This dissertation consists of three essays that integrate theories in the fields of international political economy and democratization to advance the understanding of trade politics under dictatorships. The core argument is that dictators can utilize trade policies to prolong their political survival. Thus, economic globalization inhibits, not facilitates, democratization. In the first essay, I address a substantive question: What factors motivate dictators to expand the trade regime of their countries? Scholars have been focusing on the difference in trade openness between democracies and dictatorships. They conclude that democracies have more trade openness than do autocracies. However, these works fail to systematically assess the high variation of trade openness among dictatorships. In addition, from the perspective of modernization theory, trade-induced economic growth may facilitate democratization in dictatorships. Accordingly, it looks like committing political suicide for political leaders of some authoritarian countries, such as China and Vietnam, to significantly engage their countries in the world economy. Based on the Heckscher-Ohlin model of international trade and theories of democratic transitions, I argue that rising inequality is a key determinant for dictators to expand the trade regimes. In other words, inequality is a cause, rather than a consequence, of trade openness under dictatorships. Building on the argument of the first essay, I expect that increase in trade openness not only reduces inequality but also helps dictators strengthen their authoritarian rule. Thus, my second essay focuses on the effects of signing preferential trade agreements (PTAs) on inequality and authoritarian survival. In this chapter, I demonstrate that once a dictatorship successfully signs PTAs with other countries, it can further reduce both economic inequality and prospects of regime breakdown. This finding explains why the some authoritarian countries, China in particular, become more resilient against democratization after signing numerous PTAs.The third essay investigates whether types of protectionism also differ by types of authoritarianism. The current literature finds that single-party dictatorships, due to their larger winning coalitions, are more open to trade with lower tariffs than other types of authoritarian regimes, such as personalistic or military dictatorships. In this essay, I offer a caveat to this research agenda by showing that larger sizes of winning coalition also result in more complicated tariff schedules of single-party dictatorships. Those complicated tariff schedules help dictators protect more members of their winning coalitions and consolidate their authoritarian rule under single-party dictatorships.By integrating dictators' strategic choice of trade policies into this analytic framework, I conclude that trade liberalization leads to authoritarian consolidation. Overall, my dissertation offers an economic anatomy of authoritarian survival to the ongoing research agenda on dictatorships in the age of globalization.
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