Work in Progress Comments Welcome! Globalization and Risk Redistribution in the Developing World Sarah M. Brooks Department of Political Science Ohio State University brooks.317@osu.edu Draft Version: 11/12/08 Abstract: The ways in which societies cope with the risk of income loss have drawn attention in recent debates over the links between globalization and state-sponsored social insurance. Research on the advanced industrial nations has generally portrayed this as a positive relationship: the expansion of social welfare programs supported economic integration in the postwar era, and rising insecurity is once again fueling demands for broader state sponsorship of social protection. There is much less consensus, however, over whether such dynamics extend to the developing world as well. There is good reason for caution. Consumption-smoothing efforts in developing countries often entail informal, ‘second best’ strategies that are organized by households and communities, rather than by the state; and they often fail to reduce insecurity and poverty. These features suggest a potentially very different role for risk protection in the process of globalization in the developing world. Analysis of these linkages in 106 advanced industrial and developing nations betweem 1970 to 2006 reveals starkly diverging effects of risk protection on movements toward economic integration in rich and poor countries. Risk protection in developing countries has been much less supportive of economic integration than it has been in advanced industrial nations. State intervention to smooth over distributional conflicts and dampen insecurity in lower-income nations thus may not follow closely the logic observed among the rich nations. The analysis finds evidence as well to suggest that risk protection systems in developing countries mediate globalization’s effect on public sector interventions in ways that differ sharply from the dynamic observed in the developed economies. Paper presented at the meeting of the International Political Economy Society, Philadelphia, PA November 14-15, 2008. Many thanks to Miryam Farrar, Shelly Fleming and Bentley Allan; all errors are my own.