Open AccessLeadership Survival, Regime Type, Policy Uncertainty and PTA Accession 1
Author(s) -
Hollyer James R.,
Rosendorff B. Peter
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
international studies quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.897
H-Index - 100
eISSN - 1468-2478
pISSN - 0020-8833
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-2478.2012.00750.x
Subject(s) - autocracy , discretion , accession , economics , democracy , government (linguistics) , matching (statistics) , public economics , international economics , political science , politics , european union , statistics , law , linguistics , philosophy , mathematics
Hollyer, James R. and B. Peter Rosendorff. (2012) Leadership Survival, Regime Type, Policy Uncertainty and PTA Accession. International Studies Quarterly , doi: 10.1111/j.1468‐2478.2012.00750.x
© 2012 International Studies Association Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) limit member‐states’ trade policy discretion; consequently, policy uncertainty is mitigated. Reductions in policy uncertainty stemming from accession to a PTA improve the resource allocation decisions of the voters and reduce deadweight losses from the need to self‐insure against policy uncertainty. The resultant increase in efficiency improves an incumbent government's—particularly a democratic government's—chance of surviving in office. We test this prediction using survival analysis, adjusting for potential selection biases using propensity score matching. We find robust support for the proposition that governments that sign PTAs survive longer in office than observationally similar governments that do not sign. In addition, we find that this effect is stronger in democracies than in autocracies.