Join the Political Economy Research Group in their closing lecture of the Fall term, by Andreas Dür (University of Salzburg).
Zoom link available here
If you'd like Prof. Dür’s article, please write to perg@ceu.edu.
ABSTRACT / Do legislators' trade attitudes reflect constituency interests? We tackle this question by looking at the link between the trade competitiveness of electoral districts and legislators' trade attitudes. Concretely, we expect legislators from districts that are highly competitive in international trade to be more supportive of trade agreements than legislators from noncompetitive districts. Data based on surveys with 3,576 legislators from 16 Latin American countries and 48 legislative periods between 2005 and 2019 allow us to test our expectation. The surveys captured legislators' attitudes towards preferential trade agreements with the United States, the European Union, and the Pacific Alliance. We measure districts' trade competitiveness with an innovative combination of household survey and trade data. The evidence shows that trade competitiveness indeed positively correlates with legislators' support for trade agreements. This finding is not driven by endogeneity, and holds for all three agreements and after controlling for legislators' ideology, partisanship, and individual and constituency characteristics. In further evidence, we show how context matters for the relative importance of constituent interests. The paper has implications for research on trade policy-making, public opinion towards trade, and legislator behavior.
BIO / ANDREAS DÜR IS PROFESSOR OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS AT THE DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SALZBURG, AUSTRIA. HE HOLDS A PHD FROM EUI IN FLORENCE (2004). PRIOR TO TAKING UP HIS CURRENT POSITION, HE WAS A RESEARCH FELLOW AT THE MANNHEIM CENTRE FOR EUROPEAN SOCIAL RESEARCH (2003-2005) AND A LECTURER AT UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN (2005-2009). DÜR HAS PUBLISHED MORE THAN 40 PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES ON TRADE POLICY, INTEREST GROUP POLITICS AND EUROPEAN INTEGRATION IN JOURNALS SUCH AS THE BRITISH JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES, THE EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, THE JOURNAL OF COMMON MARKET STUDIES, AND THE JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN PUBLIC POLICY. AMONG HIS PUBLICATIONS ARE ALSO INSIDERS VERSUS OUTSIDERS: INTEREST GROUP POLITICS IN MULTILEVEL EUROPE (OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2016) AND PROTECTION FOR EXPORTERS: DISCRIMINATION AND POWER IN TRANSATLANTIC TRADE RELATIONS, 1930-2010 (CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2010). SINCE 2017, HE HAS BEEN PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR OF THE TRADEPOWER PROJECT, WHICH IS FINANCED BY THE EUROPEAN RESEARCH COUNCIL.
FACEBOOK: HTTPS://WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/CEUPERG/ TWITTER: HTTPS://TWITTER.COM/CEUPERG