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Political Regimes and International Trade: The Democratic Difference Revisited

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2004

XINYUAN DAI
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801-3696 ([email protected]).

Abstract

How do domestic political institutions affect the outcomes of international trade negotiations? Specifically, are the aggregate trade barriers agreed upon by a democratic pair lower than those by a pair composed of a democracy and an autocracy? I revisit these important questions by highlighting some problematic aspect of the analysis by Mansfield, Milner, and Rosendorff (2000). Contrary to their central conclusion, I find that whether the aggregate trade barriers are lower for a democratic pair than those for a mixed pair depends on the preferences of the decision makers involved. Thus, although domestic political institutions are important, they alone are insufficient to predict a higher level of cooperation among democracies.

Type
FORUM
Copyright
© 2002 by the American Political Science Association

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