Entering the global economy: Democracy, party strength, and international trade (India)

What explains the variation of trade protection across countries and years? In an effort to answer that question, I build and test theory relating party strength to trade policy outcomes in democracies. I argue that, other things equal, countries with strong parties will produce freer trade policies. I focus on two aspects of party strength---organizational centralization and stable party linkages to large groups in the electorate. I contend that legislative logrolls leading to high protection are significantly less likely in countries with centralized parties. Further, because parties with stable linkages to the electorate have longer time horizons, I argue that they will generally prefer open trade policies that provide long-run economic benefits. Finally, I contend that parties that are linked to a large portion of the electorate will be inclined to provide public goods like freer trade over particularistic rents. I test these relationships both with a large quantitative model and with a qualitative case study of India. The quantitative analysis, examining democracies from 1975--2000 and using a newly coded measure of party centralization, provides broad evidence for the generalizability the theory. The case study of India, based partly on field work in Delhi, indicates that as expected, decentralization and unstable electorate linkages both increase protectionist side payments, but in very different ways.