| Abstract: | Several recent attempts to understand the politics of trade liberalization and expansion have come under criticism for the way they employ different economic models to identify the positions of domestic political actors. The two approaches most popular among political scientists are the Stolper-Samuelson theorem and the factor-specific model. Each of these economic models builds on extreme assumptions, and each therefore exhibits shortcomings. Rather than engage in a debate purely over the merits and flaws of each, this article builds on the work of Gene Grossman to show that an avenue exists for the development of political models that can encompass both of these approaches, but go beyond the limitations of each as well. I then apply a simpler version of this sort of model to the case of German party politics at the turn of the century to illustrate its potential. |
