Page 119 - DECO503_INTERNATIONAL_TRADE_AND_FINANCE_ENGLISH

Unit 10 : Political Economy of Non-tariff Barriers : and Their Applications

more types of goods and services than would be the case in a country characterized by large electoral Notes
districts and less influential interest groups.
In addition to the number of parliamentary constituencies, another important institutional feature of
democracies concerns whether a list-system proportional representation (PR) or a winner-take-all
system exists. Rogowski notes, “Pressure groups are restrained where campaign resources or the legal
control of nominations are centralized in the hands of party leaders. Of course, such control is achieved
quite effectively in rigid list-system PR.”
We begin the following analysis by focusing on the effects of the number of parliamentary
constituencies on NTBs. We then analyze the effects of both the number of constituencies and whether
a state’s electoral system is winner-take-all or PR. We take this tack to determine whether our results
are robust with respect to the inclusion of PR in our model. Doing so is useful because some studies
have found that differences exist in the autonomy of policymakers among various PR systems and
that, in certain cases, public officials in PR systems may be vested with less autonomy than their
counterparts in winner-take-all systems.
10.3 Effects of the Interaction between Societal and Statist Factors on
Trade Policy

Although the relative merits of societal and statist approaches to the study of foreign economic policy
have been hotly debated, quantitative comparisons of them have been rare. Rarer still have been
empirical analyses of the impact of the interaction between societal and statist factors on trade policy.
The few previous studies of this sort have focused almost exclusively on U.S. commercial policy.
Additionally, much of their effort has been directed at explaining tariffs, rather than NTBs. However,
its unusual size and institutional structure may limit how broadly conclusions based on studies of
U.S. trade policy can be applied. Further, it is widely recognized that successive rounds of the GATT
limited the ability of member states to respond to demands for protection or to advance state interests
by imposing tariffs. Since the states we examine are all contracting parties to the GATT, our focus on
explaining NTBs (rather than tariffs) is especially important. Indeed, the need to analyze the effects
of factors that govern demands for and the provision of protection—as well as the interactions among
them—on cross-national patterns of NTBs is a glaring gap in the literature, and one that we seek to
redress.
We focus on two related issues concerning the interaction between societal and statist factors. As
noted above, some statists argue that the policies of states in which policymakers are poorly insulated
from societal pressures tend to reflect the interests of societal groups rather than the national interest.
There is also reason to expect increases in societal demands for protection during cyclical downturns
in the economy and when macroeconomic conditions undermine the competitiveness of a state’s
goods. Thus, one hypothesis we will examine is that the incidence of NTBs tends to be greatest in
states characterized by (1) high levels of unemployment and appreciated currencies and (2) domestic
institutions that undermine the insulation and autonomy of public officials with respect to pressure
groups.

What you mean by Statist Factor?

A second hypothesis we will test is that the incidence of NTBs is greatest in cases where both state
and societal actors display a preference for protection. Although much of the literature bearing on
the interaction between statist and societal factors has focused on the effects of divergent preferences
between state and societal actors, the possibility that their preferences might converge has been raised
in a number of studies, although it has not been analyzed in sufficient detail. If such a convergence is

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 113