6533b855fe1ef96bd12b113c
RESEARCH PRODUCT
Attitudes towards the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership in the European Union: The treaty partner heuristic and issue attention
Nils D. Steinersubject
Transatlantic Trade and Investment PartnershipCommercial policyHealth (social science)Eurobarometer05 social sciencesContext (language use)Investment (macroeconomics)0506 political sciencePoliticsPolitical sciencePolitical economy0502 economics and businessPolitical Science and International Relations050602 political science & public administrationmedia_common.cataloged_instance050207 economicsTreatyEuropean unionDemographymedia_commondescription
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.
| year | journal | country | edition | language |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-02-13 | European Union Politics |