You need a title. Your abstract is perhaps too long. Keep it within 150
words or so. What is the main claim here? Are you saying that the effect
of divided government matters only when the Congress is protectionist? If
so, say it. Right now, there isn't a clear and coherent theme running
through the abstract. Some more comments below.
Kosuke
Utilizing data on Congressional voting and U.S.
tariffs before and after
the establishment of the Reciprocal Trade Authorization Act (RTAA) of
1934, we make two key claims relevant to the literature on endogenous
tariff theory.
The abstract should make it obvious that your key claims are relevant to
the literature without explicitly saying it.
First, we challenge the view that the RTAA made free
trade more tenable
by increasing political sensitivity to export interests (Bailey,
Goldstein, and Weingast, 1997; Irwin and Krosner, 1999).
No need to cite the literature in the abstract unless it's very important.
The Democratic Party was sensitive to export interests
before the
enactment of the RTAA and became increasingly insensitive after 1934.
This lends support to an alternative theory based on factor mobility and
shifting interest group coalitions, which suggests that constituency
shifts reversed the trade preferences of the Republican and Democratic
parties in the post-World War II era (Hiscox 2002). Second, we argue
that extant literature on the effect of divided government on tariffs
fails to account for the structure of delegation and the aforementioned
preference shift. Since the RTAA delegates authority only to lower
tariffs, free-trade Congressional parties prefer to delegate regardless
of the identity of the President. This theoretical prediction is borne
out in our analysis of the voting data, which demonstrates that only
members of the protectionist party have a systematic tendency to vote
against delegation when the President is of the other party.
you can make the sentece shorter by removing phrases like "this
theoretical prediction is borne out in our analysis"
On average, a member of the protectionist party is 31
to 60% more likely
to vote against delegation in the presence of an opposing party
President, while the equivalent for a liberal party member is -8 to 14%.
We also revisit Lohmann and OHallorans (1994) seminal analysis and
find that the effect of divided government on tariff rates is
conditional on the presence of a protectionist Congress.