Economic integration in NAFTA and the EU

This book offers a unique, authoritative and critical comparison of regional economic integration. It demonstrates that economic integration is not an automatic process - institutions must handle the integration process. This book argues that the institutions established in both Europe and America are deficient in several respects. Not only are the 'side effects' of free trade on labour markets and social and environmental conditions inadequately addressed, the economic integration projects are actually undermining some of the core institutions that serve the needs of the market economies - institutions upon which the integration process itself depends. In the existing literature on comparative regionalism there has been a tendency to draw superficial conclusions. Americans have been overly optimistic about the significance of EU Treaty provisions on the social dimension and subsidiarity, and Europeans have seen the simplicity of NAFTA's institutional framework as a smart solution to the burdensome bureaucracy of Brussels. The reality, however, is much more complex. This volume contains a number of critical analyses of the aims of both the EU and NAFTA, the institutional instruments chosen, and the influence of politics, history and culture.