North American Integration

The coming into force of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 has made North America a significant and influential experiment in regional integration, aimed at competitiveness gains and continent-wide production and investment. The concluding chapter takes stock of NAFTA’s economic and social impacts on its three states parties, with a focus on employment. Such impacts are crucial to understand the dissatisfaction that led to its renegotiation. It is considered whether its successor, the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA), is likely to address these concerns and produce a stable and prosperous North American space. Rather than a new model, the USMCA constitutes an update and a slight rebalancing of the existing North American integration model, although much less significant and influential than at NAFTA’s advent. North American economic integration will remain a contested work in progress.

This paper argues that the policy detail of the U.S.’ Mérida Initiative, an aid package publicly justified as counternarcotics (CN) assistance for Mexico, helps reveal part of a wider U.S. effort to create a shared economic-security space in North America. In the context of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and recent drug violence inside Mexico itself, analysts of North American integration have concluded there is a lack of bilateral cooperation on mutual security issues. It is argued here however that the U.S. is pushing to construct a regional security framework on its terms. This is a product of the general aim in U.S. foreign policy to secure its strategic interests from potential threats, and more specific security imperatives created by bilateral and North American economic integration.

The coming into force of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 has made North America a significant and influential experiment in regional integration, aimed at competitiveness gains and continent-wide production and investment. The concluding chapter takes stock of NAFTA’s economic and social impacts on its three states parties, with a focus on employment. Such impacts are crucial to understand the dissatisfaction that led to its renegotiation. It is considered whether its successor, the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA), is likely to address these concerns and produce a stable and prosperous North American space. Rather than a new model, the USMCA constitutes an update and a slight rebalancing of the existing North American integration model, although much less significant and influential than at NAFTA’s advent. North American economic integration will remain a contested work in progress.

Most accounts in current literature on North American integration consider the implementation of side and parallel environmental agreements to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and their corresponding institutions, as either a side-effect of the pursuit of the economic interests of the national governments or the result of the successful push of the socio-environmental demands of non-governmental organisations into the NAFTA's negotiation. These opposite explanations closely resemble liberal intergovernmentalist and transnational-focused accounts used to explain the occurrence and progression of regional integration in Europe. This article reviews and challenges both accounts and argues that they both assess inadequately the interests of governmental and transnational actors, and their roles and relative influence in determining the outcome of the negotiations of the NAFTA's side and parallel agreements on the environment. It proposes that a revised liberal intergovernmentalist account, that considers the non-economic national interests of nation-states, would explain better the pursuit and negotiation of the NAFTA's environmental side and parallel agreements, and the institutional structure that resulted from them.

Current studies of regional integration in North America claim that this process is limited to the entering of intergovernmental agreements that aim to expand and enhance crossborder flows of goods and capitals between Mexico, Canada and the US. Such studies claim that the political effects of the process on nation-states are limited and constrained by the decisions of the national governments. In contrast, this thesis argues that the actions of transnational actors have increased the policy interdependence between the three countries in the arenas of environmental protection, labour cooperation and protection of foreign direct investment. Transnational actors have used, applied and interpreted the rules originally created by the intergovernmental agreements –NAFTA, NAAEC, BECA and NAALC– and have subsequently demanded additional and improved rules. Regional institutions have in turn responded to these demands by supplying new and improved regional rules. In doing so, transnational actors and regional institutions have furthered the policy interdependence between the three countries. This phenomenon, known in other contexts as institutionalisation, demonstrates that the process of regional integration in North America is more substantial than previous studies claim. In addition, it illustrates the relevance of the theories of Liberal Intergovernmentalism and Supranational Governance to the analysis of the emergence and development of the North American integration process.

Current studies of regional integration in North America claim that this process is limited to the entering of intergovernmental agreements that aim to expand and enhance crossborder flows of goods and capitals between Mexico, Canada and the US. Such studies claim that the political effects of the process on nation-states are limited and constrained by the decisions of the national governments. In contrast, this thesis argues that the actions of transnational actors have increased the policy interdependence between the three countries in the arenas of environmental protection, labour cooperation and protection of foreign direct investment. Transnational actors have used, applied and interpreted the rules originally created by the intergovernmental agreements –NAFTA, NAAEC, BECA and NAALC– and have subsequently demanded additional and improved rules. Regional institutions have in turn responded to these demands by supplying new and improved regional rules. In doing so, transnational ...