Economic Integration in NAFTA and the EU: Deficient Institutionality

Ten Regionalism: The Case of North America Edmé Domínguez Reyes

INTRODUCTION

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 non-economic 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?

We propose to examine how the three members of NAFTA represent three different cultures, built through different historical trajectories, while the mode of institutionalization of economic cooperation in NAFTA represents only one of these three cultures - the American one, and its values, concepts and traditions. Hence, this one-sidedness of NAFTA's institutionalization as an integration project is heavily reflected in the type of economic regulation, a very neo-liberal one, and severely limits the possibility of a regional identity formation.

REGIONAL IDENTITY: SPANISH, FRENCH AND ANGLO-SAXON HERITAGE

Canadians, USA's citizens and Mexicans are separated not only by the language; their history, religion, race and philosophy are totally different. The United States and Canada are nations with only five hundred years of history but they are well advanced into the twenty-first century while Mexico with a history of several thousand years is still attached to its past.

One of the fundamental contradictions opposing the North and the South, the Anglo-French and the Spanish heritages has been their difference in mentalities and traditions - regarding the role of the market, of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, of the state and the church - that has shaped the development of two radically different societies within the same geographical region. Moreover, the European paradigms of 'development', 'democracy', 'progress' and 'modernity' have not only been interpreted differently according to an Anglo, French or Spanish tradition, the original, so called 'Indian' cultures have made these differences even deeper.

However, the European - and specially the Anglo-Saxon - paradigm of modernity has had a very strong influence over Mexico's educated élites. This, together with the impact of the 'American way of life' in the Mexican middle and upper classes, concerning their projects of life has become one of the pillars on which the project of regionalization and institutionalization of this regionalization may be built.