Book Reviews

Dallmeyer, Dorinda G. (ed.). Joining Together, Standing Apart: National Identities after NAFTA. The Hague, London, Boston: Kluwer International, 1997. Pp. xxiii, 155.

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was not conceived of by its negotiators nor described to domestic constituencies as an effort at political and social integration. Nonetheless, North American economic integration combined with expanded trade regulation does internationalize an increasing number of political and social issues that previously were addressed through purely domestic legal and social processes. The papers in this volume recognize and explore this connection by examining the interaction between the genesis, passage and future course of NAFTA and national politics, cultures and identities.

The authors in this volume adopt interdisciplinary approaches from law, politics, economics and anthropology to explore the connection between trade policy and issues of domestic politics and local identity. Louis Ortmayer utilizes a dialectical theory of international trade negotiation, two-level game theory and an internalization theory of multinational enterprise to analyse the complex political economy of the negotiation and passage of NAFTA. Alejandro Nadal provides a critical account of the origins and claimed benefits of the neoliberal economic agenda of the Salinas era in Mexico, of which NAFTA is considered a part. Léon Bendesky describes the social unrest and political resistance following the 1994 financial crisis in Mexico as consequences of the economic sacrifice and the lack of substantial political or social reform involved in the Salinas agenda. Daniel Salée discusses the challenges for national identity in Quebec posed by both globalization and the growth of significant sub-national identities. Jill Norgren and Serena Nanda argue that NAFTA will have minimal impact on US national identity based on their examination of an assortment of US laws and cases which show a limited tolerance for pluralism of cultural minorities. David Wirth summarizes various kinds of effects that NAFTA and `government by trade agreement' may have on the formation of domestic environmental regulation in the United States. Dorinda Dallmeyer concludes with a chapter summarizing pertinent themes of the volume.

The papers provide a diversity of critical voices and identify some fruitful interdisciplinary approaches to NAFTA policy debate. With this diversity, however, there are also weaknesses. The chapters range so widely that at times they connect very little with each other; greater engagement between the different authors would have been useful, for example, to explore the connection between limitations on national regulatory autonomy and changing national identity. Topics such as the trade of cultural products or the legal and illegal movement of workers may have more effectively bridged the issues of trade and identity. More generally, a number of the papers provide limited commentary on the specific significance of NAFTA. The NAFTA often seems epiphenomenal, subsumed under discussions of globalization (Salée), pluralism of cultural identities (Norgren and Nanda) or Salinas-era neoliberalism (Nadal, Bendesky). More nuanced analyses might consider NAFTA not just as symptom of these other social phenomena, but as a distinctive process and venue for the formation of policy, ideology, culture and identity. In this respect, Wirth's article provides the most careful consideration of the specific effects of NAFTA on domestic policy formation and national politics. Greater engagement with the literatures on European integration and on comparative federal structures might also have better focused attention on the particular impact that different legal and institutional structures can have. Overall, however, the volume makes a useful contribution towards a richer literature on the many and increasing connections between domestic autonomy, national identity, economic integration and international trade regulation under agreements like NAFTA.

Robert Wai
Osgoode Hall Law School
York University

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