Risking free trade : the politics of trade in Britain, Canada, Mexico, and the United States
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Risking free trade : the politics of trade in Britain, Canada, Mexico, and the United States
(Pitt series in policy and institutional studies)
University of Pittsburgh Press, c1996
- : pbk
Available at 12 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [153]-173) and index
Contents of Works
- Overview : why governments enact free trade
- Why did Peel repeal the corn laws?
- The new deal, the welfare state, and free trade
- The two-level gamble : why Canada enacted free trade
- NAFTA and solidarity : institutional design in Mexico
- Conclusion : high risks, low risks
Description and Table of Contents
Description
There are few issues as politically explosive as the liberalisation of trade, as recent controversies in the United States, Canada and Mexico have shown. While loosening trade restrictions may make sense for a nation's economy as a whole, it typically alienates powerful vested interests. Those interests can exact severe political costs for the government that enacts change. So why accept the risk? In this book, Michael Lusztig constructs a model to determine why and under what conditions governments take the free trade gamble. Working with the rational choice tradition, Lusztig's model sees government actors as political entrepreneurs, willing to risk the political costs of free trade for more lucrative objectives: creating or preserving alignments within the party's electoral support base. In contrast to other theories, this model does not assume that free trade is the first-order preference of government. Rather, it is a means to an end, a strategy, in a complex set of political games.
Lusztig uses his model to explain shifts to free trade in four cases: Britain's repeal of the Corn Laws; the United States' enactment of the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act (1934); Canada's decision to initiate continental free trade with the US in 1985; and Mexico's decision to pursue the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1990.
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