Of the various transnational economic linkages, international trade is the most explicitly and persistently political. It is also very closely tied to industrial and investment policies in domestic political economies. In this tightly and clearly argued book, Fiona McGillivray comes to terms with the political dimensions of trade and industrial policy by focusing on how electoral rules, strength of political parties, and industrial geography affect trade policy, and she provides a persuasive argument about the conditions under which politicians act to redistribute income toward particular industrial sectors.

McGillivray's point of departure is that trade policy is inherently redistributive. She also notes that certain types of trade policy might not at first glance appear to be redistributive, which makes them attractive to politicians. Furthermore, she assumes that politicians are most interested in political survival and will act within their particular institutional context to try to assure their continuation in power. In effect, she argues, the likelihood that trade or industrial policy will favor particular industries depends on political institutions and can be predicted on the basis of institutional and geographical variables.

The book is particularly impressive in its theoretical deductions and arguments. While highly disciplined when it comes to deriving hypotheses, McGillivray also has a good sense of the contexts that she is writing about. To begin with the theoretical arguments, she differentiates political systems along two dimensions: the strength of political parties and the electoral system (majoritarian single-member districts vs. proportional representation). She then examines three of the four possible combinations in detail: majoritarian strong-party systems, such as the UK; majoritarian weak-party systems, such as the United States; and proportional representation (PR) strongparty systems, such as Germany. Although it is somewhat difficult to do justice to her sophisticated argument in a review, the basic thrust of her case comes down to this: Industry, geography, and political systems can combine with one another in multiple ways, and most importantly, one can get a very good handle on understanding which industries will be protected or otherwise favored by governments by looking at their interaction. More specifically, in majoritarian single-member district systems with strong parties, the marginal or “swing” districts are likely to be favored with protection of their industries, while in majoritarian single-member district systems with weak parties, the most favored industries are likely to be those that are large and dispersed across many districts, as are those with long-serving representatives (i.e., those in “safe” seats), who are able to rise in seniority and be in a position to protect their constituents. Finally, strong-party PR systems are likely have governing coalitions favoring core supporters with protection or other kinds of benefits.

One will note that there is no significant discussion of the fourth possible combination, weak-party PR systems. McGillivray notes that such systems are atypical, although she does recognize that there is one very important case that fits this bill: Brazil. She includes some discussion of the Brazilian case and considers the possible theoretical implications of it, but in the end concludes that “given the relative ambiguity of prediction and the uniqueness of each weak-party PR case” (p. 41), she will not consider such cases in any detail. This is certainly an understandable conclusion, but it also points to the greater ease, in general, of prediction when it comes to strong-party systems. Even though the author does consider a weak-party majoritarian system (the United States), there is also a greater degree of uncertainty in this sort of case as well, since protection can depend on particular individual representatives in key committee positions who can protect or provide assistance to voters in their districts, and this can certainly be somewhat idiosyncratic. She does try to get a handle on this by testing for the effects of membership on key committees in the U.S. Congress, but this test does not, in the end, give her much explanatory leverage.

McGillivray recognizes some of the limits of her quantitative data. For example, she notes the limitations of using tariffs as an indicator of protection, particularly since governments have come up with numerous ways to protect and aid industries as actual tariff levels have declined in recent decades. To her credit, McGillivray tries to think creatively about this data, and comes up with some alternative measures to get at how politics affects industrial favoritism by developing some new measures on price dispersion in stock markets to get at changes in government industrial policy. Importantly, however, she weaves in qualitative stories to help illustrate and strengthen her arguments. She begins the book by focusing on the cutlery industry in the UK, the United States, and Germany, noting the different levels of protection for these industries, which then launches her theoretical discussion. Her consideration of the steel industry in Chapter 4 is an outstanding and brief summary of the travails of that industry in five industrialized countries, and it dovetails nicely with the theoretical argument. It does so, in particular, because she demonstrates that the pattern of protection and assistance in the steel industry is clearly not determined by the ideological predilections of the parties in power, and that right-of-center governments have done plenty to intervene in the market when it suited their political survival requirements. Much like George W. Bush's protection of the steel industry in 2002, conservative governments elsewhere found it useful to intervene in the marketplace when politically convenient. And McGillivray demonstrates, quite effectively, how the nature of this intervention depends on political institutions and industrial geography.

It is difficult to find much fault with Privileging Industry, and any criticisms tend to be of the sort that would ask the author to extend what she has done, since she is clearly on a fruitful track here. For example, she could have gotten greater leverage out of more discussion of a weak-party PR case like Brazil, comparing it to the weak-party majoritarian case of the United States. In addition, the measures of stock price dispersion could be improved and developed further, as McGillivray herself recognizes; the payoff for her methodological exertions are not terribly great at this point. In the end, however, this is a clearly argued book that significantly advances our understanding of the political dynamics behind trade and industrial policy in a comparative context, and that is a significant achievement.