Abstract
When Stephen Harper, Enrique Peña Nieto, and Barack Obama—chief executives of the three “North” American countries1—met in Toluca, Mexico, in February 2014,2 the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) signed by the three countries was already 20 years old. Crafted at a time of intense regional trade bloc rivalry,3 NAFTA bondages were quickly and widely interpreted in similar fashion as the European Union (EU)—of policy-making authorities plausibly passing from the state to a supranational entity.4 In other words, existing mutually dependent, or interdependent, relations would pave the way for economic integration of sorts between states. Yet, as Duncan Wood of the Mexican Institute in Washington, DC argued, shortly after the Toluca Summit: (a) “the bilateral approach has more often than not trumped trilateralism” and (b) “a dual-bilateral approach may be complementary,” ultimately, to the “trilateral vision for the region.”5 Had the ambitious initial integrative efforts regressed into interdependence across North America during those 20 years, or was a strategic shift underway to adjust to globalizing economic behavior elevating unilateral action?
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Nicholas V. Gianaris, The North American Free Trade Agreement and the European Union (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998), 4–13;
and Edgar Ortiz, “NAFTA and foreign investment in Mexico,” Foreign Investment and NAFTA, ed., Alan M. Rugman (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1994), ch. 7.
See, for example, Charles F. Doran, “When building North America, deepen before widening,” A New North America: Cooperation and Enhanced Interdependence, eds., Charles F. Doran and Alvin Paul Drischler (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996), ch. 4.
Henry Nau, “From integration to interdependence: Gains, losses, and continuing gaps,” International Organization 33, no. 1 (Winter 1979): 119–47.
Andrew Moravcsik popularized this approach in contrasting it with intergovernmentalism. See his “Negotiating the Single European Act: National interests and conventional statecraft,” International Organization 45, no. 1 (Winter 1991): 19–56.
Daowei Zhang, The Softwood Lumber War: Politics, Economics, and the Long U.S.-Canada Trade Dispute (New York: Routledge, 2007).
William J. Davey, Pine and Swine: Canada-United States Trade Dispute Settlement: The FTA Experience and NAFTA Prospects (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1996).
Raymond A. Rogers and Catherine Stewart, “Prisoners of their histories: Canada-U.S. conflicts in the Pacific salmon fishery,” American Review of Canadian Studies 27, no. 2 (August 1997): 253–69.
Gunnar Niels and Peter H. Smith, “NAFTA and Mexican migration,” At the Crossroads: Mexico and U.S. Immigration Policy, eds., Frank D. Bean, Rodolfo O. de la Garza, Bryan R. Roberts, and Sidney Weintraub (Boulder, CO, and New York: Rowman & Littlefeld, 1997), 263–81.
Term utilized by a former Guatemalan president, Juan Jose Arevalo. See Juan Jose Arevalo, June Cobb, and Raul Osegueda, The Shark and the Sardines (Whitefsh, Montana: Kessinger Publishing, 2007, but originally 1961).
Ross Perot set the tone early with Save Your Job, Save Our Country: Why NAFTA Must Be Stopped—Now (Los Angeles, CA: Hyperion, 1993).
From Jagdish Bhagwati and Hugh T. Patrick, eds., Aggressive Unilateralism: America’s 301 Trade Policy and the World Trading System (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1991).
Ronald L. Watts, “The MacDonald Commission Report and Canadian Federalism,” Publius: The Journal of Federalism 16 (Summer 1986): 175–99.
On the Third Option, see Jeremy Kinsman, “Who is my neighbor? Trudeau and foreign policy,” London Journal of Canadian Studies 18 (2002–2003): 103–20.
Jorge Chabat, “Mexico’s foreign policy in 1990: Electoral sovereignty and integration with the United States,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 33, no. 4 (Winter 1991): 1–25;
and Frederick W. Mayer, Interpreting NAFTA: The Science and Art of Political Analysis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).
On ISI, see Jaime Ross, “Mexico’s trade and industrialization experience since 1960: A reconsideration of past policies and assessment of current reforms,” Working Paper, #186, Kellogg Institute, January 1993; and John Weiss, “Trade reform and manufacturing performance in Mexico: From import substitution to dramatic export growth,” Journal of Latin American Studies 31, no. 1 (1999): 151–66.
Roy E. Green , The Enterprise for the Americas Initiative: Issues and Prospects for a Free Trade Agreement in the Western Hemisphere (New York: Praeger, 1993).
Jeffrey Garten, A Cold Peace: America, Japan, Germany and the Struggle for Supremacy (New York: Random House, 1992).
Robert A. Pastor, “NAFTA is not enough: Steps toward a North American Community,” The Future of North American Integration: Beyond NAFTA, eds., Peter Hakim and Robert E. Litan (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2002), ch. 4;
and Norris C. Clement et al., North American Economic Integration: Theory and Practice (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 1999).
Joseph Grunwald, “The rocky road toward hemispheric economic integration: A regional background with attention to the future,” NAFTA as a Model of Development: The Benefits and Costs of Merging High and Low Wage Areas, eds., Richard S. Belous and Jonathan Lemco (Washington, DC: National Planning Association/Ebert Stiftung/Institute of the Americas, 1993), ch. 7.
Jorge Chabat and Guadalupe Gonzalez Gonzalez, “Mexico’s hemispheric options in the post-Cold War era,” Foreign Policy and Regionalism in the Americas, eds., Gordon Mace and Jean-Philippe Therien (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1996), ch. 3.
One exception, Robert Gilpin, even talked of Canada—US integration in the mid-1960s. See “The politics of transnational economic relations,” International Organization 25, no. 3 (June 1971): 398–419.
Liette Gilbert, “North American anti-immigration rhetoric: Continental circulation and global resonance of discursive integration,” The Impacts of NAFTA on North America, ed., Imtiaz Hussain(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), ch. 4.
Jean Marie Palayet, Helen S. Wallace, and Pascaline Winand, Visions, Votes, and Vetoes: The Empty Chair Crisis and the Luxembourg Compromise Forty Years On (Oxford, UK: Peter Lang, 2006).
Dissected by Peter H. Smith, “Political dimensions of the peso crisis,” Mexico 1994: Anatomy of an Emerging-Market Crash, eds., Sebastian Edwards and Moisés Naím (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment/The Brookings Institution, 1997), 31–53.
Imtiaz Hussain. Reevaluating NAFTA: Theory and Practice (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 153.
Ricardo Grinspun and Maxwell A. Cameron, “The political economy of North American integration: Diverse perspectives, converging criticisms,” The Political Economy of North American Free Trade, eds., Ricardo Grinspun and Maxwell A. Cameron (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), ch. 1.
William Perry, “Mexico and NAFTA: The politico-security dimension in historical perspective,” Assessments of the North American Free Trade Agreement, ed., Ambler H. Moss, Jr. (New Brunswick, NJ: Transactions Publishers, 1993), ch. 3.
Louis E. V. Nevaer, NAFTA’s Second Decade: Assessing Opportunities in the Mexican and Canadian Markets (Mason, OH: Thomson/South-Western, 2004);
and Stephen Blank and Jerry Haar, Making NAFTA Work: U.S. Firms and the New North American Business Environment (Coral Gables, FL: North-South Center, University of Miami, 1998).
Richard E. Feinberg , Summitry in the Americas (Washington, DC: Institute of International Economics, 1997).
Paul Evans, Engaging China: Myth, Aspiration, and Strategy in Canadian Policy from Trudeau to Harper (Toronto, CA: University of Toronto Press, 2014).
Richard S. Belous and Rebecca S. Hartley, eds., The Growth of Regional Trading Blocs in the Global Economy (Washington, DC: National Planning Association, 1990).
Realist interpretations vary in style, sequence, and priorities, but the substance remains the same: state power precedes all else, and is defined in terms of “the national interest.” Hans J. Morgenthau, the widely acclaimed “father of international relations,” brought this out forcefully in his magnum opus, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York: Knopf, 1948). But also see Stanley Hoffmann, “Obstinate or obsolete? The fate of the nation-state in the case of Western Europe,” Daedalus 95, no. 3 (Summer 1966): 862–915. The high priest of neorealism was Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Menlo Park, CA: Addison-Wesley, 1979).
The original work on functionalism was David Mitrany’s A Working Peace System (Chicago, IL: Quadrangle Books, 1966, but originally in 1943). Revived form is dubbed neofunctionalism.
The foundational work is by Ernst B. Haas, Uniting for Europe: Political, Social, and Economic Forces, 1950–1958 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1958).
Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition (Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Co., 1977).
Kinsman , “Who is my neighbor?” London Journal of Canadian Studies 18 (2002–2003): 103–20.
Flor Brown and Lilia Domínguez, “Trade integration and sectorial productivity,” Mexico Beyond NAFTA: Perspectives for the European Debate, eds., Martin Puchet Anyul and Lionello F. Punzo (New York: Routledge, 2001), ch. 8;
and Sebastian Edwards, Crisis and Reform in Latin America: From Despair to Hope (Washington, DC: International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 1995).
Joseph S. Nye, “Comparing common markets: A revised neofunctionalist model,” Regional Integration: Theory and Research, eds., Leon N. Lindberg and Stuart A. Scheingold (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 199–218.
Judith Adller Hellman, “Mexican perceptions of free trade: Support and opposition to NAFTA,” Political Economy of North American Free Trade, eds., Ricardo Grinspun and Maxwell A. Cameron (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), 200, but see ch. 12.
Ricardo Grinspun, “The economics of free trade in Canada,” Political Economy of North American Free Trade, eds., Ricardo Grinspun and Maxwell A. Cameron (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), ch. 7.
Stephen Fielding Diamond, “U.S. labor and North American integration: Toward a constructive critique,” Political Economy of North American Free Trade, eds., Ricardo Grinspun and Maxwell A. Cameron (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), ch. 16.
Norman Caulfeld, NAFTA and Labor in North America: Working Class in American History (Urbana-Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2009).
Barbara Hogenboom, Mexico and the NAFTA Environmental Debate: The Transnational Politics of Economic Integration (Copenhagen: International Books, 1998).
Riordan Roett, Mercosur: Regional Integration, World Markets (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1999).
Point comes across on a sectorial basis in Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Jeffrey J. Schott, NAFTA Revisited: Achievements and Challenges (Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 2005), esp. the summarizing ch. 9.
Imtiaz Hussain, “Doggone diplomacy? The Iraq war, North American bilateralism, and beyond,” Canada and the New American Empire, ed., George Melnyk (Calgary, AL: University of Calgary Press, 2004), 213–30.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2015 Imtiaz Hussain and Roberto Dominguez
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hussain, I., Dominguez, R. (2015). North American Economic Integration: State or Supranational Preferences?. In: North American Regionalism and Global Spread. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137493347_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137493347_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-50518-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-49334-7
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political Science CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)