Free Trade Agreements and the Consolidation of Democracy

Emanuel Ornelas and Xuepeng Liu

No 9279, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: We study the relationship between participation in free trade agreements (FTAs) and the sustainability of democracy. Our model shows that FTAs can critically reduce the incentive of authoritarian groups to seek power by destroying protectionist rents, thus making democracies last longer. This gives governments in unstable democracies an extra motive to form FTAs. Hence, greater democratic instability induces governments to boost their FTA commitments. In a dataset with 116 countries over 1960-2007, we find robust support for these predictions. They help to rationalize the rapid simultaneous growth of regionalism and of worldwide democratization since the late 1980s.

Keywords: Political regimes; Regionalism; Rent destruction; Trade liberalization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 F13 F15 F53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP9279 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: Free Trade Agreements and the Consolidation of Democracy (2014)
Working Paper: Free Trade Aggreements and the Consolidation of Democracy (2013)
Working Paper: Free Trade Agreements and the Consolidation of Democracy (2013)
Working Paper: Free trade agreements and the consolidation of democracy (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:9279

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP9279

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().