This book maps the process and political economy of policy making in Africa. It's focus on trade and industrial policy makes it unique and it will appeal to students and academics in economics, political economy, political science and African studies. Detailed case studies help the reader to understand how the process and motivation behind policy decisions can vary from country to country depending on the form of government, ethnicity and nationality and other social factors.
Drawing on internal political contexts and external influences on the policy process, this book illustrates the growing relevance of research in increasingly contested settings designed to support a particular cause. Is this a new world of post-academic research?
The United States is entering a period of profound uncertainty in the world political economy--an uncertainty which is threatening the liberal economic order that its own statesmen created at the end of the Second World War. The storm surrounding this threat has been ignited by an issue that has divided Americans since the nation's founding: international trade. Is America better off under a liberal trade regime, or would protectionism be more beneficial? The issue divided Alexander Hamilton from Thomas Jefferson, the agrarian south from the industrializing north, and progressives from robber barons in the Gilded Age. In our own times, it has pitted anti-globalization activists and manufacturing workers against both multinational firms and the bulk of the economics profession. Ambassador C. Donald Johnson's The Wealth of a Nation is an authoritative history of the politics of trade in America from the Revolution to the Trump era. Johnson begins by charting the rise and fall of the U.S. protectionist system from the time of Alexander Hamilton to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930. Challenges to protectionist dominance were frequent and often serious, but the protectionist regime only faded in the wake of the Great Depression. After World War II, America was the primary architect of the liberal rules-based economic order that has dominated the globe for over half a century. Recent years, however, have seen a swelling anti-free trade movement that casts the postwar liberal regime as anti-worker, pro-capital, and--in Donald Trump's view--even anti-American. In this riveting history, Johnson emphasizes the benefits of the postwar free trade regime, but focuses in particular on how it has attempted to advance workers' rights. This analysis of the evolution of American trade policy stresses the critical importance of the multilateral trading system's survival and defines the central political struggle between business and labor in measuring the wealth of a nation.
The Politics of Fair Trade argues that fair trade is more than just labels on specialty coffee products. Nor is fair trade just protectionism in disguise. Rather, fair trade is opposition to unrestricted trade based on sincere concerns about environmental and labor conditions abroad. Fair traders are not trying to protect jobs or the economy at home, but do not want to see workers exploited and the environment degraded in their trading partners. Academics and policymakers are ill equipped to deal with fair trade concerns because they wrongly assume trade preferences run along a single dimension from free trade to protection. This book introduces a multidimensional theory of trade policy preferences, arguing that people can oppose trade for different and unrelated reasons. The book then demonstrates, using public opinion data in the U.S. and EU and Congressional voting data in the U.S., that fair traders are sincere and not simply protectionists. The book demonstrates why fair trade poses a threat to free trade and argues that free traders should include stronger and enforceable labor and environmental standards in trade agreements in order to win the support of fair traders. Doing so will enable free trade to continue while also helping to improve conditions in developing countries, satisfying the concerns of both free traders and fair traders.
The Multilevel Politics of Trade presents a timely comparative analysis of eight federations (plus the European Union) to explore why some sub-federal actors have become more active in trade politics in recent years. As the contributing authors find, there is considerable variation in the intensity and modes of sub-federal participation. This they attribute to three key factors: the distinctive institutional features of federal systems; the nature and scope of trade policy and trade agreements; and the extent of social mobilization that accompanies a particular trade policy conversation. As a whole, The Multilevel Politics of Trade argues that sub-federal actors’ interests (jurisdictional, political, and economic) are what motivate them to participate in trade debates. However, institutional configurations, coupled with the influence of civil society actors, political parties, and others determine the nature and scope of that participation. Informed by a deep knowledge of federal dynamics, this volume provides extensive comparative analyses of all seven of the North American and European federations and represents a significant intervention into the study of both federalism and political economy.
By re-examining the archaeological evidence from salvage campaigns in Egypt and Sudan using anthropological and economic theories, this book offers a fresh view of exchange patterns between Egypt and Lower Nubia in the 4th millennium BC and how these relationships changed.
Alasdair Young analyzes the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations and explores why they have proved so difficult to conclude. He sheds light on the limits of transatlantic cooperation and teases out the implications for the UK in post-Brexit trade negotiations and for facing a more protectionist stance from the United States.
Trade is being weaponized – and this is not good. As politicians on both sides of the Atlantic raise the stakes, trade is increasingly a tool of coercion to achieve strategic influence. This book looks at the risks for us all as trade becomes an instrument of foreign policy, and it shows how politicians could turn things around.
In this comprehensive revision of the most influential, widely read analysis of the US trade policymaking system, Destler addresses how globalization has reshaped trade politics, weakening traditional protectionism but intensifying concern about trade's societal impacts. Entirely new chapters treat the deepening of partisan divisions and the rise of "trade and . . ." issues (especially labor and the environment). The author concludes with a comprehensive economic and political strategy to cope with globalization and maximize its benefits. The original edition of American Trade Politics won the Gladys Kammerer Award of the American Political Science Association for the best book on US national policy.
