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How Can Economic Interests Influence Support for Free Trade?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 April 2012

Benjamin O. Fordham  and
Katja B. Kleinberg
Benjamin O. Fordham
Affiliation:
Binghamton University (SUNY). E-mail: bfordham@binghamton.edu
Katja B. Kleinberg
Affiliation:
Binghamton University (SUNY). E-mail: kkleinbe@binghamton.edu
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Abstract

Recent research on the sources of individual attitudes toward trade policy comes to very different conclusions about the role of economic self-interest. The skeptical view suggests that long-standing symbolic predispositions and sociotropic perceptions shape trade policy opinions more than one's own material well-being. We believe this conclusion is premature for two reasons. First, the practice of using one attitude to predict another raises questions about direction of causation that cannot be answered with the data at hand. This problem is most obvious when questions about the expected impact of trade are used to predict opinions about trade policy. Second, the understanding of self-interest employed in most studies of trade policy attitudes is unrealistically narrow. In reality, the close relationship between individual economic interests and the interests of the groups in which individuals are embedded creates indirect pathways through which one's position in the economy can shape individual trade policy preferences. We use the data employed by Mansfield and Mutz to support our argument that a more complete account of trade attitude formation is needed and that in such an account economic interests may yet play an important role.1

Type
Research Note
Information
International Organization , Volume 66 , Issue 2 , April 2012 , pp. 311 - 328
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 2012

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