Kono, Daniel Yuichi and Rickard, Stephanie J. 
ORCID: 0000-0001-7886-9513
(2014)
Buying national: democracy, public procurement, and international trade.
International Interactions, 40 (5).
pp. 657-682.
ISSN 0305-0629
Abstract
Many studies show that democracy promotes freer trade. However, because they typically focus on “at-the-border” barriers such as tariffs, we know little about democracy’s effects on “behind-the-border” barriers such as discrimination in government procurement. We address this question by asking how democracy affects governments’ incentives to discriminate against foreigners when buying goods and services. We argue that “buy national” policies have unclear costs and are harder to attack than policies that visibly interfere with consumers’ ability to buy foreign goods. This makes such provisions more attractive than tariffs to democratic leaders seeking reelection. We thus hypothesize that democracy leads to lower tariffs but to greater discrimination in public procurement. We support this hypothesis with an analysis of procurement and imports in 138 countries from 1990 to 2008. Our results imply that a full understanding of the democracy–trade policy relationship requires attention to increasingly prominent behind-the-border barriers to trade.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Official URL: | http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/gini20/current |
| Additional Information: | © 2014 Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group |
| Divisions: | Government |
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor J Political Science > JA Political science (General) J Political Science > JZ International relations |
| Date Deposited: | 19 Nov 2014 15:00 |
| Last Modified: | 24 Apr 2024 07:54 |
| URI: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/60195 |
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