Global commerce is rapidly organizing around regional trading blocs in North America, Western Europe, Pacific Asia, and elsewhere—with potentially dangerous consequences for the world trading system. Professor Kerry Chase examines how domestic politics has driven the emergence of these trading blocs, arguing that businesses today are more favorably inclined to global trade liberalization than in the past because recent regional trading arrangements have created opportunities to restructure manufacturing more efficiently.

Trading Blocs is the first book to systematically demonstrate the theoretical significance of economies of scale in domestic pressure for trading blocs, and thereby build on a growing research agenda in areas of political economy and domestic politics.

"Chase has written a superb book that provides us with an innovative and compelling explanation for the development of trading blocs."
—Vinod Aggarwal, Director, Berkeley APEC Study Center, University of California, Berkeley

Kerry A. Chase is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Tufts University.