Constituency Size and Support for Trade Liberalization: An Analysis of Foreign Economic Policy Preferences in Congress

Abstract

Studies of the political economy of trade frequently rely on the assumption that the larger a policy maker's constituency, the more supportive of free-trade that policy maker will be. Large constituencies are supposed to yield concern for the national interest and provide insulation from particularistic, protectionist interests. This assumption, though, has rarely been directly tested. This article does so by leveraging the variation in district size within the U.S. Congress. This article statistically examines a dataset of roll-call votes on trade legislation from 1994 to 2004 to determine the effect of constituency size and alternative explanations for legislative preferences on foreign economic policy and finds no evidence of the effect of constituency size.