Despite populist backlash against globalization in advanced industrialized countries, developing countries have recently sought to liberalize trade. To shed light on this phenomenon, we investigate mass attitudes toward free trade in thirty-six African countries. Using two rounds of Afrobarometer data and original survey data from Ghana and Uganda, we find that individuals hold views that are consistent with their economic self-interest. As factor endowment models predict for a sample of skill-scarce countries, low-skilled individuals are more likely than high-skilled individuals to support free trade. Moreover, the strongest negative effects of skill occur for the most skill-scarce countries in the sample and are driven by individuals in the labor force. Our results are robust to measuring variables more precisely in original surveys and controlling for other factors thought to shape attitudes. The findings indicate that previous evidence against factor endowment models may have partially resulted from inadequate data from the developing world.

Do world politics affect the adoption of new technology? States overwhelmingly rely on technology invented abroad, and their differential intensity of technology use accounts for many of their differences in economic development. Much of the literature on technology adoption focuses on domestic conditions. The authors argue instead that the structure of the international system is critical because it affects the level of competition among states, which in turn affects leaders’ willingness to enact policies that speed technology adoption. Countries adopt new technology as they seek to avoid being vulnerable to attack or coercion by other countries. By systematically examining states’ adoption of technology over the past two hundred years, the authors find that countries adopt new technologies faster when the international system is less concentrated, that changes in systemic concentration have a temporally causal effect on technology adoption, and that government policies to promote technology adoption are related to concerns about rising international competition. A competitive international system is an important incentive for technological change and may underlie global technology waves.

Are FDI and Islam in conflict with one another in the eyes of Tunisians?  Does support for globalization fall or increase when it embraces or challenges Islamic dress, prayer, and other practices? We examine through different experimental tests how Tunisians react to foreign direct investment when it accommodates or conflicts with Islamic norms. Using three original sources of data, including a large representative survey (N = 4,986), a conjoint survey experiment (N = 1,502), and an original survey experiment with experimental social vignettes (N = 504), we examine how threats (and non-threats) from FDI to Islamic norms affect support for FDI. We find strong support for FDI, but these levels of support are not stable. We find the support for FDI falls by almost 32% if it is seen to clash with female Islamic dress. Support is highest when it accommodates Islamic practices, especially the female hijab and lowest when it is perceived to disregard these practices.

Prior international political economy public opinion research has primarily examined how economic and socio-cultural factors shape individuals’ views on the flows of goods, people and capital. This research has largely ignored whether individuals also care about rewarding or punishing foreign countries for their policies on these issues. We tested this possibility by administering a series of conjoint and traditional survey experiments in the United States and China that examined how reciprocity influences opposition to foreign acquisitions of domestic companies. We find that reciprocity is an important determinant of public opinion on the regulation of foreign investments. This suggests the need to consider the policies that other countries adopt when trying to explain public attitudes toward global economic integration.

There is evidence that some countries negotiate trade agreements during economic downturns. Why would a leader do this? We argue that political leaders can gain from such agreements because of the signals they send to their public. The public are less likely to blame leaders for adverse economic conditions when they have implemented sound economic policies, such as signing agreements designed to liberalize trade and prevent a slide into protectionism. In hard economic times, leaders – especially those in democratic environments – may find that trade agreements are a useful way to reassure the public. Since majorities in many countries around the world view trade favorably, leaders may see agreements that prevent them from adopting protectionism as a way to maintain support. We evaluate this argument by analyzing preferential trade agreements (PTAs) formed since 1962. We find that, on average, democratic countries are more likely to form PTAs during hard economic times. We also find that democratic leaders who sign PTAs during downturns enjoy a longer tenure than their counterparts who do not sign such agreements.

Does foreign aid enable or constrain elite capture of public revenues? Reflecting on prominent debates in the foreign aid literature, we examine whether recipient preferences are consistent with a view that foreign donors wield substantial control over the flow of aid dollars, making elite capture more difficult and mass benefits more likely. We compare elite and mass support for foreign aid versus government spending on development projects through a survey experiment with behavioral outcomes. A key innovation is a parallel experiment on members of the Ugandan national parliament and a representative sample of Ugandan citizens. For two actual aid projects, we randomly assigned different funders to the projects. Significant treatment effects reveal that members of parliament support government programs over foreign aid, whereas citizens prefer aid over government. Donor control also implies that citizens should favor foreign aid more and elites less as their perceptions of government clientelism and corruption increase. We explore this and report on other alternative mechanisms. Effects for citizens and elites are most apparent for those perceiving significant government corruption, suggesting that both sets of subjects perceive significant donor control over aid.

Following older debates in international relations literature concerning the relative importance of domestic versus systemic factors, newer debates emphasize interdependence among states and the complex interactions between systemic and domestic factors. As globalization and democratization advance, theories and empirical models of international politics have become more complicated. We present a systematic theoretical categorization of relationships between domestic and systemic variables. We use this categorization so that scholars can match their theory to the appropriate empirical model and assess the degree to which systemic factors affect their arguments. We also present two advances at the frontier of these empirical models. In one, we combine hierarchical models of moderating relationships with spatial models of interdependence among units within a system. In the other, we provide a model for analyzing spatial interdependence that varies over time. This enables us to examine how the level of interdependence among units has evolved. We illustrate our categorization and new models by revisiting the recent international political economy (IPE) debate over the relationship between trade policy and regime type in developing countries.

The world economy has maintained or enhanced its integration in the past decade even in the face of the global financial crisis. A large part of this globalization has been driven by capital flows. This symposium focuses on one element of these capital flows, foreign direct investment (FDI), and on the regime in place to safeguard and promote such investments around the globe. The articles by Allee and Peinhardt and Simmons focus on the nature and evolution of the bilateral investment treaties (BITs) that have been developed to protect such investments and that have proliferated since the 1990s. The final article, by Büthe and Milner, turns its attention to the ways in which international trade agreements affect FDI. The comparison between the investment and trade agreements is instructive, since they seem to have different effects.

FDI has become one of the most important economic flows in the global economy. It is a critical source of capital for developing countries and remains a significant source of investment in the developed world. FDI has grown in part because countries changed their policies toward it dramatically after the 1980s; governments in developing countries made unilateral policy changes that opened up markets across the globe and increased competition among countries for FDI.

International trade agreements lead to more foreign direct investment (FDI) in developing countries. This article examines the causal mechanisms underpinning this trade-investment linkage by asking whether institutional features of preferential trade agreements (PTAs), which allow governments to make more credible commitments to protect foreign investments, indeed result in greater FDI. The authors explore three institutional differences. First, they examine whether PTAs that have entered into force lead to greater FDI than PTAs that have merely been negotiated and signed, since only the former constitute a binding commitment under international law. Second, they ask whether trade agreements that have investment clauses lead to greater FDI. Third, they consider whether PTAs with dispute-settlement mechanisms lead to greater FDI. Analyses of FDI flows into 122 developing countries from 1971 to 2007 show that trade agreements that include stronger mechanisms for credible commitment induce more FDI. Institutional diversity in international agreements matters.

In this article we bring together opposing international relations theories to better understand U.S. foreign policy, in particular foreign trade and aid. Using votes in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1979–2004, we explore different theoretical predictions about preferences for foreign economic policy. We assess the impact of domestic factors, namely political economy and ideological preferences, versus foreign policy pressures. Our three main results highlight the differential effect of these factors in the two issue areas. First, aid preferences are as affected by domestic political economy factors as are trade preferences. Second, trade preferences, but not economic aid ones, are shaped by the president's foreign policy concerns; for economic aid, domestic political economy factors matter more than foreign policy ones. Third, aid preferences are shaped more by ideological factors than are trade ones, but ideology plays a different substantive role in each. Different constituencies support aid and trade. This finding has implications for foreign policy substitutability, “the internationalist coalition” in U.S. foreign policy, “statist” theories of foreign policy, and the connection between public opinion and legislative voting.

Since the Second World War, preferential trading arrangements (PTAs) have become increasingly pervasive features of the international economic system. A great deal of research has addressed the economic consequences of these arrangements, but far less effort has been made to identify the political factors leading states to enter them. In this article, the domestic political factors affecting whether countries enter PTAs are investigated, placing particular emphasis on the number of veto players within a state. It is argued that the probability of forming a PTA declines as the number of such players rises. The results, covering 194 countries from 1950 to 1999, strongly support this argument. Holding various political and economic factors constant, increasing the number of veto players within a country significantly reduces the probability of signing a PTA.

At the conclusion of World War II, several international institutions were created to manage the world economy and prevent another Great Depression. These institutions include the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (now called the World Bank), and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which was expanded and institutionalized into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995. These institutions have not only persisted for over five decades, but they have also expanded their mandates, changed their missions, and increased their membership. They have, however, become highly contested. As Stiglitz notes, “International bureaucrats—the faceless symbols of the world economic order—are under attack everywhere…. Virtually every major meeting of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization is now the scene of conflict and turmoil.”Helen V. Milner is the B. C. Forbes Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University and the director of the Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School (hmilner@Princeton.edu). She has written extensively on issues related to international trade, the connections between domestic politics and foreign policy, globalization and regionalism, and the relationship between democracy and trade policy. Her writings include Interests, Institutions, and Information: Domestic Politics and International Relations (1997), Internationalization and Domestic Politics (co-edited with Robert O. Keohane, 1996), “Why the Move to Free Trade? Democracy and Trade Policy in the Developing Countries” (International Organization 2005), “The Optimal Design of International Trade Institutions: Uncertainty and Escape” (coauthored with B. Peter Rosendorff, International Organization, 2001). The author thanks David Baldwin, Chuck Beitz, Robert O. Keohane, Erica Gould, Steve Macedo, Lisa Martin, Thomas Pogge, Tom Romer, and Jim Vreeland for invaluable comments. She also received much useful advice from seminars at Princeton University and the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Study and Conference Center.

Rising international trade flows are a primary component of globalization. The liberalization of trade policy in many developing countries has helped foster the growth of these flows. Preceding and concurrent with this move to free trade, there has been a global movement toward democracy. We argue that these two trends are related: democratization of the political system reduces the ability of governments to use trade barriers as a strategy for building political support. Political leaders in labor-rich countries may prefer lower trade barriers as democracy increases. Empirical evidence supports our claim about the developing countries from 1970–99. Regime change toward democracy is associated with trade liberalization, controlling for many factors. Conventional explanations of economic reform, such as economic crises and external pressures, seem less salient. Democratization may have fostered globalization in this period.We wish to thank the editors at International Organization, David Baldwin, Jim Fearon, Geoffrey Garrett, Barbara Geddes, Tim Groseclose, Robert Kaufmann, Robert Keohane, David Laitin, Jean Leca, Edward Mansfield, Jim Morrow, Ronald Rogowski, B. Peter Rosendorff, Alex Segura, Mike Tomz, Robert Trager, Romain Wacziarg, and Greg Wawro, for their very helpful comments on versions of this article. We also received helpful comments from seminar participants at the University of Michigan, Stanford University, the University of Pennsylvania, Syracuse University, Princeton University, Rutgers University, Yale University, and the University of California at Berkeley. Ben Judkins, Robert Trager, Megumi Naoi, and Tom Kenyon provided invaluable research assistance. An earlier version was presented at the 2001 APSA meeting in San Francisco.

Over the past fifty years, barriers to international trade have decreased substantially. A key source of this decline in protectionism has been the proliferation of agreements among countries to liberalize commerce. In this article, we analyze the domestic political conditions under which states have concluded such agreements and, more generally, explore the factors affecting interstate economic cooperation. We argue that interstate cooperation on commercial issues depends heavily on the political regime types of participants: as states become more democratic, they are increasingly likely to conclude trade agreements. To test our claim, we examine whether the regime types of states have influenced their propensity to form and expand preferential trading arrangements (PTAs) during the period since World War II. We find that democratic countries are about twice as likely to form a PTA as autocratic countries, and that pairs of democracies are roughly four times as likely to do so as autocratic pairs. These results provide strong evidence that democracies are more commercially cooperative than less democratic countries.

Our earlier article established that pairs of democracies trade more freely than country-pairs composed of a democracy and an autocracy (Mansfield, Milner, and Rosendorff 2000). Xinyuan Dai (2002) incorrectly asserts that our conclusion depends on the preferences of the decision makers who formulate trade policy. We show that Dai fails to accurately replicate our model, and hence erroneously claims that the new equilibria she deduces are consistent with it. In addition, we demonstrate that in altering one of our assumptions, Dai offers a model that is less realistic as well as inconsistent with the substantive literature on international bargaining. Finally, we question the robustness of her approach. Due to these problems of replication, realism, and robustness, we conclude that Dai's model is of limited utility.