《Determining Trade Policy》.pdf

Determining Trade Policy: Do Voters Hold Politicians Accountable? Alexandra Guisinger Abstract Models of trade policy often depend on the efficient aggregation of individual preferences+ While much of the recent empirical work on trade focuses on whether domestic coalitions form along class or sectoral lines, the process of prefer- ence aggregation itself remains understudied+ In democratic countries, voting is typ- ically assumed to be an unproblematic mechanism for aggregating preferences, but such an assumption may be misleading when the salience of trade policy is low or heterogeneous throughout the electorate+ Using data from a survey of 36,501 poten- tial voters in the 2006 U+S+ midterm congressional elections, this article explores the salience of trade policy for voters as a whole and for populations predicted to be most affected by changing trade patterns+ The article offers an estimation of trade policy salience based on the degree to which voters held Senate incumbents account- able for their 2005 vote on the Central American Free Trade Agreement, relative to roll call votes on other issues of the day+ The article finds trade policy salience to be relatively low in terms of stated importance, in voters’ knowledge of their represen- tatives’ policy positions, and in its effect on voters’ propensity to vote for the incum- bent+ The low salience of trade policy, particularly among highly affected groups, calls into question voter-driven models of trade policy+ In a survey of registered voters conducted in anticipation of the U+S+ congressio- nal vote on the Central American Free Trade Agreement ~CAFTA!,1 opponents outweighed supporters by 51 to 32 percent+2 Yet in summer 2005, CAFTA passed The author would like to thank the “Political Economy of Trade” panel participants ~American Pol