Abstract

VELAZQUEZ FLORES, Rafael; CARDENAS RUIZ, Francisco  and  MONJARAZ SANDOVAL, José de Jesús Alejandro. The Idea of National Sovereignty and the Construction of Regional Institutions in North America: A Constructivist Analysis of the NAFTA Renegotiation. Norteamérica [online]. 2023, vol.18, n.1, pp.243-282.  Epub Jan 12, 2024. ISSN 2448-7228.  https://doi.org/10.22201/cisan.24487228e.2023.1.592.

This article’s aim is to examine the influence of the conception of national sovereignty in Mexico, the United States, and Canada on the construction of regional institutions in North America from a constructivist viewpoint. The authors maintain that each North American country’s conception of national sovereignty has aided in producing the main regional institutions without a collective regional identity. This argument suggests that the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) lacks political foundations for regional cooperation and that this has led North American trilateral institutional cooperation to be subordinated to the economy. For that reason, regional cooperation has not solved common problems beyond the pragmatism impelled by each nation’s national interest. The argument is based on an analysis of the discourse of the idea of U.S., Mexican, and Canadian national sovereignty in the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 2017.

Keywords : North America; constructivism; national sovereignty; regional institutions.

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