Support for Free Trade: Self-Interest, Sociotropic Politics, and Out-Group Anxiety

Although it is widely acknowledged that an understanding of mass attitudes about trade is crucial to the political economy of foreign commerce, only a handful of studies have addressed this topic. These studies have focused largely on testing two models, both of which emphasize that trade preferences are shaped by how trade affects an individual's income. The factor endowments or Heckscher-Ohlin model posits that these preferences are affected primarily by a person's skills. The specific factors or Ricardo-Viner model posits that trade preferences depend on the industry in which a person works. We find little support for either of these models using two representative national surveys of Americans. The only potential exception involves the effects of education. Initial tests indicate that educational attainment and support for open trade are directly related, which is often interpreted as support for the Heckscher-Ohlin model. However, further analysis reveals that education's effects are less representative of skill than of individuals' anxieties about involvement with out-groups in their own country and beyond. Furthermore, we find strong evidence that trade attitudes are guided less by material self-interest than by perceptions of how the U.S. economy as a whole is affected by trade. Disciplines Communication This journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/asc_papers/322 Support for Free Trade: Self-Interest, Sociotropic Politics, and Out-Group Anxiety Edward D+ Mansfield and Diana C+ Mutz Abstract Although it is widely acknowledged that an understanding of mass attitudes about trade is crucial to the political economy of foreign commerce, only a handful of studies have addressed this topic+ These studies have focused largely on testing two models, both of which emphasize that trade preferences are shaped by how trade affects an individual’s income+ The factor endowments or HeckscherOhlin model posits that these preferences are affected primarily by a person’s skills+Although it is widely acknowledged that an understanding of mass attitudes about trade is crucial to the political economy of foreign commerce, only a handful of studies have addressed this topic+ These studies have focused largely on testing two models, both of which emphasize that trade preferences are shaped by how trade affects an individual’s income+ The factor endowments or HeckscherOhlin model posits that these preferences are affected primarily by a person’s skills+ The specific factors or Ricardo-Viner model posits that trade preferences depend on the industry in which a person works+ We find little support for either of these models using two representative national surveys of Americans+ The only potential exception involves the effects of education+ Initial tests indicate that educational attainment and support for open trade are directly related, which is often interpreted as support for the Heckscher-Ohlin model+ However, further analysis reveals that education’s effects are less representative of skill than of individuals’ anxieties about involvement with out-groups in their own country and beyond+ Furthermore, we find strong evidence that trade attitudes are guided less by material self-interest than by perceptions of how the U+S+ economy as a whole is affected by trade+ The politics of international trade has been a long-standing puzzle for social scientists+ Among economists, there is widespread agreement that free trade is beneficial+ Open trade and cross-national market integration help to allocate factors of production efficiently and to promote the welfare of countries and the world as Earlier versions of this article were presented at the 2006 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia; seminars at the University of Chicago ~Harris School!, Emory University, Harvard University, and the University of Virginia; and a conference on Domestic Preferences and Foreign Economic Policy, held at Princeton University+ We are grateful to Marc Busch, Jens Hainmueller, So Young Kim, Richard Valelly, the editors of International Organization, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments; to Rumi Morishima, Matthew Tubin, and Carmela Aquino for research assistance; and to the Christopher H+ Browne Center for International Politics and the Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics for financial assistance+ Note from the editors: Since one of the authors is an associate editor of this journal, the editors handled this article outside of the normal editorial management system and put in place special procedures to ensure rigorous, double-blind peer review+ 1+ Alston, Kearl, and Vaughan 1992+ International Organization 63, Summer 2009, pp+ 425–57 © 2009 by The IO Foundation+ doi:10+10170S0020818309090158 a whole+ Historically, however, open trade has been the exception rather than the rule+ Studies of the political economy of trade often attribute variations in trade preferences to the distributional implications of overseas commerce+ Despite the economic benefits that a given country would accrue from open trade, some individuals suffer economic harm as a result+ If these individuals form a politically potent constituency, they may be able to pressure policymakers to increase trade barriers even if doing so is economically counterproductive for the country as a whole+ If, on the other hand, the individuals who derive welfare gains from trade are particularly influential, then an open trade regime is likely to take hold+ Recent research indicates that, in democratic countries, constituency opinion on trade plays a central role in influencing the policy positions of public officials+ There are two principle ways of assessing the distributional consequences of trade+ First, the factor endowments approach emphasizes that, in a given country, trade benefits those individuals who own factors of production that are in abundant supply relative to the remainder of the world, and harms owners of factors that are in scarce supply+ In countries such as the United States, which has a skilled labor force, free trade benefits highly skilled workers and harms less skilled workers+ Second, the specific factors approach predicts that an individual’s attitudes toward trade will reflect characteristics of the industry in which he or she works+ People employed in industries that depend on overseas markets should be more supportive of open trade than people working in industries that face considerable competition from imports+ A small but growing number of studies have evaluated the strength of these explanations for trade policy preferences+ We extend this body of research using two representative national surveys of Americans and more comprehensive measures of industries and occupations than previous studies had available to them+ In addition, we link the study of trade preferences to the more extensive body of theory and empirical research on how self-interest enters into the formation of domestic economic policy preferences+ Substantial research in other economic policy domains has demonstrated that self-interest rarely shapes the formation of policy opinions because people have a difficult time understanding the connection between personal economic wellbeing and government policy+ By mounting the most thorough individual-level examination to date of the effects of industry and skill on individual trade preferences, we seek to determine whether trade is, indeed, one of those rare exceptions in which personal experiences are successfully politicized+ Alternatively, if attitudes about trade are formed in a manner similar to attitudes about domestic economic domains such as unemployment, then trade policy preferences will be based on how people believe a policy affects the country collectively rather than on narrowly defined self-interest+ Importantly, the analysis of aggregate-level data—the 2+ See Fordham and McKeown 2003; and Kono 2008+ 426 International Organization