Abstract
Any North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) theoretical fit necessitates riffling through some of the relevant debates and specifying the theoretical tenets to be used for measuring NAFTA performance. Since applying theoretical tenets rather than measuring their value/relevance is the larger goal, how those tenets have been refined over time becomes less important than specifying what those tenets are and consistently utilizing them. Accordingly, while the original conceptions, postulations, and benchmarks suffice, the first section of this chapter identifies relevant mainstream debates, leaving for the second to select and specify the paradigm to be used. At stake in both is the tension between protecting state sovereignty and going “beyond the state” into some supranational space.1 We will find, in the process, how West European experiences, without being foolproof, set the example for other regions to follow,2 albeit in fits and starts.3 North America, accordingly, slid up and down this state-supranational scale without relinquishing enough of its state-based anchor and seriously institutionalizing any supranational threads.4
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Notes
for this debate applied elsewhere, see Nina Heathcote, “The Crisis of European Supranationality,” Journal of Common Market Studies 2, no. 1 (1966): 141–71.;
James A. Caporaso, “The European Union and Forms of State: Westphalia, Regulatory or Post-Modern?,” Journal of Common Market Studies 34, no. 1 (March 1996): 29–52;
and Mark A. Pollack, “International Relations Theory and European Integration,” Journal of Common Market Studies 39, no. 2 (June 2001): 221–44.
The classic “empty-chair” crisis is discussed by Robert Ackrill, The Common Agricultural Policy (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 34–38;
and Sam-Sang Jo, European Myths: Resolving the Crises in the European Community/Union (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2007), ch. 4.
Also see Joel P. Trachtman, “L’etat, c’est nous: Sovereignty, Economic Integration and Subsidiarity,” Harvard International Law Journal 33, no. 2 (Spring 1992): 459–73.
If not to follow the West European pattern, to at least be informed or influenced by it. See N. David Palmeter, “Pacific Regional Trade Liberalization and Rules of Origin,” Journal of World Trade 27, no. 5 (October 1993): 49–62;
and John Whalley, “CUSTA and NAFTA: Can WHFTA Be Far Behind?,” Journal of Common Market Studies 30, no. 2 (June 1992): 125–41. In reality, North America is not so new a consideration, since its dominant actor, the United States, has long been considered from a European integration perspective. Karl Kaiser elaborates more on this point in “The US and the EEC in the Atlantic System: The Problem of Theory,” Journal of Common Market Studies 5, no. 4 (1966–67): 388–425. Neither is Mexico a new consideration.
See Haas and Schmitter, Mexico and Latin American Economic Integration (Berkeley, CA: Institute of International Affairs, University of California, 1964).
This is the theme in Joseph S. Nye, Peace in Parts: Integration and Conflict in Regional Organization (Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co., 1971), ch. 2, but see Part II.
They advanced, for example, interdependence, regime, or transnational theories as supranational variants. See Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence: World Power in Transition (Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co., 1977);
Andrew Moravcsik, “Negotiating the Single European Act: National Interests and Conventional Statecraft in the European Community,” International Organization 45, no. 1 (Winter 1991): 19–56;
Stephen D. Krasner, ed., International Regimes (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982);
and Keohane and Nye, Transnational Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972).
Regionalism took different shapes and substances, accordingly, even dubbed “a spaghetti bowl” rather than neofunctionalism by some. See Jagdish Bhagwati, Termites in the Trading System: How Preferential Agreements Undermine the System (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), ch. 3;
and Arvind Panagariya, Regionalism in Trade Policy: Essays on Preferential Trading (London: World Scientific Publishing, 1999), ch. 1.
On relations between the two stages, see Maurice Schiff and L. Alan Winters, Regional Integration and Development (Washington, DC: International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 2003), 78–81.
José A. Crespo, Norma Borrego, and Ana Luz Ruelas, “Political Institutions in Mexico,” in Politics in North America: Redefining Continental Relations, eds. Yasmeen Abu-Laban, Radha Jhappan, and François Rocher (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2008), ch. 8; and Francois Rocher and Gordon Di Giacomo, “National Institutions in North America: US, Canadian, and Mexican Federalism,” in Politics in North America: Redefining Continental Relations, ch. 9.
This is not in the same way or to the same degree as Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Reuschmeyer, and Theda Skocpol do in their (edited) book, Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
See also David Mitrany, A Working Peace System: An Argument for the Functional Development of International Organization, Pamphlet, #40 (London: National Peace Council, 1944).
Stanley Hoffmann, “Obstinate or Obsolete? The Fate of the Nation-State and the Case of Western Europe,” Daedalus 95, no. 3 (1966): 862–915.
Ernst B. Haas, The Obsolescence of Regional Integration Theory (Berkeley, CA: Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1975).
Robert A. Pastor, “Beyond NAFTA: The Emergence and Future of North America,” in Politics in North America; and Robert A. Pastor, “NAFTA Is Not Enough: Steps toward a North American Community,” in The Future of North American Integration: Beyond NAFTA, eds. Peter Hakim and Robert E. Litan (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2002).
Donald S. MacDonald (of the 1985 Canadian Royal Commission fame) extends what he calls “cultural sovereignty” to Canada-US relations, given that “[o]ver 70 percent [sic] of the magazines and periodicals … over 80 percent [sic] of the prime-time television presentations … and equivalently large percentages of books publications, or reordering” within Canada “came from outside the country.” See MacDonald, “Canadian Perceptions,” in Building a Canadian-American Free Trade Area, eds. Edward R. Freed, Frank Stone, and Philip H. Trezise (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1987), 15, but see 11–17.
See Harald von Riekhoff, “The Impact of Prime Minister Trudeau on Foreign Policy,” in Canadian Foreign Policy: Historical Readings, ed. J. L. Granatstein (Toronto, ON: Copp Clark Pitman, 1993), 289–90;
and Michael Tucker, Canadian Foreign Policy: Contemporary Issues and Themes (Toronto, ON: McGraw-Hill, 1980), ch. 2.
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© 2012 Imtiaz Hussain
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Hussain, I. (2012). North American Economic Integration in Theoretical Context. In: Reevaluating NAFTA. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137297174_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137297174_2
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