Understanding NAFTA in Mexico: Political attitude formation in a changing economic and political environment

This project examines individual level attitudes towards the North American Free Trade Agreement in Mexico. I explore three competing theories to explain variation in public support for this issue: a utilitarian model that focuses on the cost and benefits of policies to individuals, an affective model that explains variation in support by analyzing an individual's opinion of the United States, and a cue-taking model that analyzes presidential cues as an influence on support for NAFTA. Using survey data from Mexico, I test these competing hypotheses, and find that attitudes toward the United States and presidential cues are more important in structuring support for NAFTA than are economic considerations.