Who Can Assert Ownership Over Automation? Workplace Technological Change, Populist and Ethno-nationalist Rhetoric, and Candidate Support

Technological change has dramatically reshaped labor markets, but technology’s distributional implications have been less politicized than those of other economic shocks. As innovation in automation and artificial intelligence accelerates, however, political parties face growing incentives to “claim” the issue. Candidates proposing to protect workers against technological change may appeal directly to workers’ economic concerns, but if technology is perceived similarly to other economic shocks, workers may also be mobilized through populist and ethno-nationalist appeals. This paper asks: relative to other shocks, what kind of messaging around workplace technological change resonates most with workers? We examine this question using a ten-country 3 × 3 survey experiment that randomly exposes each respondent to one of three vignettes featuring excerpts from political candidates’ speeches: the passages promise to protect workers against offshoring, automation and AI, or changing consumer demand and do so using populist rhetoric, populist and ethno-nationalist rhetoric, or no additional messaging. We find that overall support for protecting workers against technology is lower than for other shocks, but that all types of candidate messaging appeal to workers who feel vulnerable to technology.