Sometimes I write things longer than a blog post. I've talked about Dani Rodrik's views on trade a number of times (see, e.g., here, here, here and here). Now I've gone a little further, and written a book review of his latest book, The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy. The book review is in the latest issue of the World Trade Review; the SSRN version is here. Here's an excerpt:
Another way to think about the "policy space" that governments have is to talk about the scope of the trade regime and how trade rules affect domestic policy-making. The scope will affect how much policy space there is. Arguably, Rodrik identifies a fundamental problem with trade rules when he says: "the absence of a clear and bright line between where domestic prerogatives end and external obligations begin creates substantial friction. In fact, the trade regime's growing legitimacy crisis can be traced back to this fundamental ambiguity" (p. 81). But it is not clear that his proposals help the matter. As discussed below, even if the principles he would use to define the scope of the trade regime do establish clear boundaries, and it is not clear that they do, his specific proposals may not achieve his goals as well as some possible alternatives might.
