Not the Size of the District but the Size of the Job:.

Scholars argue that large constituencies greater heterogeneity causes them to orient politicians away from ‘distributive’ or ‘pork-barrel’ politics. Asserting that protectionism is an example of such politics they attribute the relatively free-trading stance of the U.S. Presidency vis-a-vis the Congress and the Senate vis-a-vis the House to differences in constituency size. I argue in contrast that trade politics cannot be usefully be understood as distributive because lobbies are active on both sides of the issue. Larger constituencies ought to include lobbies on both sides of trade issues. By contrast, smaller ones should be more apt to be dominated by one camp, but no more or less protectionist on average. Empirically I show that state size is largely uncorrelated with trade policy positions among Senators, that Senators are less protectionist than Representatives even when constituency size is controlled for and even when they represent the same constituency. I show that the inter-cameral difference however is, like the inter-branch one, a post-war phenomenon, unlike constituency differences that purportedly explain it Having rejected the distributive/constituency size theory, I argue that the size of the job rather than the size of the district explains inter-cameral differences on trade. Senators’ and Presidents’ smaller numbers give each greater power which encourages them to act ‘responsibly’, reduces collective action problems and makes backers’ threats of punishment less credible. This factor, like constituency size, is not new, but only became crucial in the postwar era as elite opinion was won over to free trade and trade policy ceased to link groups to parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]