To what extent does globalization affect democracies? In the following paper which is the preliminary empirical analysis of my ongoing Ph.D. thesis, I am interested in looking at how globalization affects the different dimensions of democracies. The topic has received much attention from academics, policy-makers or concerned and engaged citizens. It is one of the classic questions in the international political economy research field. Much has been written on a theoretical level while systematic empirical analysis on the effect of globalization on democracy is scarce. While some see globalization as a tool for enhancing democracy others predict a dark future for the democratic nation-state. But what if both assertions contain some truth? What if the impact of globalization on democracies may vary among the different dimensions of democracy? What if different dimensions of globalization may have different effects on the national democracy? Claims on the relationship between globalization and democracy hardly include the specification of the definition of globalization and what is meant by the term democracy. Or if included minimalist definitions both of globalization - as economic liberalization - and democracy - as elections vs. non-elections - are most common. In the following paper, I present two innovations for the international political economy literature and a deepening of the dialogue between political science and comparative political economy. First, I broaden the definition of globalization beyond a mere economic understanding. Besides the economic dimension, I include social and political aspects of globalization into the analysis. The inclusion of three dimensions of globalization into the analysis gives a more realistic picture of today's globalization. Second, I elaborate my arguments based on very recent debates of political scientists on the concept of democracy. Despite the discordance on how far beyond the minimalist democracy definition the reconceptualization should go there is a tendency to endorse a broader conception of democracy. In order to explore this complex relationship, I will apply a quantitative statistical analysis with new and old democracies for comparison reasons for the period of 1970-2015 which is the time when countries in different regions experienced political and economic liberalization. I will apply the multidimensional KOF globalization index which can be disaggregated into an economic, social and political dimension and does justice to the claim that today's globalization erodes national borders and reduces the importance of nation states. Thus, it is important to extend the unit of measurement beyond the nation-state and extend it to the individual level. The same logic of disaggregation is applied to the dependent variable, the quality of democracy. I will analyze the effect of globalization on the equality dimension in democracies, the freedom dimension as well as the control dimension.
