Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

This article examines the role of national-level politics and economics on the setting of supranational trade policy within the European Union (EU). It argues that, though EU member states must have a uniform tariff schedule, significant variation remains in the average, trade-weighted tariff because each country has a different bundle of imports into each country. Thus, some countries import more high-tariff goods than others. This article argues that a significant part of this variation is intentional, because countries know which goods they import. Therefore, countries that prefer protection push for tariffs on products they import whereas countries that prefer free trade push for liberalization on products they import, with these preferences being driven by the amount of institutional access provided to interest groups and the economic conditions in the member states. This argument is tested with regression analyses of a panel of average tariff rates in the EU member states and the tariff schedule agreed to by the EU at the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

Keywords

common external tariff domestic politics trade policy

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Baldwin, Matthew (2006) `EU Trade Politics - Heaven or Hell?', Journal of European Public Policy 13(6): 926-42.

Beck, Nathaniel and Jonathan N. Katz (1995) `What to Do (and Not to Do) with Time-Series Cross-Section Data', American Journal of Political Science 89(3): 634-47.

Davis, Christina L. (2004) `International Institutions and Issue Linkage: Building Support for Agricultural Trade Liberalization', American Political Science Review 98(1): 153-69.

De Bievre, Dirk and Andreas Dür (2005) `Constituency Interests and Delegation in European and American Trade Policy', Comparative Political Studies 38(10): 1271-96.

Dür, Andreas (2006) `Economic Interests and the Making of EU Trade Policy', mimeo.

Ehrlich, Sean D. (2005) `Access to Protection: Democratic Institutions, Interest Group Politics, and International Trade Theory', PhD dissertation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Ehrlich, Sean D. (2007) `Access to Protection: Domestic Institutions and Trade Policies in Democracies', International Organization 61(3): 571-605.

Grossman, Gene M. and Elhanan Helpman (2002) Interest Groups and Trade Policy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Hanson, Brian T. (1998) `What Happened to Fortress Europe? External Trade Policy Liberalization in the European Union', International Organization 52(1): 55-85.

10.

Henisz, Witold (2006) `Political Constraint Index Dataset', URL (consulted July 2008): http://www.-management.wharton.upenn.edu/henisz/ .

11.

Katzenstein, Peter (1985) Small States in World Markets: Industrial Policy in Europe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

12.

Magee, Stephen P. , William A. Brock and Leslie Young (1989) Black Hole Tariffs and Endogenous Policy Theory: Political Economy in General Equilibrium. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

13.

Meunier, Sophie (2005) Trading Voices: The European Union in International Commercial Negotiations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

14.

Milner, Helen V. (1988) Resisting Protectionism: Global Industries and the Politics of International Trade. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

15.

Mitchell, Brian R. (1995) International Historical Statistics. New York: Stockton Press.

16.

Moravcsik, Andrew (1993) `Preferences and Power in the European Community: A Liberal Intergovernmentalist Approach', Journal of Common Market Studies 31(4): 473-524.

17.

Olson, Mancur (1972) The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups, revised edn. New York: Schocken Books.

18.

Patterson, Lee Ann (1997) `Agricultural Policy Reform in the European Community: A Three-Level Game Analysis', International Organization 51(1): 135-65.

19.

Putnam, Robert D. (1988) `Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games', International Organization 42(3): 427-60.

20.

Rogowski, Ronald (1987) `Trade and the Variety of Democratic Institutions' , International Organization 41(2): 203-23.

21.

Schuknecht, Ludger (1991) `The Political Economy of EC Protectionism: National Protectionism Based on Article 115, Treaty of Rome', Public Choice 72(1): 37-50.

22.

Trefler, Daniel (1993) `Trade Liberalization and the Theory of Endogenous Protection', Journal of Political Economy 101(1): 138-60.

23.

Tsebelis, George (2002) Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press .

24.

Woolcock, Stephen (2005) `European Union Trade Policy: Domestic Institutions and Systemic Factors', in Dominic Kelly and Wyn Grant (eds) The Politics of International Trade in the Twenty-First Century: Actors, Issues and Regional Dynamics, pp. 234-51. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.23 MB

0.00 MB