Importing Threat: Why Embedded Liberalism Fails

• In Event: Domestic Politics of International Political Economy

Abstract

Among the principle concerns of international political economy is the relationship between economic conditions to individual evaluations of policy choices and candidates. In trade politics, voters appear to behave sociotropically, in that they appear more responsive to outcomes of the region and nation over measures of individual material interests. We argue that this behavior is consistent with material voters imperfectly evaluating politicians on the basis of their efforts to redistribute commercial gains and in the match between their overall foreign policy orientation and their region and nation’s competitive position in the world. In this logic, assistance programs, such as those called for to embedded liberalism, have the disadvantage of sending a negative signal to voters about the prospects for their region and nation in a competitive environment. Using novel microdata from the US Department of Labor TAA program, we show that TAA can exacerbate the electoral effects of trade shocks, counterintuitively driving voters away from pro-distribution politicians and toward hawkish candidates.

Authors

• Minju Kim, University of Chicago

• Robert Gulotty, The University of Chicago