 The Electoral Salience of Trade Policy: Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Welfare and ComplexityTimothy W. Taylor International Interactions, 2015, vol. 41, issue 1, 84-109 Abstract: Why do some trade policies become electorally salient while others do not? While much of the literature argues that citizens act as a domestic constraint in the formation of trade policy, a general consensus has emerged that trade is most often a nonsalient issue among voters. This poses a paradox. On the one hand, trade models hinge upon voters’ rational self-interest and preferences for varying levels of protectionism to keep their governments accountable. On the other hand, the conditions by which trade becomes salient to these very voters in the first place are both undertheorized and untested. Using experimental evidence, I argue that two dimensions of a trade policy affect the likelihood of that issue becoming electorally salient. First, policies with large welfare effects should be more salient. Second, more complex issues should be less salient because such agreements are more likely to obfuscate an individual’s ability to discern its effects. I find support for my hypotheses that a trade policy’s salience tends to increase with the magnitude of its welfare effects and decrease with its complexity. Date: 2015 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:ginixx:v:41:y:2015:i:1:p:84-109 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1080/03050629.2014.945582 Access Statistics for this article International Interactions is currently edited by Michael Colaresi and Gerald Schneider More articles in International Interactions from Taylor & Francis Journals |
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