Partisanship and international trade: Some international evidence

Abstract

This paper investigates the attitudes of political parties to international trade in 23 OECD countries in the period 1972–2004. Employing different datasets and various measures of trade openness, we examine how government ideology affects trade policy preferences and whether this relationship depends on international and domestic factors by employing the panel data techniques. Our main findings are that an increase in the leftist orientation of the government leads to more restrictive or less open trade policies, while right-oriented parties are likely to express more favor to trade openness. Secondly, international factors such as globalization in political and social dimension as well as financial openness, have a strong positive influence on a given party’s trade policy preferences. Thirdly, we offer clear evidence that a political party will change its partisan positions due to the influence of the domestic economic and institutional environment.