The greater individuals’ level of globalization, the less they will contribute to public goods. This finding emerges from the doctorate thesis of Dr. Eitan Adres from the School of Political Sciences at the University of Haifa. The thesis won the outstanding study award from the Israel Political Science Association. Dr. Adres explains: “In today’s global world, in which state sovereignty has been weakened, the map of citizens’ rights and obligations is becoming increasing unclear.”
A key dilemma in political science concerns the question of “free riders.” A rational person can be expected to prefer behavior that allows them to evade their obligations and rely on the contributions of others — ranging from tax evasion to refraining from donating to charities and on to draft dodging. Nevertheless, most people choose not to act in accordance with this rational model. According to Dr. Adres, the level of acquiescence to governmental demands depends in part on citizens’ level of trust in the government. Globalization has clouded concepts such as identity, culture, and borders and raises numerous challenges in terms of this bond between state and citizen.
In Dr. Adres’ thesis, which was supervised by Dr. Dana Vashdi and Dr. Yair Zalmanovitch, he sought to examine the connection between globalization and participation in contribution to public goods. To this end, the study presents an innovative and unique index determining the individual’s globalization level, whose impact is not dependent on the level of globalization of the state.
Four countries were chosen to examine this relationship: Germany and Australia, which both have a high level of globalization; Columbia, which has a low level of globalization; and in the middle Israel, which has an intermediate level of globalization. Approximately one thousand participants in the four countries participated in three economic decision games testing their willingness to contribute to a public good.
The findings showed that the more people consider themselves to adhere to the values of globalization, consumerism, and individualism, and the more they regard themselves as “citizens of the world” exposed to globalization, the less likely they are to contribute to public goods and the more likely they are to seek to be “free riders” on the contributions of others.
