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Googling the WTO: What Search-Engine Data Tell Us About the Political Economy of Institutions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 July 2013

Krzysztof J. Pelc
Krzysztof J. Pelc*
Affiliation:
McGill University, Montreal. E-mail: kj.pelc@mcgill.ca
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Abstract

How does international law affect state behavior? Existing models addressing this issue rest on individual preferences and voter behavior, yet these assumptions are rarely questioned. Do citizens truly react to their governments being taken to court over purported violations? I propose a novel approach to test the premise behind models of international treaty-making, using web-search data. Such data are widely used in epidemiology; in this article I claim that they are also well suited to applications in political economy. Web searches provide a unique proxy for a fundamental political activity that we otherwise have little sense of: information seeking. Information seeking by constituents can be usefully examined as an instance of political mobilization. Applying web-search data to international trade disputes, I provide evidence for the belief that US citizens are concerned about their country being branded a violator of international law, even when they have no direct material stake in the case at hand. This article constitutes a first attempt at utilizing web-search data to test the building blocks of political economy theory.

Type
Research Notes
Information
International Organization , Volume 67 , Issue 3 , July 2013 , pp. 629 - 655
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 2013 

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