Governing the North American Free Trade Area: International Rule Making and Delegation in NAFTA, the SPP, and Beyond

Abstract

The North American free trade area appears to have reached an impasse. Deprived of adequate rule‐making mechanisms, it is facing an institutional deficit that hinders its competitivenes, but any form of European‐style supranationalism has unequivocally been ruled out as a conceivable way to administer the economic zone created more than 15 years ago by the North American Free Trade Agreement. Should, therefore, North Americans abandon any prospect of deeper economic integration and even expect a relative decline in free trade in the region? Not necessarily, because supranationalism is not in any way a necessary condition for effective international rule making. The key ingredient for effective international rule making is not the external delegation of authority, but rather the level of domestic executive autonomy states are able to pool and coordinate through often sophisticated, but not necessarily legally binding, international institutions. On this account, this article evaluates the potential of the recent Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) and concludes that it amalgamates enough executive autonomy to constitute a basis for the establishment of a nontreaty, international rule‐making body. After looking at examples of international rule‐making bodies to which the United States is a party and that share key institutional features of the SPP, the article suggests paths by which the three governments could upgrade the SPP design in such a way as to provide the North American free trade area with the flexible rule‐making capability it needs. La zona de libre comercio de Norteamérica parece haber llegado a un callejón sin salida. A falta de los mecanismos adecuados para crear organismos reglamentarios, enfrenta un déficit institucional que entorpece su competitividad. Sin embargo, cualquier forma de supra‐nacionalismo al estilo europeo ha quedado sin duda descartada como una alternativa viable para administrar la zona económica creada hace más de quince años por el TLCAN. ¿Deberían entonces los miembros de Norte América abandonar cualquier esperanza de una integración más profunda, y hasta esperar una contracción del libre comercio en la región? No necesariamente, ya que el supranacionalismo no es de ninguna manera condición necesaria para la generación eficaz de mecanismos reglamentarios. El principal ingrediente para instaurar un organismo reglamentario eficaz, no depende de la delegación de autoridad a un ente externo, sino del nivel de autonomía del poder ejecutivo que los estados estén dispuestos a obtener y coordinar mediante instituciones muchas veces sofisticadas, aunque no necesariamente con poder de obligatoriedad jurídica. Al respecto, este artículo evalúa el potencial de la reciente Alianza para la Seguridad y la Prosperidad de América del Norte (ASPAN), y concluye que dicha institución amalgama la suficiente autonomía del poder ejecutivo como para constituir el fundamento, sin tener que formalizarlo en un tratado, de un cuerpo reglamentario a nivel internacional. Luego de cons...

The Security and Prosperity Partnership And the Pitfalls of North American Regionalism

“…Some analysts interpret the spp as a form of regional governance (Kirton and Guebert, 2010;Roff, Krajnc, and Clarkson, 2009;Anderson and Sands, 2007;Belanger, 2010;Gilbert, 2007;Grondin and De Larrinaga, 2009). The policy-making process can be understood as a sequence of stages: 1) problem identification, 2) agenda setting, 3) policy norteAméricA formulation, 4) policy adoption, 5) policy implementation, 6) policy evaluation, and 7)…”