NAFTA: The Governance of Economic Openness

Abstract

Although the rule-based regime of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has instituted the empowerment of private actors vis-à-vis government bureaucracies, and of transstate institutions at the regional level, it is contended in this article that NAFTA should be envisioned as a hybrid model of economic governance. Under the agreement, some issue areas still remain under the administration of state-centered authorities, and other ones, such as investment, trade remedy policies, and labor and environmental issues, under the surveillance and fragmented authority of nonstate actors. This transfer of authority to private or civil society actors is, in fact, a major trait of the NAFTA policy mechanism. It is also argued in this article that, contrary to what some authors have suggested, NAFTA's hybrid institutional machinery is provoking deep integration in the region, in spite of the absence of supranational institutions or the homogenization of national legislation.