Issue-Areas, Sovereignty Costs, and North Americans’ Attitudes Towards Regional Cooperation

Summary:  View help for Summary Studies of public opinion towards regionalism tend to rely on questions regarding trade integration and specific regional organizations. This narrow focus overlooks dimensions of regionalism that sit at the heart of International Relations research on regions today. Instead, we argue that research should explore public preferences with respect to regional cooperation in different issue-areas. We find that people’s views of regional cooperation in North America diverge from their attitudes towards trade integration alone. Using data from Rethinking North America (RNA), an untapped public opinion survey conducted in Mexico, Canada, and the US in 2013, we show that although country-level attitudes towards trade integration in North America were similar, preferences for regional cooperation varied by country depending on the issue at hand. We propose that attitudes are shaped by citizens’ perceptions of the asymmetric patterns of national-level benefits and vulnerabilities created by regional cooperation. Generally, respondents favor cooperation where their state stands to gain greater capacity benefits and oppose it where cooperation imposes greater costs on national autonomy. For policymakers, this multifaceted approach to regionalism sheds light on areas where public preferences for regional cooperation might converge. Future research that disaggregates various aspects of support for regional cooperation should help integrate the study of public opinion with “new” and comparative regional approaches that emphasize aspects of regionalism beyond trade and formal institutions.

Subject Terms:  View help for Subject Terms North America; regionalism; public opinion; NAFTA; free trade

Geographic Coverage:  View help for Geographic Coverage North America

Time Period(s):  View help for Time Period(s) 2013 – 2013

Data Type(s):  View help for Data Type(s) survey data