International trade and domestic politics: improving on Rogowski's model of political alignments

Ronald Rogowski's work offers valuable insight into the impact of changing trade exposure on domestic politics. Exploring the political implications of the well-known factor endowments model of international trade theory, Rogowski argues that owners of relatively abundant productive factors will form a free-trading coalition against owners of relatively scarce productive factors, who will align in favor of protection. Rogowski's parsimonious three-factor version of the factor endowments theory—although offering valuable insight into the politics of less developed economies, including today's developed economies in earlier centuries—produces significant anomalies when applied to advanced economies. Intuitive logic and empirical research, especially the Leontief paradox, suggest that the highly complex division of labor found in developed countries will confound the simplicity of the three-factor model. Edward Learner's multifactor model suggests solutions to the anomalies that afflict Rogowski's simpler model when applied to recent politics in the United States and Europe.