Social Expectations Concerning Free Trade Agreements
Social Expectations Concerning Free Trade Agreements

Perception versus Reality

Summary/Abstract: The paper reflects the problem of Free Trade Agreements (FTA) that recently have raised enormous public discussion focused on environmental protection, food quality, job security, and citizen rights. The main focus of our study is to identify and confront the social perception concerning the FTA with the so-called “expert knowledge.” This may contribute both to better understanding of the controversies on the FTA and to proper indicating the possible sources of social conflicts. The results obtained seem to prove the main hypothesis that the mismatch between social perception and expert knowledge on the FTA does exist. What is more, it is mainly based on emotional not rational basis, which neglects rationale based communication channel between policy makers and society.

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