Does more democracy lead to more open trade regimes?

Many developing countries flocked to free trade since the early 1980s. Concurrent with this rush to adopt an open trade regime, there has been a global movement toward democracy. We argue that these two trends are related by showing how democratization of the political system reduces the ability of governments to use trade barriers as a strategy for building political support. We capture the democratization process by an expansion of the group of actors who participate in the selection of political leaders. We provide some empirical evidence to support our claim using various data sets that cover about 70 developing countries for the time period of 1970-92.