Elite cueing and attitudes towards trade agreements: the case of TTIP

Bernd Schlipphak,Andreas Dür

doi:10.1017/s175577392000034x

Abstract

AbstractHow does elite communication affect citizens’ attitudes towards trade agreements? Building on a growing literature on context factors influencing public opinion about trade and trade agreements; we argue that citizens rely on cues provided by political elites, especially political parties, when forming their views towards these agreements. Such cueing effects are most likely for citizens with little information about a trade agreement and for citizens receiving cues from trusted elites. In addition, citizens exposed to cues from non-trusted elites should exhibit a source-opposing effect. Our key contribution is to test these expectations relying on a survey experiment on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) carried out in Germany and Spain. The findings from our experiment support the existence of elite cueing effects, although to a limited degree. Overall, the paper contributes to a better understanding of public opinion towards TTIP, trade policy attitudes, and public opinion more generally.

Highlights

Over the past decade, public opposition to free trade agreements has grown in the Global North as well as in the Global South (Naoi and Urata, 2013; Urbatsch, 2013; Dür and Mateo, 2014; Hicks et al, 2014; Steiner, 2018)
We have examined the effects of such a heuristic, namely the positions of trusted elites, for the case of Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)
We have found some support for the expectation that citizens use source cues to form their attitude on trade agreements if they have little information about the topic and if they trust the sources of the cues

Summary

Introduction

Public opposition to free trade agreements has grown in the Global North as well as in the Global South (Naoi and Urata, 2013; Urbatsch, 2013; Dür and Mateo, 2014; Hicks et al, 2014; Steiner, 2018). As put by Zaller (1992: 121), ‘Perceiving the message as coming from a source with a different predisposition induces “partisan resistance”’ This discussion leads us to formulate the following three hypotheses: H1: Little informed citizens that receive a positive (negative) cue become more favourable (more opposed) towards a trade agreement. The upshot is that the treatment worked in the sense of updating individuals’ views on the party positions (as shown in the manipulation check), but in most cases this is not reflected in mean support for TTIP These aggregate effects may hide important differences across different types of respondents, as expected in our hypotheses. When they did have an effect, this is only present for the group of not or not well informed

50 Andreas Dür and Bernd Schlipphak

Findings

Conclusion