The Counterattack of Outliers: Minority, Divided Government, and the Changing Effect of Institutional Veto Power on Trade Policy Ratification in the Digital Media Era

Abstract

Different governments have different motives to shape a bilateral trade policy, either to gain political benefits or to avoid political costs. In digital era, public opinion on social media platforms play perhaps increasingly vital role in influencing government’s trade policy. Recent development of international tensions seem to counter-argue the everlasting dominant theories in political economics. A simple fact is that the rise of digital veto power is shaking the traditional veto system and the communication between decisionmaker and the public. Digital veto power became more significant a decisive role in reshaping trade policy in many recent cases, turning leaders who tend to violate or redesign trade policy in favor of protectionism to gain more political benefits rather than costs in the past.

So what effect do the domestic institutional veto power still have on shaping trade policy outcome with the challenge of veto power of digital platforms is a good question to study. Other than the social media platforms’ impact on reshaping the form and practice of public opinion, little has known that the veto power of social media has an increasing impact on institutional veto power. The research will study the correlation of institutional veto powers and international trade agreement change possibility under the influence of practice of public opinions on digital platforms.