Greg Anderson

Review: The North American Idea A Vision of a Continental Future

THE NORTH AMERICAN IDEA A Vision of A Continental Future Robert A. Pastor New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 288pp, US

Securitization and sovereignty in post-9/11 North America

24.g5 (doth). ISBN 978-0199782413In June 2001, two Roberts met at the office of the United States trade representative in Washington, DC. One was President George W. Bushs new hard-charging, internationalist United States trade representative, Robert Zoellick, now president of the World Bank. The other was Robert Pastor of Emory University, himself no shrinking violet in intellectual combat. It seemed an auspicious time for such a meeting. At Zoellicks initiative, the Bush administration was poised to breathe new life into a US trade agenda that had stalled since the completion of NAFTA and GATTs Uruguay round in 1994. Pastor was one of the best-known scholars on North American integration and had just completed a new manuscript on the topic. After a discussion with Zoellick and his staff about the American trade agenda, including the pursuit of fast-track authority on which subject Pastor remains the expert), the two Roberts parted ways.At the time of the meeting, I was a doctoral student and intern in the trade representatives office of the Americas, working mainly on North American issues. In early July, a draft manuscript of Pastors book made its way to my office. Zoellick had requested that someone read it and prepare a summary. The job was quickly delegated to me.The staff seized this opportunity to keep their intern busy for several days. In Toward a North American Community: Lessons from the Old World for the New (2001), Pastor argued that the US could learn many important lessons - many of them negative - from European economic integration. The postwarimperatives ofrecovery and security had initially driven Europes experiment, which subsequently became a victim of its own success. Over time, sclerotic decision-making within the EUs supranational structures came to overwhelm the benefits of trade liberalization, labour mobility, and a common currency.By contrast, NAFTA left North America incomplete. The agreement had stimulated enormous economic activity and deepened ties among the United States, Canada, and Mexico. But the continents potential remained unrealized because no governance structures had been established to manage it. Over-governance in Europe undermined competitiveness, but under-governance in North America generated a paralysis of its own. Pastors book both explained how North America had evolved and prophesied what it could become. Even as it warned of the dangers of EU-style governance, it also charted possible paths toward greater trilateral cooperation, culminating in a customs or monetary union.Although Pastor acknowledged that these efforts would have a uniquely North American flavour rooted in the history and culture of each nation, he quickly attracted withering criticism from nationalist critics in all three countries, including both television pundits such as CNNs Lou Dobbs and antiglobalization street protestors. Given that the antiglobalization movement reached its zenith in 2001, Toward a North American Community had trouble attracting widespread support.His latest book, The North American Idea, offers a vision of what North America could be. It offers concrete proposals and impassioned advocacy in abundance. The North American prescription did not change significantly over the decade that elapsed between this book and its predecessor. …

Borders in Globalization: Alberta in a BiG Context

ABSTRACT This paper traces the recent evolution of North American economic and security relations within the context of broader debates in international political economy (IPE) concerning globalization and its effects on the state in the international system. Borrowing from David Lakes discussion of hierarchical sovereignty, this paper argues that efforts to meld security to economics in an integrated North American market devoid of institutions have made sovereignty more hierarchical. It presents an approach to looking at North American integration, which can assist in understanding recent developments that are suggestive of new areas of research and policy development for both practitioners and theoreticians.

How did investor‐state dispute settlement get a bad rap? Blame it on NAFTA, of course

The evolving functions and workings of national governments and borders during the post-Cold War era have reflected ongoing tensions among cross-cutting, sometimes contradictory factors. Integrative factors associated with the emergence of broader regional and global economic systems, and related patterns of cultural interaction have prompted most major economic and political actors to adapt to growing international interdependence, particularly since the 1980s. However, the often disruptive effects of these forces on domestic economic, social and political relationships have triggered numerous pressures on governments. Sometimes, citizens and particular interests seek assistance from governments in adapting to these trends. Sometimes, they seek government action to shield them from internal and external risks arising from these changes. Some of these adaptations may reflect “territorially”based political decisions within the jurisdictions of particular governments. Others reflect more a-territorial or extra-territorial arrangements resulting from varying mixtures of market forces, unilateral actions by external governments or political actors, and cooperative actions among governments, often through functional, policy-specific international organizations. In recent years, scholars have coined numerous terms to describe the interaction between multi-jurisdictional interdependence and contemporary forms of governance, including multi-level governance, multi-dimensional governance, subsidiarity, intermesticity, the perforated state, and the disaggregated state (Burgess, 2006; Slaughter, 2002; Lake, 2003; Krasner, 1999). James Rosenau’s (2000) concept of “fragmegration” fits comfortably within this disciplinary jargon, but usefully attempts to reconcile two separate phenomena: integration and fragmentation. The Borders in Globalization project addresses the extent to which existing regulatory systems governing movements of products, services and people “straddle” borders as opposed to being organized primarily along territorial lines. Answers to this question vary widely across economic sectors and types of human mobility. Regulatory systems governing major energy and other commodity exports, and related infrastructure, are typically specialized by sector and sub-sector. Similar variations apply across modes of transportation or transmission and categories of people. The result is often highly varied systems of multi-level governance with varied interprovincial and international barriers, notwithstanding efforts at cross-border and federal-provincial regulatory coordination. Identifying and developing these nuances has significant implications for recognizing

NAFTA on the Brain: Why Creeping Integration Has Always Worked Better

In the short history of the US bilateral investment treaty (BIT) programme, there have been no instances of dispute settlement cases initiated against the United States by firms from BIT countries. The NAFTA experience changed that. Where other studies have only hinted at the reasons for NAFTA controversies, this paper makes clear three causal factors: (i) changing patterns and intensity of FDI, (ii) the application of those rules to developed countries amid those changing FDI patterns and (iii) ambiguities in ISDS rules themselves. The paper explores these and traces the ways in which lessons of the NAFTA have been instrumental in changing the pursuit of investment protection agreements. BITs used to be uncontroversial, but the NAFTA focused attention on reforms to ISDS that maintain the utility of BITs in the governance of FDI, without creating a legal structure for simply challenging the state.

Inventing North America : Canada, Mexico, and the United States

This paper argues that since the completion of the NAFTA in the early 1990s, there has been too much focus on what governments in Ottawa, Washington, and Mexico City have or have not been doing to deepen North American integration. The NAFTA was an anomaly that obscures the larger history of incrementalism that has shaped North Americas political economy. A focus on large, government-led integration projects like the NAFTA as a model for North American integration distracts from an examination of the many connections and processes taking place across borders every day. Security has become fully entrenched as a driving paradigm of North American relations. However, much of the activity in this domain and others is taking place at the bureaucratic, sub-state, and non-state levels rather than via active direction from national leadership. As scholars and analysts of North America, we would do well to move away from the NAFTA as a model for negotiating North Americas future.

Did Canada Kill Fast Track

Introduction: North America in the World/The World in North America. - The Three States of North America. - Neighbors and Partners. - Global Forces. - Regional Factors. - Trading Places. - Promise - and Peril. - North and South. - Between East and West. - Conclusion: Predicaments and Possibilities.