Departamento de Estudios e Investigación

Many academics, policymakers, non-governmental organisations and other observers of the North America relations have been historically critical of the Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and especially of the rules of Chapter 11. It is widely believed that the inclusion and implementation of Chapter 11 ‘opened the floodgates’ for foreign investors to sue national and sub national governments when the policies of the latter affect the economic interests of the former. However, these critiques are not well-founded. As the outcome of the case vs. Apotex United States demonstrates, the rules and arbitration mechanisms of Chapter 11 have strengthened, not weakened, the ability of North American national and sub national governments to create, maintain and improve public policies aimed at ensuring public welfare.

General David Petraeus attempts to lessen our concerns about the state-of-affairs of regional integration in North America and be cautiously optimistic about its future. I argue, however, that this might be a counterproductive position. It might prevent us from realizing that the limited institutional framework that sustains growing trade and investment in North America is not suitable for addressing the socioeconomic impact and environmental externalities that have resulted from such increased exchanges.

The United Kingdom seems to be interested in boosting its moral credentials on the global promotion of freedom and self-determination by taking part in this alleged dispute on Crimea. Staying out of the issue could actually better serve such purpose.

Emilian Kavalski's book joins a number of excellent textbooks providing an accessible route into the study of IR. It provides an overview of the major theories and debates in the discipline, with a particular focus on those covered in undergraduate programs. The book's content is clear, and incrementally and logically organised, enabling readers to follow the development of discipline from its outset to the emergence of the complex topics at the top of the current global agenda.

In The Fence and the Bridge: Geopolitics and Identity Along the Canada-US Border, Heather N. Nicol adds to growing analyses of the functioning and perception of borders by focusing on the historical development of the Canada-US border-security relationship, tracing it from the present post-9/11 era back into the preceding centuries. While the book does tend to assume Canada as a country subject to US dominance, thereby inhibiting consideration of the growing harmonisation of North American security policies, this a worthy contribution to studies into the contested meanings of borders in the specific context of US-Canadian relations.

Numerous scholars argue that the rules, mechanisms, and bodies established under NAFTA's Chapter 11 for the settlement of foreign direct investment disputes have undermined the policy-making capabilities of governments in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada for promoting public welfare in their countries. This article argues that Chapter 11 has instead contributed to reaffirming governments' power to enact and uphold social-oriented domestic laws. It demonstrates that Chapter 11's dispute settlement mechanisms were created and operate according to the interests of the national governments in facilitating and increasing the flows of trade and investment capital between their countries without compromising their sovereignty and policy-making powers.

This opinion article briefly discusses Mexico's most likely objectives at the North American Leaders’ Summit to take place on 29 June, 2016, in Ottawa, Canada, and the complexities the country will face to reach its intended goals at the Summit. It discusses the ambitious proposals on the future of the regional integration project that President Enrique Peña Nieto will probably introduce at the Summit and concludes that he is unlikely to reach his intended objectives.

This is a report on a visit by students from the University of Birmingham's Department of Political Science and International Studies to Amnesty International UK’s Human Rights Action Centre in London, which took place on 28th March 2012. Students from the undergraduate second-year POLS 214 IR Theory and first-year POLS 105 Introduction to IR modules, as well as PhD students and GTAs from POLSIS, listened to a presentation by Hannah Shaw, AI’s Student Manager, and Bethan Cansfield, AI’s Women’s Human Rights campaigner, on the work of Amnesty International for the defence of human rights in the United Kingdom and abroad.

In Free Speech After 9/11, Katharine Gelber compares three liberal democracies –the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia– to consider the ways in which Western governments have placed new restrictions on freedom of speech since the 9/11 attacks. This book is a worthy, unique and timely contribution that shows these governments to be deliberate transgressors of the principles they often claim to be defending.

Many of us, political scientists, failed to anticipate, and some to even acknowledge, the resurgence of nationalism and xenophobia in the 21st century in Europe and North America. These regions, which used to be considered the global beacons of freedom, tolerance and liberalism, have now become some of the most visible discontents of economic globalisation and political liberalism. Our collective obsession with analysing even the smallest policy- and decision-making mechanisms in the most advanced industrial democracies prevented us from seeing the big changes that were destroying their very essence.

Why do Mexicans migrate to the US? In "On the Move: Changing Mechanisms of Mexico-US Migration", Professor Filiz Garip seeks to challenge overarching assumptions regarding the ‘typical’ Mexican migrant by instead showing the diverse experiences and push-pull factors that shape the decision to migrate from Mexico to the US. This review welcomes Garip’s distinctive approach as enabling scholars to better understand the complex and divergent patterns of movement between nations.

The current scholarship on North American integration has largely failed to engage with European integration theories. This paper argues that this situation results from the existence and dominance of the assumption, in the current literature, that North American integration is an intergovernmental process. It follows from this notion that, confronted with turbulence, the governments of Mexico, Canada, and the United States have lingered in promoting integration, and the process has stalled. Hence, (European) regional integration theories are irrelevant to the study of the North American case. This article argues that this claim resembles those made in the 1970s in Europe, when Ernst Haas declared the theorization of (European) integration obsolescent. To address this claim, this paper proposes reintroducing regional integration theories into the study of North American integration. It argues that such a change would enable scholars to better understand and acknowledge the varying degrees of policy interdependence (and hence political integration) between these countries. It concludes that the use of these theories would enable scholars to reassess North American integration, and potentially reveal that this process might be more substantial than current studies claim.

In Thinking like a Political Scientist: A Practical Guide to Research Methods, Christopher Howard makes a compelling case for transforming how research methods are taught to undergraduate students of political science. Through its accessible, easy-to-follow approach, this new guide equips and encourages the next generation of political scientists to undertake research that has the potential to directly impact pressing political issues.