When Does Issue Linkage Backfire? Value-Based Issue Linkage in Trade Agreements

• In Event: Contemporary Issues in Trade Agreements

Abstract

Does issue linkage promote international cooperation? Design-of-institutions scholars have argued that issue linkage can boost support for an unpopular international agreement from stakeholders who would otherwise be indifferent or opposed to it. This thesis relies on a crucial yet understudied assumption: stakeholders operate based on clearly defined group interests in an issue area, thus making issue linkage conducive to increased support. However, this design approach fails to address an important feature of contemporary political lives: some stakeholders have bundled partisan preferences across many issues and think like ideologues, rather than single-issue groups. This paper argues that issue linkage may rather lower the support for the agreement when stakeholders have strong partisan preferences, and linkage facilitates cooperation only among those with clearly defined preferences isolated from other politicized issues. I test this theory in two ways. First, I use a text-as-data approach to investigate activists’ positions on US and EU trade negotiations across linkages to environmental and human rights issues. Second, I conduct in-depth interviews with activists who were involved in trade negotiations. Overall, I find that single-issue groups tend to propose design-based solutions to cooperation challenges and provide support for trade deals in return for concessions, whereas ideologues not only respond negatively to issue linkage but the government’s linkage attempt also provides a focal point for them to join forces with anti-trade and pro-sovereignty groups. This paper has important implications for our understanding of how domestic politics limits the effect of issue linkage.

Author

• Boram Lee, London School of Economics