The Politics of Protection: An Institutional Approach to Government-Industry Relations in the British and United States Cotton Industries, 1945-73

Internationally, the establishment of the GATT marked the beginning of a shift to greater trade liberalism. Against this background the governments of developed economies have generally treated textiles as a special case. This essay focuses on the differing level of political bargaining power exerted by the cotton industry interest groups in Britain and the United States, in their quest for protection, since 1945. It demonstrates that, to understand why pressure groups in the United States gained more concessions than those in Britain, it is necessary to consider the differing institutional and political environments in which they operated and the historical forces which shaped them.