Uninformed citizens and support for free trade

Abstract

ABSTRACT In less developed countries, the higher individuals’ labor skills are, the more they support free trade. This recurrent statistical finding is problematic for extant analytical models used to explain and interpret people's positions on free trade. This article proposes an analytical framework that challenges the dominant full-information factor-endowment approach to public opinion on free trade. The dominant approach assumes informed individuals who relate expectations about how free trade will affect them to their work skills. We propose that most individuals lack information and that their positions reflect the influence of information, frames, economic vulnerability, and political endorsements. We test this alternative approach with a Spanish survey conducted in May 2009 and the ISSP survey conducted in 2003 in a large number of less developed and more developed countries. The Spanish data demonstrate that the population is largely uninformed and that their ideas about the consequences of free trade do not explain contrasts among different socio-demographic groups. Meanwhile, the ISSP data contradict important aspects of the traditional approach and are consistent our alternative approach.