Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-8mjnm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-19T02:02:58.870Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Trade and the variety of democratic institutions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Ronald Rogowski
Affiliation:
Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Get access

Abstract

Students of comparative politics have long acknowledged the importance of such institutional factors as electoral systems, parliamentary versus presidential rule, and the strength of parties; but they have either regarded the institutions as given or have explained them entirely in domestic terms (associating proportional representation, for example, with the intensity of social cleavages). In economically advanced democracies, however, these institutional aspects can be plausibly linked to dependence on trade: proportional representation, the parliamentary system, strong parties, and large electoral districts have “survival value” for developed democracies exposed to trade. That the recently revived agitation for proportional representation in the United Kingdom has been cast explicitly in terms of economic necessity and dependence on trade adds force to this argument, and suggests the need for further historical research on other cases of institutional adaptation and change.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1987

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. See, for example, Dahl, Robert A., ed., Political Oppositions in Western Democracies (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1966), pp. 349352Google Scholar.

2. Hermens, F. A., Democracy or Anarchy? A Study of Proportional Representation (Notre Dame, Ind.: The Review of Politics, 1941Google Scholar); Lakeman, Enid and Lambert, James D., Voting in Democracies: A Study of Majority and Proportional Electoral Systems (London: Faber & Faber, 1955Google Scholar); Duverger, Maurice, Political Parlies, trans. Barbara and Robert North (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1959Google Scholar); Rae, Douglas W., The Political Consequences of Electoral Laws (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1971Google Scholar); Richard, Katz A.Theory of Parties and Electoral Systems (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980)Google Scholar.

3. Rae, , Political Consequences, pp. 101103Google Scholar.

4. Beyme, Klaus von, Parteien in westlichen Demokratien (Munich: R. Piper & Co., 1982), pp. 319322Google Scholar.

5. Pomper, Gerald M., Elections in America: Control and Influence in Democratic Politics (New York and Toronto: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1968), p. 48Google Scholar.

6. See, for example, Key, V. O. Jr, Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups, 4th ed. (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1958), pp. 229230Google Scholar; and Schattschneider, E. E., Party Government (New York: Rinehart, 1942)Google Scholar.

7. Key, , Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups, pp. 701706Google Scholar; Duverger, , Political Parties, p. 393Google Scholar ff.; Epstein, Leon D., Political Parties in Western Democracies (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1967), pp. 316317Google Scholar; Dahl, , Political Oppositions, p. 350Google Scholar.

8. E.g., Rae, Political Consequences, chap. 7.

9. Katz, , Parties and Electoral Systems, pp. 3840Google Scholar.

10. Lijphart, Arend, “Advances in the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems,” World Politics 36 (04 1984), p. 429CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11. Williams, Philip M., Crisis and Compromise: Politics in the Fourth Republic (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., Anchor Books, 1966), pp. 322324Google Scholar; Key, , Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups, p. 710Google Scholar.

12. Lijphart, , “Comparative Study of Electoral Systems,” p. 426Google Scholar.

13. Rae, Political Consequences, especially chap. 9.

14. For a full and useful argument of the general claim, see Milnor, A. J., Elections and Political Stability (Boston: Little Brown, 1969), especially chap. 8Google Scholar.

15. Lakeman, and Lambert, , Voting in Democracies, p. 169Google Scholar; Lijphart, Arend, The Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968), pp. 110111, 129, and 171–176Google Scholar.

16. Brenan, Gerald, The Spanish Labyrinth: An Account of the Social and Political Background of the Civil War, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950), pp. 265266Google Scholar; Dolf Stemberger and Bernhard Vogel, with the assistance of Nohlen, Dieter, Die Wahl der Parlamente und anderer Staatsorgane: Ein Handbuch, vol. 1, Europa (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1969), pp. 12571258Google Scholar.

17. Huntington, Samuel P., Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1968), pp. 125126Google Scholar.

18. Williams, Philip and Harrison, Martin, Politics and Society in de Gaulle's Republic (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Anchor Books, 1973), p. 206Google Scholar; de Gaulle, Charles, Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavor, trans. Terence Kilmartin (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1971), p. 6Google Scholar

19. Dahl, Robert A. and Tufte, Edward R., Size and Democracy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1973), chaps. 3 and 5, seem to me to permit this inferenceGoogle Scholar.

20. Cameron, David R., “The Expansion of the Public Economy: A Comparative Analysis,” American Political Science Review 72 (1978), pp. 12431261CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21. Katzenstein, Peter J., Small States in World Markets: Industrial Policy in Europe (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1985), pp. 150156Google Scholar.

22. Hirschman, Albert O., National Power and the Structure of Foreign Trade (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1945), p. 17ffGoogle Scholar.

23. A few quite small and objectively trade-dependent economies pursue protection, albeit at enormous cost. New Zealand is the example most frequently adduced. See, for example, Olson, Mancur, The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1982), pp. 132136. As I shall suggest shortly, New Zealand's political structure may well be associated with its perversity of policyGoogle Scholar.

24. Exceptional departures are of course possible, when one country (or a few that collaborate) monopolizes some product for which there are no ready substitutes-for example, diamonds or, briefly, oil.

25. As Paul Samuelson demonstrated in a fundamental theorem, free trade even in commodities is usually enough to equalize factor prices. Hence the result I describe follows even if capital and labor do not, or cannot, migrate. Samuelson, Paul A., “International Trade and the Equalization of Factor Prices,” The Economic Journal 58 (1948), pp. 163184CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26. Wallerstein, Immanuel, The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-System (New York: Academic Press, 1974)Google Scholar.

27. Moore, Barrington Jr, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), chap. 2Google Scholar.

28. North, Douglass C. and Thomas, Robert Paul, The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), p. 20CrossRefGoogle Scholar. North, Douglass, Structure and Change in Economic History (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1981), pp. 118119Google Scholar.

29. “Rent” is of course meant here in its economic, not its everyday, sense, i.e. roughly as a return derived by market power or coercion (typically by a monopoly) rather than by competition. More technically, “Rent [is]…any income received by a factor over the amount necessary to keep that factor in its present employment.” Hanson, John Lloyd, A Dictionary of Economics and Commerce, 5th ed. (Plymouth: Macdonald and Evans, 1977), p. 395Google Scholar.

30. Katzenstein, , Small Stales in World Markets, pp. 157160Google Scholar.

31. Schattschneider, E. E., Politics, Pressures, and the Tariff (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1935Google Scholar), epilogue; Hody, Cynthia Ann, “From Protectionism to Liberalism: Institutional Change and the Politics of American Trade Policy.” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1986Google Scholar.

32. Punnett, R. M., British Government and Politics, 2nd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1971), p. 139ff.Google Scholar; Chase, Harold W., Holt, Robert T., and Turner, John E., American Government in Comparative Perspective (New York and London: Franklin Watts, 1980), chap. 3Google Scholar.

33. To put the matter another way, disciplined parties in effect create larger (or, as Olson, in Rise and Decline of Nations, would say, more “encompassing”) constitutencies. Such parties' strategies are determined less by local considerations than by the pursuit of a national majority.

34. Katz, Parties and Electoral Systems.

35. Hermens, Democracy or Anarchy; Downs, Anthony, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1957), chap. 8Google Scholar.

36. Hermens, , Democracy or Anarchy, pp. 6466Google Scholar.

37. See particularly McKelvey, Richard, “Intransitivities in Multi-Dimensional Voting Models and Some Implications for Agenda Control,” Journal of Economic Theory 12 (1976), pp. 472482CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38. Sternberger, and Vogel, , Wahl der Parlamente, vol. 1, pp. 474476Google Scholar.

39. See, for example, Cobban, Alfred, A History of Modern France, vol. 3, France of the Republics, 1871–1962 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965), pp. 123 and 127Google Scholar.

40. Katzenstein, , Small States in World Markets, pp. 10, 32, and 100–103Google Scholar. That PR would stabilize policy was, interestingly, a principal argument for many of the system's early advocates. Count Goblet d'Alviella contended that “changes of political orientation will be less frequent and slower … [there will be] substitution of evolution for revolution.” John Humphreys emphasized that PR worked against “those violent swings of the pendulum which have so often been a pronounced feature of election.” C. G. Hoag and G. H. Hallett argued that under the plurality system “the change in election results is out of all proportion to the change in public opinion … [but] PR … records each shift in its right proportions.” Count [Eugene/ d'Alviella, Goblet, La représentation proportionelle en Belgique: l'histoire d'une riform (Brussels and Paris: Weissenbruch, 1900), p. 19Google Scholar; Humphreys, John H., Proportional Representation: A Study in Methods of Election (London: Methuen, 1911), p. 219Google Scholar; Hoag, Clarence Gilbert and Hallett, George Hervey Jr, Proportional Representation (New York: Macmillan, 1926), p. 96Google Scholar.

41. Rae, , Political Consequences, p. 167Google Scholar.

42. Ibid., p. 169.

43. Lijphart, , Politics of Accommodation, pp. 25 and 110–111Google Scholar.

44. Katzenstein, Small States in World Markets.

45. McKelvey, “Intransitivities in Multi-Dimensional Voting Models.”

46. Axelrod, Robert, Conflict of Interest (Chicago: Markham, 1970)Google Scholar.

47. E.g., de Swaan, Abram, Coalition Theories and Cabinet Formations: A Study of Formal Theories of Coalition Formation Applied to Nine European Parliaments after 1918 (San Francisco and Washington: Jossey-Bass; Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1973)Google Scholar.

48. Rae, , Political Consequences, pp. 170174Google Scholar.

49. Ibid., pp. 158–160.

50. Ibid., p. 175.

51. The Kendall-Stuart tau-c is a useful measure of association where both underlying variables are ordinal and where the rows and columns are unequal in number. Moreover, it is the most conservative of the available measures for such a case. (The Goodman-Kruskal gamma, for example, would suggest a stronger association in each of the cases described here.)

52. The regression equation tells us, in essence, that the number of parliamentary constituencies will be predicted by the natural number e to the power [5.31 – .0299(trade(100)/GDP)]. But for any function g = ef(x), dg/dx = ef(x) (df/dx); hence for any given value T of trade as a percentage of GDP, the derivative is [e(5.31-.099T)] (-.0299).

53. I mean the t-score only as an index of goodness of fit. I am well aware that these nations do not constitute a random sample of all developed economies.

54. Dahl, and Tufte, , Size and Democracy, pp. 8182Google Scholar.

55. E.g., Nie, Norman H., Verba, Sidney, and Petrocik, John R., The Changing American Voter (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1976), p. 303n and cited sourcesGoogle Scholar.

56. See, for example, Asher, Herbert B., Causal Modelling, Sage University Paper on Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences, 07–003 (Beverly Hills and London: Sage Publications, 1976), especially pp. 2938Google Scholar.

57. Here the independent variable is simply population in millions. I have experimented with various transformations, including ln of population and the cube root of population (following a suggestion based on the work of Prof. Rein Taagepera of the University of California, Irvine); in no case was the impact of population increased.

58. Janda, Kenneth, Political Parties: A Cross-National Survey (New York: Free Press, 1980)Google Scholar.

59. Ibid., section entitled “Variable 9.01.”

60. Hermens, , Democracy or Anarchy, pp. 4158Google Scholar; Katz, , Parties and Electoral Systems, p. 32Google Scholar.

61. See, inter alia: Verney, Douglas V., Parliamentary Reform in Sweden, 1866–1921 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1957)Google Scholar; Pugh, Martin, Electoral Reform in War and Peace, 1906–18 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978)Google Scholar; Goblet d'Alviella, La représentation proportionelle en Belgique; and the recent comparative study of Andrew McLaren Carstairs, A Short History of Electoral Systems in Western Europe (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1980)Google Scholar.

62. Contrast, for example, Verney's tame account of the Swedish reforms of 1917–18—Parliamentary Reform in Sweden, chap. 11—with the far more revealing version of Sven Söderpalm, Anders, Wallenberg och Branting (Lund: Gleerups/Tema, 1970)Google Scholar.

63. Equally, one can ask why some states have retained PR almost unquestioningly since its original adoption, while others—notably Germany, in the late Weimar years, in 1949, and between 1966 and 1969—have repeatedly re-opened the debate. (I owe this point to an anonymous referee.)

64. Viscount Caldecote (Robert Andrew Inskip), Industry Needs Electoral Reform (London: CAER, 1975), emphasis addedGoogle Scholar.

65. Walkland, S. A., “The Report of the Hansard Society Commission on Electoral Reform” (book review), Parliamentary Affairs 29 (Autumn 1976), p. 453Google Scholar; Pugh, Martin, “Political Parties and the Campaign for Proportional Representation 1905–1914,” Parliamentary Affairs 33 (Summer 1980), p. 306Google Scholar; Conservative Action for Electoral Reform, Reform of the Voting System: A Message to Conservatives (London: CAER, 1984), p. 6Google Scholar.

66. Finer, S. E., ed., Adversary Politics and Electoral Reform (London: Anthony Wigram, 1975)Google Scholar.

67. Ibid., p. 140.

68. Hansard Society for Parliamentary Government, Report of the Hansard Society Commission on Electoral Reform (London: Hansard Society, 1976Google Scholar); idem, Politics and Industry: The Great Mismatch (London: Hansard Society, 1979).

69. Walkland, , “Report of the Hansard Society,” p. 453Google Scholar; Hansard Society, Politics and Industry, p. 3.

70. Bogdanor, Vernon, The People and the Party System: The Referendum and Electoral Reform in British Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 194 and 196Google Scholar.

71. Pugh, ‘Campaign for Proportional Representation.’ At this point, I must dispel a misconception occasionally encountered even among persons otherwise well-informed on British politics, namely that the U.K.'s renewed interest in PR has been stimulated principally by the direct elections to the European Parliament. In fact, the British controversy considerably antedates European elections. For the true recent history of the issue, see the useful sketches of Pugh (despite the title of his essay, he alludes frequently to the present-day debate) and Walkland, “Report of the Hansard Society.”

72. A recent and representative example is Gallarotti, Giulio M., “Toward a Business-Cycle Model of Tariffs,” International Organization 39 (Winter 1985), pp. 155187CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

73. Dahl and Tufte, Size and Democracy; Katzenstein, Small States in World Markets.

74. Of course, states large enough to affect world prices by their tariff policies may find that their optimal tariff is greater than zero even when transportation is costless. But they will not find autarky advantageous; nor, if I am right, will they be likely to attain their optimal tariff through institutions that give wide sway to local interests or private wealth.

75. Pirenne, Henri, Mohammed and Charlemagne (London: Allen and Unwin, 1939)Google Scholar.

76. Feigenbaum, Harvey, “Power and the Product Cycle: The International Market and French Nuclear Power,” paper delivered at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D. C., 1982Google Scholar.

77. Cf. Rosecrance, Richard, The Rise of the Trading State: Commerce and Conquest in the Modern World (New York: Basic Books, 1986)Google Scholar.

78. Rogowski, Ronald, “Structure, Growth, and Power: Three Rationalist Accounts,” International Organization 37 (Autumn 1983), p. 730CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

79. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies.