Trade, Conflict & Cooperation: How IOs Affect Support for Internat'l Agreements

• In Event: Legitimzing and De-legitimizing International Cooperation

Abstract

Negotiating international agreements requires leaders to successfully play a two-level game, whereby they must reach an agreement at the international level and build a supporting coalition at the domestic level. With the United States withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), we are reminded that building a supporting coalition for international cooperation at the domestic level is a critical step to achieving international cooperation. This paper tackles the question of how the negotiation process, specifically the proposal process, affects domestic support for international agreements and the likelihood of cooperation. I argue that international organizations can enhance domestic public support for negotiated agreements when they are perceived as initiating or proposing the agreement. Using an innovative series of survey experiments imbedded in current event news coverage about economic, security, and environmental negotiations, I test competing explanations of how proposal power and IOs affect domestic support for international cooperation. The results show that IO proposals enhance support for international cooperation, and expand the domestic supporting coalition by increasing support among members of the opposition party. These findings suggest that when IOs act as third-party proposers in international negotiations, it expands the domestic win-set of supported agreements and enhances support for international cooperation.

Author

• Ryan Brutger, University of California, Berkeley