Nondemocracies are often only encountered as a counterpart to democracies. Differences between various kinds of nondemocracies are typically ignored in both empirical and theoretical research. Empirical research showed that the variance of trade regulations between 1978 and 1999 decreased for the OECD country group whereas it increased for all non-OECD countries, which are mainly nondemocracies, during the same time.1 Previous attempts to explain variation of trade openness among nondemocracies relied solely on one-dimensional measures of democracy (level). However, this might be a too crude simplification. Thus, the present paper seeks to explain disparities in the trade openness of two subtypes of nondemocratic regimes, namely monarchies and electoral regimes. The research question is: Do different kinds of nondemocratic regimes display different behavior regarding international trade and trade regulations? The argument put forward is, yes, they do because institutions shape outcomes and the institutions of power generation and retention of power vary between nondemocratic regimes and so does the factor endowment. Hence, theoretical foundations are rational choice institutionalism and classical trade theory. A panel data analysis covering the time period from 1972 to 2005 will be applied to test if differences depending on the regime type exist. Three different measures of trade openness (de facto, de jure and a mixture) will be used to test for various dimensions of trade.
