Markets, coalitions and institutions: International trade integration and political reforms in developing countries

In the past few decades, numerous countries around the world have gone through a process of political liberalization. These political liberalizations have occurred contemporaneously with increasing trade integration among countries around the world. This dissertation examines the relationship between these two phenomena by investigating the conditions under which trade integration facilitates political liberalization.; International trade integration facilitates domestic political liberalization under two conditions: when countries are excluded from as well as included in trade integration, and when the resulting economic changes affect the coalition supporting authoritarian leaders. Economic and political ramifications of trade integration are not limited solely to countries integrating their trade. In particular, countries' exclusion from trade integration lowers their access to other countries' markets. When such changes in countries' external market access affect the authoritarian leaders' coalition, which extracts significant benefits from international trade, the changes lead to politically destabilizing pressures on the authoritarian regimes. Thus, trade integration reduces the coalition members' dependence on authoritarian leaders as well as the leaders' role in economically providing for their coalition. In this context, authoritarian leaders strategically pursue incremental political liberalization to prolong their stay in power.; I evaluate this argument against three types of evidence and find support for it. A historical analysis of the nineteenth century Europe reveals that trade integration in that period both included and excluded countries and that it contributed to political liberalization in countries. Statistical analyses of 99 countries between 1972 and 2000 show that countries' coalition type and changes in their external market access explain countries' political liberalization, controlling for existing explanations. Case studies demonstrate that the reduction in its access to the European market contributed to Uruguay's political liberalization in the 1980s, whereas Tunisia's continued access to the European market in the 1990s contributed to maintaining the authoritarian regime. These findings improve our understanding of the international trading system and domestic political liberalizations as well as the interaction between trade integration and authoritarian politics.