Economic Integration and Political Accountability

This paper studies to what extent economic integration, or globalization, influences the accountability of politicians. Assuming that politicians are controlled by the voters through reelection rules, we analyze to what extent economic integration affects the form of those rules and the efforts made by politicians. We define economic integration by the existence of policies and shocks interdependences between countries. Then, from a political point of view, this integration is shown to be a two-sided phenomenon. Shock-interdependence allows yardstick comparison, increases political accountability and therefore efforts while policy-interdependence induces a lack of responsibility and harms the extent to which politicians can be controlled.