceive state intervention as necessary to combat various forms of environmental degradation and labor exploitation in global supply chains. State intervention is a direct and intuitive way of restricting the boundaries of markets (Evans 1997, Kenworthy and Pontusson 2005, Zelizer 2013), and states have become more interventionist vis-à-vis in global supply chains over the past decade (Evans 2020, Horner 2017, Rodrik 2018). But the legitimacy of state mandates continues to be in question, particularly amidst polarized perceptions of evidence (Eyal 2019) and the rise of private authority beyond the state (Sassen 2006). We treat perceptions of state intervention into global markets as potentially flexible, situational, and multi-dimensional, consistent with the moral markets literature (Bandelj 2020, DiMaggio and Goldberg 2018). Rather than measuring generalized “free trade” versus “protectionist” attitudes, we investigate how judgments depend on particular threats or injustices, framings of severity, and assurances of responsibility. Methodologically, we use a conjoint survey experiment, a useful tool for analyzing multi-dimensional perceptions of socio-political phenomena (Flores and Schachter 2018), to extend research on popular perceptions of markets (Hahl, Zuckerman and Kim 2017, Schilke and Rossman 2018). 2 A range of environmental, labor, and human rights concerns have inspired a similar form of transnational advocacy, in which activists highlight egregious damage, press well-known corporations to take responsibility, and lobby for state intervention (Longhofer et al. 2016, Seidman 2007). Rather than bracketing these specific concerns or leaving them segregated in different literatures, we follow Polanyi (1944) in seeking to generalize across labor and environmental issues, while also asking if there are distinctive logics at play (Evans and Kay 2008). In addition, we connect the moral markets literature to research on corporations and “private politics” (Carlos and Lewis 2018, McDonnell, King and Soule 2015, Walker 2014) to ask whether assurances (not only obfuscating structures) grease the wheels of objectionable markets. In particular, we examine the effects of corporate assurances of responsibility (Lim and Tsutsui 2012) and prosocial messaging (McDonnell and King 2013) in a crowded discursive arena. Recent studies that strongly draw respondents’ attention to corporate actions have produced mixed findings about corporate voluntary initiatives’ effects on public opinion (Dana and Nadler 2019, Kolcava, Rudolph and Bernauer 2020, Malhotra, Monin and Tomz 2019). We seek a more complete portrayal, in which firms’ promises are one piece of a larger landscape, which also contains messages from advocacy groups, as theorized in the literature on transnational advocacy networks (Keck and Sikkink 1998). We proceed by developing hypotheses about advocacy frames, corporate assurances, and distant labor/environmental problems and then describe the design and administration of our survey experiment. After analyzing the results in our full sample and assessing heterogenous effects across political orientations, we incorporate qualitative evidence from an open-ended question, which provides insight into the logics of judgment. THEORY AND PRIOR EVIDENCE Moral markets research emerged with accounts of how popular perceptions of markets are sensitive to particular forms of commodification (Zelizer 2013). Scholars then identified arrangements that mute concerns by encouraging observers to see the activity as something other than a market transaction—such as structures of obfuscated exchange that mask the purchase of political influence (Schilke and Rossman 2018) or scripts of gift-giving that frame the selling of human eggs as a loving donation (Almeling 2007). The fundamental insight that markets are interpreted through situational moral lenses need not be limited to the primordial question of whether an exchange is marketized or not. The lenses through which markets are understood can also shape how economic valuation is carried out (Fourcade 2011) or how individuals view profit-seeking and inequality (Davis and Robinson 2006, DiMaggio and Goldberg 2018). In the context of global supply chains, buying-selling relationshiPs may be apparent rather than obscured, but the controversies encountered may nevertheless be difficult for observers to square with their moral codes. This raises questions about the factors that shape these judgments and the ability of various actors to strategically amplify or minimize concerns. We therefore turn to research on advocacy networks and corporate responsibility, which highlight frames and assurances that are especially salient in global supply chains. 3 Advocacy Frames and the Structuring of Concern Research on transnational advocacy networks suggests that perceptions of distant problems are malleable, rather than

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