Requiem Or Revival

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was launched amid great hopes and controversy in 1994. More than a dozen years later, progress toward economic integration has stalled. Mexico's economy remains far behind those of Canada and the United States, and such pressing issues as energy security remain unaddressed. In Requiem or Revival? scholars and policymakers from all three nations dissect NAFTA's failure to fulfill its early promise and evaluate the prospects for further integration. The authors explore the interaction between regionalism and multilateralism, the impact of the "new trade" agenda, and NAFTA's unresolved problems—migration, security, and energy. Recognizing the limits of the NAFTA framework, they examine its relationship to the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas negotiations and the Doha Development Round, and they discuss various ways in which NAFTA could be revamped or improved. The result is an intriguing volume offering important insights on the future of economic integration in North America and beyond. Contributors include Chantal Blouin (North-South Institute), Theodore H. Cohn (Simon Fraser University, emeritus), I. M. Destler (University of Maryland), Charles F. Doran (Johns Hopkins University–SAIS), Christina Gabriel (Carleton University), Sergio Gómez Lora (IQOM, Inteligencia Comercial), Jerry Haar (Florida International University), Laura Macdonald (Carleton University), Gordon Mace (Université Laval), Isidro Morales (University of the Americas), Glauco Oliveira (University of Southern California), Antonio Ortiz Mena (CIDE), Jeffrey J. Schott (Peterson Institute for International Economics),Anne Weston (North-South Institute),Tamara Woroby (Towson University, Johns Hopkins University––SAIS), and Jaime Zabludovsky (Soluciones Estratégicas).

Praised for its authoritative coverage, Global Political Economy places the study of international political economy (IPE) in its broadest theoretical contextnow updated to cover the continuing global economic crisis and regional relationships and impacts. This text not only helps students understand the fundamentals of how the global economy works but also encourages them to use theory to more fully grasp the connections between key issue areas like trade and development. Written by a leading IPE scholar, this text equally emphasizes theory and practice to provide a framework for analyzing current events and long-term developments in the global economy. New to the Seventh Edition Focuses on the ongoing global economic crisis and the continuing European sovereign debt crisis, along with other regional economic issues, including their implications for relationships in the global economy. Offers fuller and updated discussions of critical perspectives like feminism and environmentalism, and includes new material differentiating among the terms neomercantilism, realism, mercantilism, and economic nationalism. Updated, author-written Test Bank is provided to professors as an e-Resource on the book’s Webpage.

In Canada Among Nations, 2007 a team of specialists explores the space that Canada currently occupies in the global policy landscape and considers the bureaucratic players who manage this "occupation." Looking at trade, the environment, development, defence, intellectual property rights, and, the biggest file of all, the United States, they examine the various games involved, from the relationship of the Prime Minister's Office with the foreign policy apparatus to the constraints imposed by Alberta’s and Quebec’s particular interests and takes on foreign policy.

Twenty years after NAFTA, the consensus seems to be that the regional project in North America is dead. The trade agreement was never followed up by new institutions that might cement a more ambitious regional community. The Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), launched with some fanfare in 2005, was quietly discontinued in 2009. And new cooperative ventures like the US‐Canada Beyond the Border talks and the US‐Mexico Merida Initiative suggest that the three governments have reverted to the familiar, pre‐NAFTA pattern of informal, incremental bilateralism. One could argue, however, that NAFTA itself has been buried, and yet the region somehow lives on, albeit in a form very different from regional integration in other parts of the world. A diverse group of contributors, from the United States, Canada, and Mexico, with experience in academia, government service, think tanks and the private sector bring to bear a sophisticated and much needed examination of regional governance in North America, its historical origins, its connection to the regional distribution of power and the respective governments’ domestic institutions, and the variance of its forms and function across different issue areas. The editors begin by surveying the literature on North American regional politics, matching up developments there with parallel debates and controversies in the broader literatures on comparative regional integration and international policy coordination more generally. Six contributors later explore the mechanisms of policy coordination in specific issue-areas, each with an emphasis on a particular set of actors, and with its own way of characterizing the relevant political and diplomatic dynamics. Chapters on the political context for regional policy coordination follow leading to concluding remarks on the future of North America. At a time when scholarly interest in North America seems to be waning, even while important and interesting political and economic developments are taking place, this volume will reinvigorate the study of North America as a region, to better understand its past, present and future.

The course of events since the implementation of NAFTA has had unexpected elements with significant impacts on North American integration. First has been the rise of China as a larger source of imports and production partner than Mexico. Second has been the rise of security concerns since September 11, 2001. The result has been much stronger integration between Canada and the US than with Mexico. Migration issues are now linked with security, which has risen to a top priority in the international agenda. While liberalization has furnished strong economic incentives for integration, it has not provided a sufficient guide for the political process, which requires leadership and appropriate institutions to coordinate and regulate the special interest groups. A coherent and effective North American integration would be a valuable asset in the context of global integration and competition, yet the issues involved are quite complex and varied. North American Integration: An Institutional Void in Migration, Security and Development examines the current state of North American integration. Editors Gaspare M. Genna and David A. Mayer-Foulkes gather an international group of experts to give a broad, coherent picture of the current, multifaceted process of integration, and find that institutional development is an essential component. Divided into three sections, the book: - Discuss the determinants of integration and shows that the institutional characteristics of the three countries, including democracy and basic rights, are the most important. - Provides examples of institutional building in contexts for which institutions are lacking, specifically labor, migration and health issues. - Examines issues such as overall security arrangements, trade, drug related violence, energy, and the continuing wage gap among the countries, which have an important bearing on integration.

While no supranational institutions exist to govern climate change in North America, a system of cooperation among a diverse range of actors and institutions is currently emerging. Given the range of interests that influence climate policy across political boundaries, can these distinct parts be integrated into a coherent, and ultimately resilient system of regional climate cooperation? Climate Change Policy in North America is the first book to examine how cooperation respecting climate change can emerge within decentralized governance arrangements. Leading scholars from a variety of disciplines provide in-depth case studies of climate cooperation initiatives – such as emissions trading, energy cooperation, climate finance, carbon accounting and international trade – as well as analysis of the institutional, political, and economic conditions that influence climate policy integration.

As the race for resources in distant parts of the planet gathers momentum, most discussion has centered on the potential for conflict, environmental destruction, and upheaval from climate change. This important book shifts the conversation about the Arctic and Antarctic from conflict to cooperation. A multidisciplinary roster of experts provides fresh views of the polar regions, focusing on diplomacy and the potential for cooperative international decision-making. Collectively the contributors illustrate the breadth of issues that complicate governance in the Arctic and Antarctic, as well as parallels and differences between the politics of the two poles.

A Billion Trips a Day: Tradition and Transition in European Travel Patterns consists of twenty-four original chapters developed by a network of transport professionals in a coordinated manner. The three parts of the book are: European Mobility Patterns; Dimensions of European Mobility, and National Perspectives. Mobility in fourteen countries is described and ten chapters of analysis compare the major dimensions of travel across Europe, which is seen as a laboratory for transport policies. A Billion Trips a Day: Tradition and Transition in European Travel Patterns questions the uniqueness of European travel and transport policies and demonstrates that, in many ways, Europe is different from other developed economies. However, there are side dissimilarities within Europe. The authors take a deep look at the underlying factors which affect travel behavior, with the objective of providing the necessary information for policy making. The comparative chapters of Part II provide an analysis based on national perspectives of the role of the time dimension travel; automobile ownership and use; commuting; public transport; and international travel. They also review the transport policies applied in Europe, explaining why some policies work in some places, while failing in others.