The Comparative Politics of Trade Policy

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Patterns of import protection and export promotion vary widely across countries. So domethods of industry support. Part of this variation reflects differences in economic structure andin the political organization and activities of industry interest groups. But political institutionsmatter as well. Whereas much recent research has focused on the relationships between voters,interest groups, and politicians that help determine trade policy in a particular political setting,much less is known about the role that political institutions play in the formation of trade policy.In this project, the principal investigators will examine how variation in political institutionstranslates into predictable and testable differences in the structure and form of trade protectionand industry support.Comparative politics is, of course, one of the core fields in political science, where it has a longand venerable tradition. But, whereas political scientists often focus on the implications ofdifferent political institutions for political outcomes . such as the number of political parties thatare active in a country, the stability of the government, and the representation of minority groups. the principal investigators will address the effects on economic policy outcomes. By studyingthe comparative politics of trade policies, they will contribute importantly to the analysis ofpolitical regimes. The existing formal models of presidential and parliamentary democracies arequite rudimentary and do not allow for political parties and interest groups as distinct participantsin the political process. The principal investigators will develop extensions of the formal theorythat will add significantly to its realism and domain.The principal investigators are well known for their earlier research on the political economy oftrade policy. That work, published in numerous articles and two books, focuses on the role thatspecial interest groups play in the policy process. Whereas the earlier research assumed aparticular, stylized political regime with a given set of institutions, the principal investigators nowintend to re-focus their analysis on a comparison of outcomes in different political settings.This project will contribute to our understanding of trade policy formation and of theimportance of political institutions. The principal investigators will investigate how trade policiesdepend on the strength of party discipline, how outcomes differ in presidential versusparliamentary political systems, how trade policies are affected by electoral rules and by theorganization of the trade bureaucracy. Moreover, they will examine how the institutional settingaffects the incentives facing industry lobby groups and will ask which institutional arrangementsare best able to generate policies that serve the general interest of the polity. Thus, the projectwill help identify characteristics of the institutional setting and trade bureaucracy that cancontribute to the formation of better trade policies.The project also will develop new conceptual tools that will help other researchers study thedemocratic policy process for a wider range of economic policies. The results will bedisseminated widely to the research communities in the social sciences via journal publicationand participation in national and international conferences. The authors plan to integrate graduatestudents into the project; they will help to assemble data, check the analytical results, and preparecomputer simulation models. In this way, the project will promote the education of the nextgeneration of researchers in economics and political science.