Review of "Commerce and Coalitions: How Trade Affects Domestic Political Alignments," by Ronald Rogowski

 Review of

Commerce and Coalitions: How Trade Affects Domestic Political Alignments, by Ronald Rogowski, ISBN 0691078122

Five out of five stars

Why commerce makes strange bedfellows.

 There is an old saying that “politics makes strange bedfellows,” meaning that political alliances often are formed between groups that seem to have nothing in common. In this book, Rogowski puts forward very convincing arguments that trade and commerce also leads to coalitions that seem impossible. This of course leads to unusual political alignments.

 Four square matrices are used to illustrate the points. For example, the entry where the economy is advanced, and land and labor are both scarce capital is assertive when trade is expanding and defensive when trade is declining. Some of the points are well documented historically. For example, in Japan labor was abundant and land was scarce. Hence the expansionist movement in Japan almost from the moment the nation was modernized.

 The first chapter covers how changing forces of trade affect political cleavages. Chapter two covers the rapid expansion of trade from 1840 to 1914. This coincided with the European takeover of Africa for exploitation in place, rather than for the slave trade. The spoils of colonization led to rather unusual coalitions, where with few exceptions different groups within a country cooperated and even rival nations cooperated in the creation of their African holdings.

 One of the most interesting facts is that by the start of World War I, 80 percent of the land in Russia was owned by the peasants, either communally or individually. This was surprising, as the main slogan of the Bolsheviks in seizing power was, “Peace, land and bread.”

 The interwar period where international trade essentially collapsed due to high tariff walls being put in place is covered. While there were voices that rightfully pointed out that this was fueling the worldwide Depression, there was little political will to do otherwise.

 This is a very important book that covers how trade has evolved over the centuries. There is also a chapter covering how trade changed in classical Greece, the last centuries of the Roman Empire and sixteenth-century Europe. The vitality of mutually beneficial trade has a great deal to do with the political health of nations, ancient and modern. The main premise that is put forward and justified is that when international trade expands, locally abundant factors in a country assert themselves while the owners of scarce resources become defensive. The reverse takes place when trade declines. The case for this is convincing.