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1999 | Buch

Introduction Kapitel lesen Erstes Kapitel lesen

Economic Integration in NAFTA and the EU

Deficient Institutionality

herausgegeben von: Kirsten Appendini, Sven Bislev

Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan UK

Enthalten in: Professional Book Archive

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Über dieses Buch

The institutions of the EU and NAFTA are critically analysed by leading American and European scholars. The book covers both the general problems of building new and integrated markets, and several policy areas that are related to economic integration. The institutions established in both Europe and America are seen as deficient in several respects. Without offering adequate replacements, the economic integration projects are actually undermining some of the core institutions that serve the needs of the market economies - institutions on which the integration process itself depends.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Introduction

1. Introduction
Abstract
This is a book on the problems of constructing institutions to handle the processes of economic integration in Northern America and Western Europe. The term ‘deficient institutionality’ as the sub-title signals that our papers share a critical attitude to the results of institutional construction; the schemes for economic integration build institutions that influence market behaviour, but generally fail to adequately address the socio-political issues.
Sven Bislev

Economic Institutions and Internationalization

Frontmatter
2. Institutions, Power Relations and Unequal Integration in the Americas: NAFTA as Deficient Institutionality
Abstract
At the Summit of the Americas in Miami, December 1994, the heads of 34 nations in the western hemisphere, led by President Clinton, committed themselves to establishing a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) by the year 2005. They reconvened in Santiago, Chile, in early 1998 to formally launch the FTAA negotiations. According to the documents signed by the leaders, this massive integration effort will herald a new era of equity, growth and sustainable development. Whether it will actually do so may be questioned by looking at the experience of NAFTA, which has led the integration process in the Americas and has been seen as a model for integration.
Ricardo Grinspun, Robert Kreklewich
3. Free Trade and Local Institutions: The Case of Mexican Peasants
Abstract
Economic integration policies striving for more economic cooperation, efficiency and productivity have sometimes unintended and undesirable effects. Under a wide range of circumstances and by means of diverse trans-locational dynamics, market-oriented integration policies may account for local institutional deficiencies and failures, and be accompanied with more social fragmentation, marginalization, inefficiency and differentiation, and hence with an increased feeling of injustice. As such, it may be a cause, and not only a consequence, of local and global problems. Furthermore, in some cases the lack of ideas and instruments to successfully confront problems at the global level may be a problem itself on account of the loss of institutions at the local and trans-local level.
Raúl Garcia-Barrios
4. NAFTA, the EU and Deficient Global Institutionality
Abstract
The differences between NAFTA and the EU are clear, as stressed in some of the previous chapters of this book. Yet these differences should not obscure how much the two projects actually have in common. Fundamentally, they are both examples of regional market integration and political institutionalization. Although of very different vintage and shaped by different historical circumstances, there exists an historical link between the two, while their future trajectories are bound to be interconnected because both are building blocks in a wider process of international institutionalization.
Morten Ougaard

Economic Integration and Societal Institutions

Frontmatter
5. Economic Integration and the Construction of the Efficient Peasant
Abstract
The Mexican constitution of 1917 established that rights of ownership of land belong to the nation, and that the nation has the right to impose restrictions on private property in cases assessed to be in the interest of the public. The state emerging from the Revolution (1910–21) was established constitutionally in the form of a presidential regime. Accordingly, the executive power became responsible for distributing and redistributing land (Gordillo, De Janvry and Sadoulet, 1997).
Hans Krause Hansen, Kirsten Appendini
6. Labour and Economic Integration: The Case of the Electronics Sector in Mexico
Abstract
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) represents a very different response to the globalization process than the European Union (EU), and the contrast between the two regions is exemplified by the approach to labour issues. Both regions have had to face global demands for increased competitiveness, but while the EU has adopted a series of institutional measures which seek to prevent the downward harmonization of wages and labour standards, for example in the form of regional and structural funds, the Social Charter, and the Social Dialogue, such initiatives are practically absent in NAFTA. Besides the weak ‘parallel agreements’ on labour and the environment which were attached at the very last minute to an otherwise purely commercial and financial treaty, there is no institutional framework in NAFTA designed to discourage downward competition on wages and labour standards (as opposed to competing in product design, quality, production capacity and so on), nor to alleviate the consequences for workers as they experience the adverse pressures of the free market.
Bodil Damgaard
7. Environmental Cooperation before and after NAFTA
Abstract
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) expanded into issues which, until some years ago, were not normally part of formal trade negotiations. One of these was environmental protection. None of the three governments initially intended to include this issue in the negotiations. However, having been incorporated into the United States’ political agenda, it was eventually accepted by the other two countries. This reluctant acceptance, in addition to US needs of reconciling opposing domestic interests, clearly anticipated the strong limits of the environmental agreements eventually reached by the parties. 7 Environmental Cooperation before and after NAFTA
Blanca Torres
8. Constructing Europe: The Role of Social Solidarity
Abstract
Unlike other regional integration projects, the European Community/Union1 has a social dimension. From the outset, that dimension was part of the conception of the Communities — as a pre-condition for and corollary of market-building. However, much ambivalence has surrounded the social aspect of the communities — the ‘European social model’ is regarded by some as a protectionist, inflexible burden of the past; the liberal economic regimes of the EU are there to remedy such ills. For others, the very same model is the epitome of human achievement in the field of community and state-building.
Sven Bislev, Dorte Salskov-Iversen
9. The Europeanization of Politics in the Southern Members of the EU
Abstract
The homogeneous level of socio-economic development within the EC changed dramatically in the 1980s with the membership of three new Mediterranean countries: Greece, Portugal and Spain. However, the enlargement to the south meant more than just greater disparities within the EC. These new members were in a process of accelerated transformation, and their economic dynamism and young democratic systems added a new dimension to the European Community. New issues came onto the European agenda, such as the cohesion or solidarity principle, and European citizenship; while old ones acquired renewed political direction, such as agriculture, fisheries and external relations. Conversely, the political and legal structures of the EC have had a profound effect upon the nature of Greek, Portuguese and Spanish domestic politics. The accession processes were based on the gradual but complete adoption of the principle of acquis communautaire, with important institutional and legislative implications at national level. On top of this, the special dynamics of the European integration process since the mid-1980s, with the SEA (Single European Act), the TEU (Treaty on European Union) and the recent Amsterdam Treaty have influenced decisively the autonomy of member states.
Susana Borrás-Alomar

Unbalanced Integration in America

Frontmatter
10. Regionalism: The Case of North America
Abstract
The North American region is only starting to undertake a process of integration that at present limits itself to certain economic aspects like trade and investment. Although the goal has never been to engage in such an accomplished integration as the European Union, certain noneconomical aspects, like environmental and labour issues, are already taken into account. Can this sort of integration limit itself to the trade and investment level or can something deeper be achieved? And in the latter case, what role do certain structural factors like cultural differences, national identities, experiences of nation-building, internal conflicts, and the process of homogenization, and so on play in the process of integration or of regional institutionalization?
Edmé Domínguez Reyes
11. The Challenges of Regionalism: Unbalanced Integration in the Americas
Abstract
The heyday of the discussions on a hemispheric free trade area embracing all of the Americas now seems to be behind us. The excitement created by the Enterprise for the Americas Initiative in 1990 ran high through to the Miami Summit in December 1994; since the Summit, very little actual progress has been achieved towards such a free trade regime, despite sporadic declarations to keep the idea alive. Both Latin America and the United States seem to have entered an era of realpolitik in their economic relations. The vision of a free trade area from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego still survives and has support, but the terms of the discussion have shifted from emotional sentiments stressing the geographic and historical unity of the Americas (imagined or true) to a greater acknowledgement of more global currents and circumstances, be it the emergence of Asia—Pacific cooperation or the triadic economic world order (US—EU—Japan). Present trends towards regionalization will by no means automatically lead to a single free trade area of the Americas (FTAA).
Pekka Valtonen
12. Trade Agreements between Unequal Partners: Does NAFTA Deal with these Inequalities?
Abstract
Mexico, as so many underdeveloped countries, has been engaged in an uphill struggle in order to surmount this condition. In past decades, the government implemented an ‘import substitution’ policy to create the conditions which would allow economic development and maintain a growth rate in accordance with population growth. At the beginning of the 1980s this model was changed, and the country initiated a transition period from a closed economy with a strong government — in terms of its presence in the economic structure — to one of the most open economies in the world and an ongoing privatization of those state structures that were built over the past decades.
Maria Elena Cardero
13. Successful Integration and Economic Distress: The New Dual Economy — the Case of Mexico in NAFTA
Abstract
1994 was the first year of Mexican integration in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the start of a period when Mexico was supposed to benefit from the further opening up of its economy. It turned out, however, to be one of the most turbulent years in the recent history of the Mexican economy. The substantial outflow of capital which began in the second quarter of 1994, ultimately led to a significant loss of foreign exchange reserves, abandonment of the pegged exchange rate regime, and a 71 per cent real depreciation of the peso. The question frequently raised was, what went wrong with the Mexican economy? After all, it appeared that the programmes for stabilization and structural change that were implemented by the Mexican authorities from the mid-1980s were rather successful in reducing the rate of inflation and improving the efficiency of Mexican producers. Above all, the core of the new programmes was from the begining oriented towards creating a new structural relationship with the rest of the world: essentially a new pattern of integration.
Sima Motamen-Samadian, Etelberto Ortiz Cruz
Backmatter
Metadaten
Titel
Economic Integration in NAFTA and the EU
herausgegeben von
Kirsten Appendini
Sven Bislev
Copyright-Jahr
1999
Verlag
Palgrave Macmillan UK
Electronic ISBN
978-0-333-99488-7
Print ISBN
978-1-349-27278-5
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-333-99488-7