The Comparative Politics of Trade Policy

各国的进口保护和出口促进模式差别很大。因此，行业支持的方法。这种差异部分反映了经济结构、政治组织和行业利益集团活动的差异。但政治制度也很重要。尽管最近的研究主要集中在选民、利益集团和政治家之间的关系上，这些关系有助于在特定的政治环境中决定贸易政策，但对政治制度在贸易政策形成中所起的作用却知之甚少。主要研究人员将研究政治制度的变化如何转化为贸易保护结构和形式的可预测和可测试的差异，当然，比较政治学是政治学的核心领域之一，在那里它有着悠久而古老的传统。但是，尽管政治科学家经常关注不同政治制度对政治结果的影响。例如，一个国家中活跃的政党数量、政府的稳定性以及少数群体的代表性。主要调查员将讨论对经济政策结果的影响。通过研究贸易政策的比较政治学，他们将对政治制度的分析做出重要贡献。现有的总统制和议会制民主的正式模式还很不成熟，不允许政党和利益集团作为独立的参与者参与政治进程。主要研究者将发展形式理论的扩展，这将大大增加其现实性和领域。主要研究者以其早期对贸易政策的政治经济学的研究而闻名。这项工作发表在许多文章和两本书中，重点关注特殊利益集团在政策过程中发挥的作用。尽管早期的研究假设了一个特定的、程式化的政治制度和一套既定的制度，但主要研究者现在倾向于将他们的分析重新集中在不同政治环境下的结果比较上。这个项目将有助于我们理解贸易政策的形成和政治制度的重要性。主要研究人员将调查贸易政策如何取决于党的纪律的力量，总统制与议会制政治制度的结果如何不同，贸易政策如何受到选举规则和贸易官僚机构的影响。此外，他们将研究制度设置如何影响行业游说团体面临的激励，并将询问哪些制度安排最能产生服务于政体总体利益的政策。因此，该项目将有助于确定有助于形成更好的贸易政策的制度环境和贸易官僚机构的特征。该项目还将开发新的概念工具，帮助其他研究人员研究更广泛的经济政策的民主政策过程。研究结果将通过期刊出版和参加国家和国际会议的方式向社会科学研究界广泛传播。作者计划将研究生纳入该项目，他们将帮助收集数据，检查分析结果，并重新建立计算机模拟模型。通过这种方式，该项目将促进下一代经济学和政治学研究人员的教育。

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.