International Politics and the Disaggregation of Major-Power Trade, 1962–1997

Market Rules: The Incidental Relationship between Democratic Compatibility and International Commerce

“…And MIDs are negatively correlated with trade, a result that is consistent with the arguments of some scholars (Barbieri and Levy 1999) but diverges from what other researchers have found (Morrow, Siverson, and Tabares 1998) and theorized (Li and Sacko 2002). These results suggest that security considerations may have an abiding influence on international trade, and not simply on trade in armaments (Bartilow and Voss 2006). The most important result of Model 3 is that democracies do trade more with each other, a result that is not explained away by their cultural similarities.…”

“…Of course, democracies might have an easier time creating explicit arrangements that increase mutual trade, such as alliances with an economic component or even preferential trade agreements—commonly called PTAs (Mansfield, Milner, and Rosendorff 2002). We do not question the importance of explicit trade arrangements (Bartilow and Voss 2006), and we recognize that joint democracy could promote trade indirectly through such mechanisms. Absent such indirect effects, however, the Democratic Peace literature provides little reason to suppose that joint democracy will shape trade policy systematically enough to produce statistically observable patterns 7…”

“…One method, of course, would be to abandon aggregate data and delve into the trade behavior of firms and agencies within particular nations—but this approach would sacrifice generality (Morrow, Siverson, and Tabares 1998, 659). Another would be to disaggregate the data according to the industrial sectors involved, given that the observable implications of competing theories differ across various goods—but this approach must rely on a small number of cross‐sectoral comparisons (Bartilow and Voss 2006). The ecological‐inference literature suggests a third productive way to isolate the proper analytical level.…”

“…It will encourage trade with friendly nations, especially those committed to helping the nation‐state defend itself (Long 2003), to collect positive security externalities. Extensive evidence indicates that trade flows do “follow the flag” in some fashion or another (Bartilow and Voss 2006; Biglaiser and DeRouen 2007; Gowa and Mansfield 1993; Long 2003; Mansfield and Bronson 1997a; Morrow, Siverson, and Tabares 1998; Polachek 1980; Pollins 1989a, 1989b; Summary 1989). 2…”

“…Studies of international trade vary widely in their data selection, not just across time (which is usually a function of data availability) but also across space. Some studies use large samples (Bliss and Russett 1998; Mansfield, Milner, and Rosendorff 2000) while others use small samples, perhaps containing only a handful of major powers (Bartilow and Voss 2006; Gowa and Mansfield 1993; Long 2003; Mansfield and Bronson 1997a; Morrow, Siverson, and Tabares 1998). The limited samples obviously entail some cost, since results will be vulnerable to the behavior of one or two nations.…”