Institutional Design, Information Transmission, and Public Opinion: Making the Case for Trade

• Author: Ryan Brutger,Siyao Li
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00220027221085072
• Published date: 01 November 2022
• Date: 01 November 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Journal of Conf‌lict Resolution

2022, Vol. 66(10) 1881–1907

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/00220027221085072

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Institutional Design,

Information Transmission,

and Public Opinion: Making

the Case for Trade

Ryan Brutger

1

and Siyao Li

2

Abstract

Domestic debates about trade have increased the salience of international economic

cooperation among the public, raising the question of whether, and how, domestic

support can be rallied in support of international trade agreements. We argue that

institutional features of trade agreements provide important cues to domestic audi-

ences that shape support, particularly the membership composition and voting rules

for multilateral deals. We use two survey experiments to show that the US public is

more supportive of trade when it is negotiated with like-minded countries. We also

f‌ind that the voting rules shape support for trade agreements, but differently across

partisan audiences. Republican voters strongly favor the home country having veto

power, whereas Democrats prefer agreements with equal voting rules. These dif-

ferences are largely driven by perceptions of the agreement’s benef‌it for the nation and

the public’s trust of the negotiators and perceived fairness of the rules.

Keywords

domestic politics, international institutions, public opinion, international cooperation,

trade, institutional design

1

Travers Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

2

Department of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania, PA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Ryan Brutger, Travers Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley, Social Sciences

Building, CA 94720, USA.

Email: brutger@berkeley.edu

The international trade system is built upon a dense network of trade agreements

ranging from immense multilateral agreements such as the General Agreement on

Tariffs and Trade (GATT) to bilateral trade deals such as the US-Korea Free Trade

Agreement. While trade was often a back-burner issue for the public, domestic political

discourse has increasingly focused on trade, thus increasing public exposure to the issue

and facilitating the formation of public attitudes that can affect both domestic politics

and international trade policy. Across countries, scrutiny of trade deals has increased,

with New Zealand seeking to exclude investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) pro-

visions from the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), and Nigeri a

f‌irst rejecting then joining the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). In the

US, trade became a central issue in the 2016 presidential campaign, with President

Trump proclaiming that “There’s no way to f‌ix TPP. We need bilateral trade deals”

(Trump 2016), a position that ref‌lected and amplif‌ied public apprehensiveness towards

globalization and opposition to trade agreements leading up to the election.

1

Once

elected, the rhetoric became policy with Trump’s withdrawal from the TPP, unilateral

push to renegotiate NAFTA and the US-Korea Free TradeAgreement, and escalation of

tariffs against allies and adversaries. The changing landscape of international trade

policy has made it a central issue for many governments, with the European Parliament

debating responses to US tariffs on steel and aluminum, 15 countries in Asia signing the

RCEP, and countless other examples as well.

The political salience of trade in the public domain has contributed to diverse and

varying attitudes toward trade agreements and international economic institutions

amongst the public (Walter 2021). In the US, public opinion has shifted from rising

support of protectionism in the early 2000s (Guisinger 2017: 69), to a recent surge in

public support for trade agreements in 2019 (Helm, Smeltz, and Hitch 2019). In the

European Union, opinions on the domestic impact of trade vary by country and by

political party aff‌iliation (Stokes 2018). Given shifting public attitudes toward trade and

international cooperation, the question remains whether, and how, leaders will be able

to rally suff‌icient domestic support to maintain and expand the network of liberal

international trade agreements that underpin the global economic system. To address

this question, this paper examines how the institutional features of trade agreements

inf‌luence domestic support for them, and how the contours of public support for

agreements shape the political coalitions supporting international economic

cooperation.

To better understand how domestic attitudes toward international trade agreements

are formed, we draw insights from scholarship that explores how institutional variation

in international agreements and international organizations provides cues to the public

and shapes support for international agreements. International institutions have the

ability to shape domestic public opinion by signaling information to domestic audiences.

For example, United Nations Security Council (UNSC) decisions changeperceptions of the

legitimacy of the use of force among the public (Voeten 2005) and IO endorsements have

been shown to provide a valuable “second opinion”that can increase public support for the

use of force in controlled survey experiments (Griecoet al. 2011).Thepublicalsoexpresses

1882 Journal of Conf‌lict Resolution 66(10)