Symbolic barriers? United States leaders, public opinion, and trade liberalization in the post-Cold War era

In this dissertation, I analyze the structure and organization of opinion on trade liberalization in the early post-Cold War era. Most traditional studies of trade politics have dismissed the significance of the broader citizenry in trade politics and focus on narrower, special interests. But I argue that the American public can be engaged on trade issues of national interest. I contend that citizens are able to access information shortcuts, or heuristics, to compensate for low information on trade policy.; I hypothesize that citizens formulate opinion on trade issues based partly on economic self-interest. Highly educated and highly skilled professionals are more likely to support freer trade. But collective economic interests and identities are more important predictors of opinion on liberal trade arrangements than are personal economic differences. Liberal-conservative ideological identification and cues are relatively insignificant variables in the structure of public and elite opinion in the trade issue environment. Democratic-Republican partisan identification provide more limited guidance than does an awareness of the president's trade position and presidential evaluation. I hypothesize that national identity, an orientation toward national sovereignty, perceptions of threat, and feelings toward trade partners and the president are significant and consistent influences on trade issue judgment.; I posit that the left-right ideological component of trade is relatively low for elites and the mass public, providing alternative channels for elite-mass communication in the trade issue domain. Elites and the public rely upon similar heuristics to formulate trade issue judgment. When there is wider public awareness on a trade issue, contending elites are more likely to use public opinion for political legitimacy in the trade policy environment.; The period under analysis focuses most extensively on the years, 1990--1996. I primarily draw my data from the 1990 and 1994 Chicago Council on Foreign Relations elite-mass opinion surveys, the 1996 General Social Survey project on National Identity, and a number of other national opinion surveys, including the Gallup Organization and the CBS/New York Times.