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Understanding International Trade Policies: An Emerging Synthesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

John S. Odell
Affiliation:
International Studies at the University of Southern California.
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Abstract

The international trade problems of the 1980s stimulated an expansion of scholarship on trade policies by economists and political scientists. At least four distinct theoretical perspectives weave their way through recent literature that concentrates on the United States—emphasizing market conditions, policy beliefs and values, national political institutions, and global structures, respectively. New studies in each of these traditions advance beyond the work of their predecessors, but none of the perspectives has yet proved adequate as a single unifying vehicle. Nevertheless, we can also see clear movement toward a synthesis, with single works blending insights from several traditions. Thus, the books under review do not all fall neatly into the familiar exclusive categories of “economics” or “political science.” The emerging synthesis needs strengthening in several ways, including the development of “conditioning hypotheses” that will reduce remaining apparent confusions.

Type
Review Article
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1990

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References

1 See parts of Robert Stern's volume not reviewed here, and Krugman, Paul R., ed., Strategic Trade Policy and the New International Economics (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1986).Google Scholar This literature is surveyed by David Richardson, J., “The Political Economy of Strategic Trade Policy,” International Organization 44 (Winter 1990), 107–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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12 See Goldstein, Judith, “The Impact of Ideas on Trade Policy: The Origins of U.S. Agricultural and Manufacturing Policies,” International Organization 43 (Winter 1989), 3172.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For comprehensive reviews, see Odell, John S., U.S. International Monetary Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 5878Google Scholar and passim, and Hall, Peter A., ed., The Political Power of Economic Ideas: Keynesianism across Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).Google Scholar For recent related applications, see Adler, Emanuel, “Ideological ‘Guerrillas’ and the Quest for Technological Autonomy: Brazil's Domestic Computer Industry,” International Organization 40 (Summer 1986), 673706CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rohrlich, Paul Egon, “Economic Culture and Foreign Policy: The Cognitive Analysis of Economic Policy Making,” International Organization 41 (Winter 1987), 6192CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Odell, John S., “From London to Bretton Woods: Sources of Change in Bargaining Strategies and Outcomes,” Journal of Public Policy 8 (July-December 1988), 287316CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and other articles in the same issue; Kapstein, Ethan B., “Resolving the Regulator's Dilemma: International Coordination of Banking Regulations,” International Organization 43 (Spring 1989), 323–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Haas, Peter M., “Do Regimes Matter? Epistemic Communities and Mediterranean Pollution Control,” International Organization 43 (Summer 1989), 377404.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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16 Stephen V. Marks and John McArthur extend this analysis specifically to congressional voting on protection for the automobile industry; they find that ideology also influences this behavior independently of constituency interest, at least when the member faces a low opportunity cost of voting his or her beliefs. “Empirical Analyses of the Determinants of Protection: A Survey and Some New Results,” in Odell, John S. and Wille', Thomas D., eds., International Trade Policies: Gains from Exchange between Economics and Political Science (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990).Google Scholar

17 Evans, Peter B., Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, and Skocpol, Theda, eds., Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar More relevant for trade policy are Katzenstein, Peter, ed., Between Power and Plenty (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978)Google Scholar; Pastor, Robert A., Congress and the Politics of U.S. Foreign Economic Policy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980)Google Scholar; John Ikenberry, G., Lake, David A., and Mastanduno, Michael, eds., The State and American Foreign Economic Policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; and Mares, David, “Domestic Institutions and Shifts in Trade and Development Policy: Colombia 1951–1968,” in Odell and Willett (fn. 16), 193224.Google Scholar

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19 Also see Haggard, Stephan, “The Institutional Foundations of Hegemony: Explaining the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934,” International Organization 42 (Winter 1988), 91120CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which links this innovation to requirements of international trade negotiations, and thus to the fourth analytical perspective.

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23 Other recent research on American government is also developing institutionally richer models. See, e.g., Shepsle, Kenneth A. and Weingast, Barry R., “The Institutional Foundations of Committee Power,” American Political Science Review 81 (March 1987), 85104CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Baron, David P. and Ferejohn, John A., “Bargaining in Legislatures,” American Political Science Review 83 (December 1989), 1,181–1,206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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26 Cognitive interpretations might seem to introduce some interpretive or phenomenological elements, but in many cases they are offered as primitive social-scientific hypotheses to be sharpened and tested in principle in the same manner as other hypotheses.

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29 Caves, Richard E., “Economic Models of Political Choice: Canada's Tariff Structure,” Canadian Journal of Economics 9 (May 1976), 278300CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Helleiner, G. K., “The Political Economy of Canada's Tariff Structure: An Alternative Model,” Canadian Journal of Economics 10 (May 1977), 318–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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31 E.g., Katzenstein, Peter, ed., Between Power and Plenty (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978)Google Scholar; Conybeare, John A. C., “Tariff Protection in Developed and Developing Countries,” International Organization 37 (Summer 1983), 441–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gallarotti (fn. 9).

32 A sampling of recent works that are related in some way could include Hosoya, Chihiro, “Relations between the European Communities and Japan,” Journal of Common Market Studies 18 (December 1979), 159–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Volker, E.L.M., ed., Protectionism and the European Community (Deventer, The Netherlands: Kluwer Law & Taxation Publishers, 1983)Google Scholar; Wallace, Helen, Wallace, William, and Webb, Carole, eds., Policy Making in the European Community, 2d ed. (New York: John Wiley, 1983)Google Scholar; Kahler, Miles, “European Protectionism in Theory and Practice,” World Politics 37 (July 1985), 475502CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hilf, Meinhard, Jacobs, Francis G., and Petersmann, Ernst-Ulrich, eds., The European Community and the GATT (Deventer, The Netherlands: Kluwer Law & Taxation Publishers, 1986)Google Scholar; Winham (fn. 4), passim; Baldwin, Robert E., Hamilton, Carl B., and Sapir, André, eds., Issues in US-EC Trade Relations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Koopmann, Georg and Scharrer, Hans-Eckart, “EC Trade Policy beyond 1992,” Intereconomics 23 (September/October 1989), 207–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and works cited earlier.

33 For windows into those topics, see, respectively Cappelan, Adne, Gleditsch, Nils Peter, and Bjerkholt, Olav, “Military Spending and Economic Growth in the OECD Countries,” Journal of Peace Research 21 (November 1984); 361–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Faini, Riccardo, Annez, Patricia, and Taylor, Lance, “Defense Spending, Economic Structure and Growth: Evidence among Countries and over Time,” Economic Development and Cultural Change 32 (April 1984); 487–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goldstein, Joshua, Long Cycles: Prosperity and War in the Modern Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Holzman, Franklyn D. and Legvold, Robert, “The Economics and Politics of East-West Relations,” in Fred Bergsten, C. and Krause, Laurence B., eds., World Politics and International Economics (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1975)Google Scholar; Baldwin, David, Economic Statecraft (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985)Google Scholar; and Hufbauer et al. (fn. 2).

34 Holsti, K. J., in “Politics in Command:. Foreign Trade as National Security Policy,” International Organization 40 (Summer 1986), 643–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar, suggests reasons for such variations. James Alt and Barry Eichengreen formalize such linkages as “parallel games,” and explore their implications in “Parallel and Overlapping Games: Theory and an Application to the European Gas Trade,” in Odell and Willett (fn. 16).

35 See Haggard, Stephan and Simmons, Beth A., “Theories of International Regimes,” International Organization 41 (Summer 1987), 491517.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 Lake (p. 225) notes historical cross-national contrasts supporting the importance of state centralization.

37 See Gowa, Joanne, “Public Goods and Political Institutions: Trade and Monetary Policy Processes in the United States,” International Organization 42 (Winter 1988), 1532.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On the other hand, changes in the structure of trade interests over the long term might also reshape the institutions that permit this result.

38 This suggestion is elaborated further in Dillon, Patricia, Odell, John S., and Willett, Thomas D., “Future Directions in the Analysis of Trade Policies,” in Odell and Willett (fn. 16), 273–83.Google Scholar