Trade, growth, poverty, and politics: toward a unified theory

This article takes the opportunity presented by the current global downturn to reassess the latest scholarly work on globalization's long-term implications for economic and political development. Will the market inequities generated by trade and international interdependence systematically undermine the domestic redistributive systems on which poor, redistribution-reliant citizens depend for their economic well-being and continuing engagement with society? Or should we expect to find trade-induced market inequality biasing political systems in exactly the opposite direction-toward more, not less, market-correcting redistribution? To answer these discipline-spanning questions with any degree of confidence, we will first need to develop a more theoretically integrated model of the mechanisms that link market inequality to nonmarket redistribution. Creating that model-and, to that end, unifying major theoretical strands within political science and economics-should be our first priority.