Do Voters Reward Politicians for Trade Liberalization? Evidence from South Korea

Sung Eun Kim; Sujin Cha

doi:10.1007/s11558-021-09442-0

Do Voters Reward Politicians for Trade Liberalization? Evidence from South Korea

Sung Eun Kim, Sujin Cha

Department of Political Science & International Relations

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

Do voters reward politicians for trade liberalization? We examine this question by analyzing voter responses in South Korea to the US-Korea Trade Agreement. Exploiting a change in party positions on the FTA over time, we examine the effects of different party positions on outcomes in the legislative and presidential elections. We find that voters who expect direct gains (losses) specifically from the treaty increase (decrease) support for the pro-trade party. However, voters in export-oriented industries do not reward politicians for a free trade agreement that does not directly affect their well-being. Our analysis of seven waves of individual-level panel survey data also demonstrates that a short-term change in a candidate’s position on the FTA influences voter decisions in the upcoming presidential election. The findings suggest that voter preferences with regard to trade can materialize into voting behavior when voters have a clear ex ante expectation of specific gains or losses from the trade policy.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	751-780
Number of pages	30
Journal	Review of International Organizations
Volume	17
Issue number	4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s11558-021-09442-0
Publication status	Published - 2022 Oct

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
For valuable feedback and suggestions, we thank Pablo Pinto, Su-Hyun Lee, Yotam Margalit, Johannes Urpelainen, and panel participants at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, as well as the editors and reviewers of this journal. This work was supported by a Korea University Grant (K1806681).

Funding Information:
For valuable feedback and suggestions, we thank Pablo Pinto, Su-Hyun Lee, Yotam Margalit, Johannes Urpelainen, and panel participants at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, as well as the editors and reviewers of this journal. This work was supported by a Korea University Grant (K1806681).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.

Keywords

Electoral politics
Free trade agreement
Preferential trade agreement
Trade preferences
Voting behavior

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Economics and Econometrics
Political Science and International Relations

Access to Document

10.1007/s11558-021-09442-0

Cite this

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abstract = "Do voters reward politicians for trade liberalization? We examine this question by analyzing voter responses in South Korea to the US-Korea Trade Agreement. Exploiting a change in party positions on the FTA over time, we examine the effects of different party positions on outcomes in the legislative and presidential elections. We find that voters who expect direct gains (losses) specifically from the treaty increase (decrease) support for the pro-trade party. However, voters in export-oriented industries do not reward politicians for a free trade agreement that does not directly affect their well-being. Our analysis of seven waves of individual-level panel survey data also demonstrates that a short-term change in a candidate{\textquoteright}s position on the FTA influences voter decisions in the upcoming presidential election. The findings suggest that voter preferences with regard to trade can materialize into voting behavior when voters have a clear ex ante expectation of specific gains or losses from the trade policy.",

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Do Voters Reward Politicians for Trade Liberalization? Evidence from South Korea

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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