Attitudes towards the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership in the European Union: The treaty partner heuristic and issue attention

Nils D Steiner

European Union Politics, 2018, vol. 19, issue 2, 255-277

Abstract: Why has the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partisanship met with strong public resistance among some Europeans and in some European Union member states, but not in others? This article argues that one important perspective to explain the pattern of support for TTIP is the role of heuristic opinion formation and issue attention. Analysing multiple waves of Eurobarometer data, I find that views of the two treaty partners, the US and the European Union, shape attitudes towards TTIP and that the largely post-materialist concerns over TTIP resonated specifically in those European countries whose citizens’ attention was less focused on economic issues. In showing how opinions towards concrete real-world trade policy proposals are shaped by the political context, these findings complement previous research on citizens’ general stances towards trade.

Keywords: Heuristics; issue attention; preferential trade agreements; trade attitudes; Transatlantic; Trade and Investment Partnership (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:eeupol:v:19:y:2018:i:2:p:255-277

DOI: 10.1177/1465116518755953

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