Politicians, Voters, and Trade

Abstract

In Democracy and International Trade: Britain, France and the United States, 1860-1990, Daniel Verdier develops a general theory for explaining how trade policy is generated in democratic states. Eschewing traditional approaches to trade policy formation, Verdier argues that the key to understanding trade politics in democratic countries is the voter. Voters count because it is they who ultimately determine the constraints under which politicians seek and hold office. Competitive elections not only force office-seeking politicians to search out and articulate voter preferences in order to construct winning electoral coalitions, they also constrain officeholding politicians once they have attained power. Politicians who renege on campaign promises risk being thrown out by angry voters in the next election. As a result, the electoral connection ensures that voter preferences about trade policy become embodied in the strategies and behavior of both officeholders and office seekers. In democracies, Verdier contends, 'voters are sovereign (p. 294). Verdier's electoral delegation argument is both insightful and compelling. He argues that elections do not determine the specific content of trade policy, as is commonly thought, but rather the latitude with which officeholding politicians can formulate and pursue trade policy. When trade policy is central to building and maintaining a winning electoral coalition, politicians become highly constrained by voter preferences. Moreover, the need to maintain coalition unity forces politicians to articulate and pursue general policies (such as free trade) that reflect the interests of voters in broad economic classes, such as farmers, labor, or business. As trade policy becomes less salient to voters, however, the constraints on politicians loosen. This enables them to pursue particularistic policies that meet the demands of more narrowly defined economic interests, such as sector specific subsidies. Finally, when trade is highly salient to voters and becomes linked to an external security threat, the executive gains great autonomy to use trade policy as an instrument for pursuing national survival. In short, the nature, strength, and distribution of preferences within the electorate determines both the general content of trade policy and the basic form of trade politics. Thus, Verdier subsumes within a single framework models of trade politics based on class or party politics (Lipset and Rokkan, 1967), pressure politics (Schattschneider, 1935), and executive politics.* Verdier's argument is compelling because it focuses directly upon the distinctive feature of democracy-competitive elections-as key to understanding the policy process. It makes the critical-and all too often overlooked-point that politicians