Privileging Industry: The Comparative Politics of Trade and Industrial Policy

Extract

Privileging Industry: The Comparative Politics of Trade and Industrial Policy. By Fiona McGillivray. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. 224p. $55.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.

Of the various transnational economic linkages, international trade is the most explicitly and persistently political. It is also very closely tied to industrial and investment policies in domestic political economies. In this tightly and clearly argued book, Fiona McGillivray comes to terms with the political dimensions of trade and industrial policy by focusing on how electoral rules, strength of political parties, and industrial geography affect trade policy, and she provides a persuasive argument about the conditions under which politicians act to redistribute income toward particular industrial sectors.