Milner, HV, and K Kubota. 2005. Why the Move to Free Trade? Democracy and Trade Policy in the Developing Countries. International Organization 59, no. 01: 107-143.
This article traces two global trends that emerged out of the 1970’s and attempts to casually link them using statistical methods. The first trend that is highlighted is the increase in democracy. The second trend that she highlights is the global reduction in tariffs. Her dependent variable is the later, and independent the former.
She initially looks at alternative explanations for changing economic policies. Some focus on economic crises. Others talk about external, ideational pressure emanating from hegemonic forces. Finally, and oddly multicolliniar with her second example, some examine the rise of neoliberal policies as being a force that contributes to decreases in tariffs. She rejects these as being sufficient to explain the global decrease in trade tariffs. For her, this change is accounted for by the increase in global democracy.
Firstly, she makes a causal claim about her variables and tries to construct a qualitative argument for why they are connected. She claims that democracies are better than autocracies at freeing governance from selective interest groups (113). She also claims that the “selectorate”, the group of people that legitimize and support the rule of a politician, changes sufficiently in a democracy. The selectorate in a democracy will be interested in more free trade because this will benefit the whole population. In an autocratic regime, the selectorate will be a small interest group and they will be more interested in promoting protectionist measures (115-7).
“Democratization will thus enfranchise a new group of voters with preferences for lower levels of protectionism” (116).
“In sum, in developing countries where autocratic governments depend on support from a small selectorate and thus are not responsive to the overall population, the governments can employ extensive protectionism. Democratization, however, may break down the old coalition supporting protectionism, and can thus lead to change in the status quo” (117).
She goes on to deploy a (relatively) large-n study of 179 countries, Polity IV democracy numbers and relatively weak tariff numbers (by her own omission – p. 122). She finds, through OLS analysis, that there is a correlation between levels of democratization and decreased tariffs. This, she concludes, links up with her qualitative account of how democracy causes reductions in tariffs.
A critique of this paper could go something like this: the causation that she highlights is not very strong, though it clearly does exist. However, this weak causation does not at all mean that her qualitative story is legitimate. The drivers of the linkage between democracy and reduced tariffs could be one of many things, and this research project does little to promote a humble approach to understanding why a slight quantitative correlation may be present.
It is really interesting that there is some correlation between her independent and dependent variables. However, her case is weakly made and her qualitative story is full of holes.
