Imperial Preference (1932): Britain’s Return to Protectionism Oksana Levkovych | LSE International Relations
[email protected] May 2018 Draft for 2018 ESHET Conference, Madrid. Please do not to cite or distribute without permission. Abstract: It has long puzzled IPE scholars, why following liberation from the gold standard and Keynes’s withdrawal of recommendation for tariff, Britain chose to abandon free trade. This paper argues that Britain’s shift to trade protectionism in 1932 can be explained through establishment of a winning protectionist coalition and need to adopt the Imperial Preference. Emerging from August-September 1931 financial crisis this coalition united free traders and trade protectionists under the National Government tasked with the national economic recovery in the wake of protracted economic Slump and the unexpected sterling float. The major emphasis in this paper is on leading individuals’ and their reactions to the evolving systemic conditions such as interwar collapse of the liberal international trade regime and dismantlement of the British Empire. It focuses specifically on Walter Runciman, the President of the Board of Trade (1931-1937) and a principled free trader in charge of Britain’s shift to protection, and on his efforts to restore Britain’s leadership through adequate trade policy response to domestic, imperial and international economic challenges. Hegemonic stability theory is the clear paradigm central to my analysis where this paper seeks to make a real contribution. For instance, Krasner’s (1976) systemic-level focus simply cannot explain such local-level policy decisions. Drawing from primary and secondary archival sources spanning dozens of collections, this paper is in the enviable position of having the real, local data required to get a handle on this puzzle.