Beyond the Policy Frontier: Canada, Mexico, and the Ideological Origins of NAFTA

Abstract

Why are certain foreign policy options considered taboo or simply kept off the agenda as necessarily unthinkable or self-destructive? And under what conditions can governments transcend such “policy frontiers”? This article seeks to answer these questions by examining the circumstances that brought about Canada's and Mexico's entry into the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)—a move that constituted a surprising reversal of historic prohibitions on formalizing bilateral economic integration that had long been entrenched in these two nations' foreign policies. Policy frontiers develop as certain elements of the “national interest”—sovereignty, security, and identity—become equated with the legitimation of state elites. When these leaders defend the policy frontier (ostensibly to defend the nation), they are also defending their own political power. These barriers are constructed in a path-dependent fashion, through a critical juncture that first establishes the frontier, and then are maintained over time by institutional and ideological mechanisms of reproduction. For the frontier to be transcended, a critical juncture combining an exogenous shock with an internal legitimacy crisis must undermine, and then reconfigure, both mechanisms of reproduction. The origins of NAFTA in the Canadian and Mexican embrace of the once-forbidden bilateral free-trade option in 1985 and 1990, respectively, illustrate this dynamic, while the individual cases offer variations on the policy frontier model that can provide insights into the analysis of other cases of historically resisted foreign policy change.

Crisis and Policy Change: The Role of the Political Entrepreneur

“…Crises or exogenous shocks are often cited as explanations for policy change (Greener 2001;Golob 2003), as their existence highlights a failing within existing policies due to their implication in, or inability to right, the emergent situation (Levy 1994). In order for policy entrepreneurs to challenge existing arrangements, a crisis and policy failure must be identified and widely perceived (Hay 1999).…”

The False Friends Problem for Foreign Norm Transplantation in Developing Countries

“…The Revista Mexicana del Derecho de Autor, INDAUTOR's predecessor's in-house academic journal features several articles along these lines. 84 While Mexican policymakers were seeking a new economic model for their regime, both NAFTA's overall policy direction and the specific content of its intellectual property chapter (Chapter 17) were driven by the United States. Elsewhere, scholars write of Mexican copyright's law's objective as being the protection of authors' rights and the safeguarding of the country's cultural heritage, 82 with the UN Declaration on Human Rights being a key legitimating document.…”

Path dependence and critical junctures: an urban-rural water sharing study

“…Decisions made during such a juncture are deemed "critical" because such a decision leads to the creation of institutional or structural patterns that endure over time [37]. In studying nations' historic trajectories, Golob [38] applies the notion of "exogenous shock" such as a war or international economic crisis that serves as a critical juncture that sets a country onto a new path. Paths can, however, be "dislocated" by strong political leadership or in response to pressures such as climate change or rapidly rising fuel prices [12].…”