Competitiveness and Death

Competitiveness and Death examines the adoption and abolition of regulatory barriers to trade across three industries: automotive safety, food safety, and intellectual property rights in international drug sales. The fundamental problem in regulatory policymaking is the conflict between the deregulatory power and influence of globalization and the deregulatory power of activists.

Gary Winslett builds on new trade theories to explain when and why businesses are most likely to lobby governments to reduce these regulatory trade barriers. He argues that businesses prevail when they can connect with broader concerns about national economic competitiveness. He examines how activist organizations overcome collective action problems and defend regulatory differences, arguing that they succeed when they can link their desire for barriers with preventing needless death. Competitiveness and Death provides a political companion to new trade theories in economics, questioning cleavage-based explanations of trade politics, demonstrating the underappreciated importance of activists, suggesting the limits of globalization, providing in-depth examination of previously ignored trade negotiations, qualifying the California Effect (the shift toward stricter regulatory standards), and showing the relative rarity of regulations used as disguised protectionism.