The dissertation identifies a body of public policies described as "politically intractable." These are policies which are of clear public benefit, but which involve high political costs to those who enact them. It is suggested that there are two routes to political tractability in the passage of these policies. The "low-risk" strategy entails insulating policy-makers from pressures applied by alienated vested interests. The "high-risk" strategy arises where actors responsible for passing intractable policies risk alienating vested interests if enacting the policy assists them to realize higher-order objectives. These higher-order objectives involve games of institutional design--attempts to reform or preserve (in the face of threat) the institutional structure of the state. The dissertation examines a subset of politically intractable policies called watershed trade policies. Watersheds are instances of substantial trade liberalization which reverse a long-standing tradition of protectionism. The dissertation explains the passage of three watersheds: Britain's repeal of the Corn Laws, the US Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, and Canada's Free Trade Implementation Act, in the context of the high-risk strategy. In these cases, trade liberalization is explained as a by-product of games of institutional design undertaken by political entrepreneurs within the state.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.41690 |
| Date | January 1993 |
| Creators | Lusztig, Michael |
| Contributors | Meadwell, Hudson (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Political Science.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001394602, proquestno: NN94672, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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