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A Protectionist Bias in Proportional Politics: Assessing How Electoral Institutions Affect Tariff Levels

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  • Pinheiro, Flavio

Abstract

o electoral rules affect the level of trade protection in democratic countries? Recent studies indicate that when it comes to trade protection, electoral systems do matter; however, a thorough analysis of the literature unveils the fact that competing theories and mixed findings still prevail. In this work, I intend to solve the empirical and theoretical puzzle involving political representation and trade policy by offering and testing an alternative explanation. My answer lies in the Stigler-Peltzman (S-P) analysis of regulation, formalized by Chang et al. in \emph{Electoral Systems and the Balance of Consumer-Producer Power}. I adapt their theory and evaluate the effect of electoral institutions on the level of trade protection. More specifically, I analyze 53 democracies from 1996 to 2008 and estimate the effect of electoral systems' level of responsiveness, measured as electoral disproportionality, on trade protection. The findings indicate that the higher the rate of proportionality created by electoral institutions, the greater the level of protection that politicians will provide for special interest groups, especially in non-presidential democracies.

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  • Pinheiro, Flavio, 2014. "A Protectionist Bias in Proportional Politics: Assessing How Electoral Institutions Affect Tariff Levels," SocArXiv xp5zm, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:xp5zm
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/xp5zm
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