Civic Participation and Legitimacy of Trade Agreements: How Input Matters

• In Event: Information and Attitudes towards Trade

Abstract

Increasingly preferential trade agreements (PTAs) include mechanisms to involve public participation and dialogue with civic organizations to meet and carry out the various provisions affecting multiple constituents. How does this incorporation of civil society and public participation into PTAs affect the perceptions of legitimacy of free trade deals? Using original survey data, we explore the effect of civic participation in PTAs on its public perceptions in the European Union (the early champion of such mechanisms) and its partners, as and the United States, both of whom incorporate public participation mechanisms in their trade deals, albeit to varying degrees. We explore the perceptions of civil society inclusion at the agreement negotiation and implementation stages. We expect greater public support and legitimacy associated with trade agreements in countries that sign PTAs that involve civil society and public voices. This relationship is mediated by the local contexts such as regime type and welfare state. We also conduct a focus group with civil society groups to explore how the inclusion of participation mechanisms would change their perceptions of trade deals and the parameters of their legitimacy. Ultimately, legitimacy can be enhanced through either input (i.e., voice) or output (i.e., consequences) and our study indicates that voice can be a means to change the growing backlash against free trade, especially in the developed world.

Authors

• Evgeny Postnikov, University of Melbourne

• Ida Bastiaens, Fordham University