1. Partisanship, Mobility, and Trade Policy: How labor mobility shapes parties' trade policy positions.
- Author
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Qiang Zhou
- Subjects
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PARTISANSHIP , *TRADE regulation , *LABOR mobility , *COMMERCIAL policy - Abstract
This paper builds on the work by Milner and Judkins (2004) where they showed that partisan identity affects the party's trade policy position. In this paper, I will show that the impact of partisanship on trade policy position is also affected by the interindustry labor mobility levels within the country. As Hiscox (2002) has argued, different levels of interindustry factor mobility will give rise to different types of trade coalitions domestically: high factor mobility is conducive to broad based, class-cleavage trade coalitions, while low factor mobility is conducive to narrow, industry-specific coalitions. My paper examines the implications of this argument for trade policy preferences of parties. I argue that in countries that are relatively labor scarce, the trade policy positions of parties are not only shaped by their partisan identities, but also by the prevailing level of domestic interindustry labor mobility. In these countries, left parties are expected to favor more protectionism but the intensity of this pursuit increases with the rise of labor mobility; right parties will prefer freer trade policy positions but their preferences decline with the rise of labor mobility. I present a theory on the relationship between levels of interindustry labor mobility and degrees of political support from constituencies of different parties. I empirically test the arguments in this paper using data from capital rich countries, most of them OECD members. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2008