Making and Remaking State Institutional Arrangements: The Case of U.S. Trade Policy in the 1970s*

The article describes the struggle between free‐trade advocates and protectionists in the early 1970s in the United States over the institutional arrangements governing trade policy formation and implementation. The analysis of the struggle and its impacts offers several modifications to historical institutionalist analysis of institutional dynamics and change. First, the uneven distribution of benefits by institutions is an intended outcome of institutional designers. Second, institutions are causally effective when they reflect a balance of forces that no longer exists. Third, unanticipated effects within given institutional arrangements are the outcome of intended counter‐strategies.