Results (
Thai) 2:
[Copy]Copied!
One of the most important developments over the past three decades has been the spread of liberal
economic ideas and policies throughout the world. These policies have affected the lives of millions
of people, yet our most sophisticated political economy models do not adequately capture
influences on these policy choices. Evidence suggests that the adoption of liberal economic practices
is highly clustered both temporally and spatially. We hypothesize that this clustering might be due to
processes of policy diffusion.We think of diffusion as resulting from one of two broad sets of forces: one
in which mounting adoptions of a policy alter the benefits of adopting for others and another in which
adoptions provide policy relevant information about the benefits of adopting. We develop arguments
within these broad classes of mechanisms, construct appropriate measures of the relevant concepts, and
test their effects on liberalization and restriction of the current account, the capital account, and the
exchange rate regime. Our findings suggest that domestic models of foreign economic policy making
are insufficient. The evidence shows that policy transitions are influenced by international economic
competition as well as the policies of a country’s sociocultural peers.We interpret the latter influence as a
form of channeled learning reflecting governments’ search for appropriate models for economic policy.
One of the most important developments over
the past three decades has been the growing
willingness of governments to open up the national
economy to global market forces. The widespread
rollback of policies that block the free movement
of goods and capital has affected the quality of life
for millions of the world’s citizens. Economists reckon
the gains to developing countries from a liberalized
capital regime to be in the billions of dollars of added
GDP growth (Dobson and Hufbauer 2001; Soto 2000).
Some, however, acknowledge the instability and human
insecurity left in liberalization’s wake (Kaplinsky
Beth A. Simmons is Professor, Government Department and Faculty
Associate, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard
University, 1033 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138
(bsimmons@latte.harvard.edu).
Zachary Elkins is Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science,
University of Illinois, 702 South Wright Street, 361 Lincoln
Hall, Urbana, IL 61801 (zelkins@uiuc.edu).
The authors thank James Alt, William Bernhard, Henry Brady,
David Collier, Ruth Collier, Paul Diehl, James Fearon, Robert
Franzese, Jeffry Frieden, Peter Gourevitch, Miles Kahler, Robert
Keohane, David Laitin, David Lake, David Leblang, Lisa Martin,
Douglas McAdams, Layna Mosley, Kathleen Much, Robert Pahre,
Richard Snyder, Michael Ward, and Kurt Weyland for their comments
on earlier drafts. Thanks to David Leblang for providing
his data on currency crises, and Eduardo Castro and Kathleen
MacNamara for providing data on policy change with respect to
central bank independence. Previous versions of this paper were presented
at the annual meetings of the Midwest Political Science Association
and the American Political Science Association, and at Duke
University, Notre Dame University, the University of California,
Berkeley, and Stanford University. Beth Simmons would like to acknowledge
the assistance of students working under the auspices
of the Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program at the University
of California, Berkeley, as well as sabbatical support from
the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation while at the Center for
Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford California.
Zachary Elkins would like to acknowledge the excellent research
assistance of Seden Akcinaroglu and financial support from the Institute
for Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC), the University
of California, Berkeley, and the University of Illinois.
2001; Prasad et al. 2003). These debates have not been
Being translated, please wait..
