Document Type
Working Paper
Publication Date
3-2020
Subjects
International economic relations, Globalization -- Economic aspects, Globalization -- Political apsects, Democracy, Dani Rodrik -- Criticism and interpretation
Abstract
This paper investigates Rodrik’s political-economy trilemma: policy makers face a trade-off of choosing two out of three policy goals or governance styles, namely, (hyper-) globalization, national sovereignty, and democracy. We develop a set of indexes that measure the extent of attainment of the three factors for 139 countries in the period of 1975-2016. Using these indexes, we examine the validity of the hypothesis of the political-economy trilemma by testing whether the three trilemma variables are linearly related. We find that, for industrialized countries, there is a linear relationship between globalization and national sovereignty (i.e., a dilemma), and that for developing countries, all three indexes are linearly correlated (i.e., a trilemma). We also investigate whether and how three political-economic factors affect the degree of political and financial stability. The results indicate that more democratic industrialized countries tend to experience more political instability while developing countries tend to be able to stabilize their politics if they are more democratic. The lower level of national sovereignty an industrialized country attains, the more stable its political situation tends to be, while a higher level of sovereignty helps a developing country to stabilize its politics. Globalization brings about political stability for both groups of countries. Furthermore, more globalized countries, whether industrial or developing, tend to experience more financial stability. Future data will allow us to test the possibility of regime changes associated with the post-2016 dynamics.
Rights
© 2020 by Joshua Aizenman and Hiro Ito. All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit, including © notice, is given to the source.
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/34347
Citation Details
Aizenman, J., & Ito, H. (2020). The Political-Economy Trilemma (No. w26905). National Bureau of Economic Research.
Description
NBER Working Paper 26905