Contentious Politics in North America: National Protest and Transnational Collaboration under Continental Integration (International Political Economy)

Contentious Politics in North America

International Political Economy Series General Editor: Timothy M. Shaw, Professor and Director, Institute of International Relations, The University of the West Indies, Trinidad & Tobago Titles include: Jeffrey Ayres and Laura Macdonald (editors) CONTENTIOUS POLITICS IN NORTH AMERICA National Protest and Transnational Collaboration under Continental Integration Ann Denholm Crosby DILEMMAS IN DEFENCE DECISION-MAKING Constructing Canada’s Role in NORAD, 1958–96 Jerry Haar and Anthony T. Bryan (editors) CANADIAN–CARIBBEAN RELATIONS IN TRANSITION Trade Sustainable Development and Security R. Lipsey and P. Meller (editors) WESTERN HEMISPHERE TRADE INTEGRATION Laura Macdonald and Arne Ruckert (editors) POST-NEOLIBERALISM IN THE AMERICAS Robert O’Brien SUBSIDY REGULATION AND STATE TRANSFORMATION IN NORTH AMERICA, THE GATT AND EU Leonard Seabrooke US POWER IN INTERNATIONAL FINANCE The Victory of Dividends

International Political Economy Series Series Standing Order ISBN 978–0–333–71708–0 hardcover Series Standing Order ISBN 978–0–333–71110–1 paperback (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and one of the ISBNs quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England

Contentious Politics in North America National Protest and Transnational Collaboration under Continental Integration Edited by

Jeffrey Ayres Saint Michael’s College, USA

and

Laura Macdonald Carleton University, Canada

Introduction, selection and editorial matter © Jeffrey Ayres and Laura Macdonald 2009 Individual chapters © contributors 2009 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–0–230–22427–8 hardback ISBN-10: 0–230–22427–X hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

Contents

Acknowledgments

vii

List of Contributors

ix

List of Abbreviations

xi

Part I Theoretical Issues and Policy Implications of North American Integration Introduction: Conceptualizing North American Contentious Politics Jeffrey Ayres and Laura Macdonald 1 The Political Economy of Neoliberalism in North America Stephen McBride 2 North American Politics after September 11: Security, Democracy and Sovereignty Julián Castro-Rea

3 16

35

Part II Contentious Politics: National and Cross-Border Variations 3 Civil Society Organizations against Free Trade Agreements in North America Dorval Brunelle and Sylvie Dugas

57

4 Paradoxes of a Transnational Civil Society in a Neoliberal World: The Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras Joe Bandy

74

5 Contesting Neoliberal Globalism and NAFTA in Rural Mexico: From State Corporatism to the Political-Cultural Formation of the Peasantry? Armando Bartra and Gerardo Otero 6 Contentious Politics in Mexico: Democratization and Mobilizations after NAFTA Jorge Cadena-Roa v

92

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Contents

7 Coalition Politics: A Political Analysis of the Strategies, Discourses and Impact of the Mexican Action Network on Free Trade (RMALC) Marie-Josée Massicotte

132

Part III Contesting Regional Governance 8 The Globalized Complexities of Transborder Governance in North America Stephen Clarkson and Antonio Torres-Ruiz 9 The Legalization of Transnational Political Opportunity Structures: Mobilization of NAFTA’s Labor Citizen Petitions for Domestic Political Gain Jonathan Graubart

155

177

10 North American Transnational Environmental Actors and Mexico Blanca Torres

195

11 NAFTA and Transnational Contention: A Decade of Alliance and Conflict over Neoliberalism Michael Dreiling and Tony Silvaggio

211

Part IV Conclusion Conclusion: Contention and Deepening North America Stephanie R. Golob

231

Notes

248

Bibliography

258

Index

284

Acknowledgments

As with many intellectual projects of this nature, the time period between the idea for this book and its actual release has been a long one. We want to first, therefore, thank all of the contributors for their patience, support and contributions to this concrete form of transnational collaboration. In fact, as an addendum to the growing research field of North American studies, we have watched for over a decade as those concerned with the contentious side to North American integration have struggled to gain a hearing in the more mainstream debates that have centered ritually on trade and investment liberalization. But there have been a number of stepping stones that have helped to widen the debate, including workshops we participated in on ‘Inventing’ North American studies at Duke University in spring 1999, or ‘Visioning’ North American studies at Carleton University in fall 2001. There have also been a number of important conferences supported by the Association for Canadian Studies in the United States (ACSUS) or the Canadian Political Science Association, where contentious politics around North American integration have gained intellectual traction. The winter 2004 Studies in Political Economy Conference, ‘NAFTA and After: Looking Forward, Looking Back from a Decade of Continental Integration’, held at Carleton University, was especially helpful in encouraging a number of the contributors herein to take a more critical analytical view of the progress of North American integration. Finally, more recently, the workshop held in March 2008 in Mexico City at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, supported by the Canadian government-funded North American Research Linkages Program, further invigorated for many the study of North American contentious politics. On a more personal level, Jeffrey Ayres would have to thank Carleton University, the Center for North American Politics and Society and its Director, Laura Macdonald, many of her colleagues in the Department of Political Science, and the Canada–U.S. Fulbright Association and its Director Michael Hawes, for the opportunity to serve as a Fulbright Research Chair in North American studies at Carleton in winter/spring 2004. The following year when he returned as a Visiting Professor at the vii

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Acknowledgments

Institute for Political Economy, it further allowed for an opportunity to flesh out the parameters of this book. In addition, research grants from the Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C. as well as faculty research grants from Saint Michael’s College have supported research on North American contentious politics. Denyse Butler Ayres, and Virginia and McKelvey also endured and ultimately embraced living in Ottawa, Canada, during periods of time that this book was being hashed out. Laura Macdonald thanks the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada which has provided necessary funding for her work. She also thanks her department, the senior administration at Carleton University, and staff in the department, especially Diane Dodds and Jennifer Warren. She is indebted to all those involved in the Centre on North American Politics and Society, especially Christina Gabriel, Melissa Haussman, Judy Meltzer, Blayne Haggart, Jimena Jimenez, Laura Chrabolowsky, and visiting Fulbright scholars, including Jeffrey Ayres. Over the years, she has also benefited enormously from opportunities for discussion and debate with members of civil society groups in Canada, particularly with John Foster, Teresa Healy, and Sheila Katz. Finally, Stephen Dale, Ben Macdonald-Dale, and Matthew Macdonald-Dale have relatively cheerfully tolerated her juggling of combined administrative responsibilities and academic production. Both editors thank anonymous reviewers of an earlier version of this manuscript, Tim Shaw and Alexandra Webster from Palgrave/ Macmillan, and especially Janna Ferguson for her dedicated work on this project.

List of Contributors Jeffrey Ayres, Department of Political Science, Saint Michael’s College, USA Joe Bandy, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Bowdoin College, USA Armando Bartra, Instituto de Estudios para el Desarrollo Rural Maya AC and Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana – Xochimilco, Mexico Dorval Brunelle, Institut d’Études internationales de Montréal, Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada Jorge Cadena-Roa, Centro de Investigaciones Interdisciplinarias en Ciencias y Humanidades, UNAM, Mexico Julián Castro-Rea, Department of Political Science, University of Alberta, Canada Stephen Clarkson, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto, Canada Michael Dreiling, Department of Sociology, University of Oregon, USA Sylvie Dugas, Centre d’études sur l’intégration et la mondialisation, Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada Stephanie R. Golob, Department of Political Science, Baruch College, USA Jonathan Graubart, Department of Political Science, San Diego State University, USA Laura Macdonald, Department of Political Science, Carleton University, Ottawa Ontario Marie-Josée Massicotte, Department of Political Science, University of Ottawa, Canada ix

x List of Contributors

Stephen McBride, Department of Political Science, Simon Fraser University, Canada Gerardo Otero, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Simon Fraser University, Canada Tony Silvaggio, Department of Sociology, Humboldt State University, USA Blanca Torres, Centro de Estudios Internacionales, El Colegio de México Antonio Torres-Ruiz, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto, Canada

List of Abbreviations ABF ACN ACS AD AFL-CIO AFSC AIFLD Alcano AMUCSS ANAD ANEC APEC APPM APPO ARIC ART ASSA BCNI BECC BEP BMD CAFTA CAM CAP CAU CAW CBNJS CCCE CCE CCI CEC CEQ

American Business Forum Action Canada Network Alliance and Conflict System Anti-Dumping American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations American Friends Service Committee American Institute for Free Labor Development Asamblea Nacional de la Alianza Campesina del Noroeste Asociación Mexicana de Uniones de Crédito del Sector Social Asociación Nacional de Abogados Democráticos Asociación Nacional de Empresas Comercializadoras de Productores del Campo Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de México Asamblea Popular del Pueblo de Oaxaca Asociación Rural de Interés Colectivo Alliance for Responsible Trade Asociación Sindical de Subcargos de Aviación Business Council on National Issues Border Environment Cooperation Commission Border Ecology Project Ballistic Missile Defense Central American Free Trade Agreement Consejo Agrarista Mexicano Congreso Agrario Permanente Convenio de Acción Unitaria Canadian Auto Workers Union Cross Border Network for Justice and Solidarity Canadian Council of Chief Executives Consejo Coordinador Empresarial Central Campesina Independiente Commission for Environmental Cooperation Centrale de l’Enseignement du Québec xi

xii List of Abbreviations

CFO CGH CIOAC CJM CLC CNC CNDH CNI CNOC CNPA CNPI COA COCOPA CODUC CQNT CQOL CSN CSO CTC CTM CUPE CUSFTA CVD EBSVERA ENGO EU EZLN FAT FDCCH FNDCM FTAA FTQ GATT GM HSA IBWC ICCR IJC ILO

Comité Fronterizo de Obreras Consejo General de Huelga Central Independiente de Obreros Agrícolas y Campesinos Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras Commission for Labor Cooperation Confederación Nacional Campesina Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos Congreso Nacional Indígena Coordinadora Nacional de Organizaciones Cafetaleras Coordinadora Nacional ‘Plan de Ayala’ Congreso Nacional de Pueblos Indígenas Consejo de Organización Agrarias Commission of Concord and Pacification Coalición de Organizaciones Democráticas Urbanas y Campesinas Coalition Québécoise sur les Négociations Trilatérales Coalition Québécoise d’Opposition au Libre-Échange Confédération des Syndicats Nationaux Civil Society Organization Citizens Trade Campaign Confederación de Trabajadores de México Canadian Union of Public Employees Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement Countervailing Duty Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act Environmental Non-Governmental Organizations European Union Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional Frente Auténtico del Trabajo Frente Democrático Campesino de Chihuahua Frente Nacional de Defensa del Campo Mexicano Free Trade Area of the Americas Fédération des Travailleurs et Travailleuses du Québec General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade Genetically Modified Hemispheric Social Alliance International Boundaries and Waters Commission Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility International Joint Commission International Labor Organization

List of Abbreviations xiii

ILRF IMF Inmecafé IPR ISD JPAC LFA LGEEPA MAI MCAM MCD MNC MSF MST NAAEC NAALC NACC NACEC NACLC NADBank NAFTA NAO NASTC NATO NDP NGO NORAD NORTHCOM NSS NYLRC OECD PAN PCN PFEA PLQ PNR

International Labor Rights Fund International Monetary Fund Instituto Mexicano del Café Intellectual Property Rights Import Substitution Developmentalism Joint Public Advisory Committee Ley de Fomento Agropecuario Ley General del Equilibrio Ecológico y la Protección al Ambiente Multilateral Agreement on Investment Movimiento ‘¡El Campo no Aguanta Más!’ Movimiento Ciudadano por la Democrática Multinational Corporations Médecins sans Frontières Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation North American Competitiveness Council North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation North American Commission for Labor Co-operation North American Development Bank North American Free Trade Agreement National Administrative Offices North American Steel Trade Committee North Atlantic Treaty Organization New Democratic Party Non-Governmental Organizations North American Aerospace Defense Command Northern Command National Security Strategy New York Labor-Religion Coalition Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Partido Acción Nacional Pro-Canada Network Proyecto Fronterizo de Educación Ambiental Parti Libéral du Québec Partido Nacional Revolucionario

xiv List of Abbreviations

PNTR POW PQ PRD PRI PRM PROFEPA Pronasol PRWORA Red Mocaf RMLAC RQIC RSCI SECOFI SEMARNAP SEMARNAT SMO SPP TAATC TANF TCPS TCRI TNA TNC TRIPs UAW UCD UE UGOCP UNAM UNORCA UNPC UNT UNTA UPA

Permanent Normal Trade Relations Prisoner of War Parti Québécois Partido de la Revolución Democrática Partido Revolucionario Institucional Partido de la Revolución Mexicana Procuraduría Federal de Protección al Ambiente Programa Nacional de Solidaridad Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act Red Mexicana de Organizaciones Campesinas Forestales Red Mexicana Acción Frente Al Libre Comercio Réseau Québécoise sur l’Intégration Continentale Regional Security Cooperation Iniative Secretaría de Comercio y Fomento Industrial Secretaría de Medio Ambiente, Recursos Naturales y Pesca Secretaría del Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales Social Movement Organization Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America Trade Agreement Administration and Technical Cooperation Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Texas Center for Policy Studies Texas Coalition for Responsible Investment Transnational Actors Transnational Corporation Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights United Auto Workers Unión Campesina Democrática United Electrical, Radio and Machinist Workers Unión General Obrera, Campesina y Popular Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México Unión Nacional de Organizaciones Regionales Campesinas Unión Nacional de Productores del Café Unión Nacional de Trabajadores Unión Nacional de Trabajadores Agrícolas Union des Producteurs Agricoles

List of Abbreviations xv

USAS USCIB USWA WCO WTO

United Students Against Sweatshops United States Council for International Business United Steel Workers of America World Coffee Organization World Trade Organization

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Part I Theoretical Issues and Policy Implications of North American Integration

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Introduction: Conceptualizing North American Contentious Politics Jeffrey Ayres and Laura Macdonald

On 19 August 2007, several thousand people massed bearing protest signs, petitions and costumes on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Canada, to protest the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) and the North American Leaders’ Summit in Montebello, Quebec. The following month, on 6 September 2007, several dozen union organizers from the Teamsters, joined by anti-immigration Minutemen activists, protested at the San Diego, California, and Laredo, Texas, borders, carrying American flags and signs reading ‘NAFTA Kills’ and ‘Unsafe Mexican Trucks’. In Mexico City, on 31 January 2008, tens of thousands of farmers marched and slowed traffic with their tractors, protesting against the entry of cheap imported corn from Canada and the United States. Later that spring, in April 2008, activists from Mexico, the United States and Canada converged on New Orleans, Louisiana, to organize the People’s Summit to counter the North American Leaders’ Summit and the SPP. Are these cases of popular protest futile acts of resistance by disconnected and disparate groups unwilling to embrace the trend of economic liberalization that has swept across North America over the past nearly 15 years? Or rather, do these incidents fit together in a larger and longer-term pattern of sustained challenge and dissent to continental integration under NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and the SPP? This book embraces the latter proposition, and analyzes voices and activities of Canadian, US and Mexican civil society groups in their campaigns of national and transnational critique of and opposition to neoliberal economic integration. The book also represents a trinational collaborative effort of Canadian, US and Mexican observers who seek to correct the imbalance in current studies of North American integration that have dwelled often on the liberating effects of NAFTA for corporate 3

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actors and governments. In this book, we evaluate the way in which civil society actors have both shaped and, more often, been affected by the process of economic integration. Moreover, this book seeks to contribute to a more dynamic, multifaceted dialogue about the ongoing deepening of the North American relationship. In fact, recent moves to push for the SPP (launched in Waco, Texas, in 2005) run the risk of repeating what was arguably the original mistake of the NAFTA signatories: the marginalization of concerns and priorities of civil society groups across the continent.1 Clearly, in the post–September 11 environment across North America, security has remained a high priority, especially for the US government. Fears of lost or disrupted market access have thus motivated business and political elites in Canada, and to some extent in Mexico, to move toward engaging US counterparts in new initiatives designed to deepen the North American relationship within a variously discussed security perimeter and harmonized regulatory policies. Yet, while business leaders have been directly invited to participate in setting the agenda for the future of the trilateral relationship, other non-state actors have been largely excluded from ongoing discussions over the SPP. Continued public concern and skepticism about the benefits and costs of NAFTA led both of the leading candidates for the US Democratic Party nomination, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, to threaten to repudiate or renegotiate the agreement. Nonetheless, the renewed push over the past several years for deepening North American ties has only further provoked labor, women’s, farmer, environmental and human rights, and related social activist groups (and, increasingly in the United States, anti-immigrant groups) to mobilize around alternative scenarios for the future of North America. As documented in this book, NAFTA has encouraged an array of contentious civic activity, as civil society actors in the three NAFTA states frequently framed their protest strategies to contest NAFTA and its perceived policy implications. Moreover, transnational cooperation also grew between groups from Canada, the United States and Mexico, who found political opportunities for protest and lobbying through NAFTA labor and environmental side agreements. In addition, a variety of types of complimentary strikes, cross-border coalition work and solidarity actions, and consumer boycotts emerged across the region. Now, while criticisms and protests against NAFTA continue to percolate, the SPP has aggravated political contention across the region. These actions of course face the limitations and constraints typical of domestic social movement activity, including shortage of resources, lack of powerful allies, problems in sustaining protest over extended periods

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and challenges in incorporating grass-roots participants and developing internally democratic structures. Moreover, because these groups have attempted to establish cross-border linkages, they face the increased challenges associated with transnational organizing including problems in communication and mutual understanding, and, in particular, the imbalance in power and access to resources between Mexican, Canadian and US civil society actors. In the United States, opponents of NAFTA and the SPP are located on both the left and the extreme right of the political spectrum. Contentious politics are thus complex, unpredictable and messy. By presenting alternative perspectives on these patterns and incidents of contentious activity, this book responds to a clear gap in the academic literature on the politics of North American integration. Beyond the immediate terrain of politics and research on North American relations, the analyses and cases in this book are broadly tied to current debates and discussions in research on social movements, transnational politics and global governance. In particular, two aspects of the recognized link between processes of globalization and contentious politics are relevant to this book: (1) work that has been assessing the increase in the number of national movements and protests that target multilateral institutions and negotiations; and (2) research that analyzes the growing incidences of cross-border coalition building against international institutions (O’Brien et al. 2000; Bandy and Smith 2004; Della Porta and Tarrow 2005). This book highlights examples of both national and transnational contentious collective action by civil society actors that have targeted North American states, policies and institutions over the 15 years since the implementation of NAFTA. While civil society actors have clearly had limited capacity to influence the shape of the integration process in North America to date, we argue that elite-focused analyses ignore a critical element of the popular reaction to the integration agenda.

North American contention: Situating the debate Our understanding of North American contentious politics can be situated within three broad areas of lively debate: research on social movements and contention, transnational politics and global governance. First, all three fields of research have become preoccupied in part with the actions of civil society groups, which are mobilizing both domestically and transnationally, and increasingly targeting the negotiation processes, policy implications and institutions of regional and global governance. Our definition of civil society in the discussion that

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follows is deliberately broad-based: it includes that arena of organized political activity between the market and the formal political institutions. We thus share Scholte’s emphasis on voluntary associations where such actors ‘deliberately seek to shape the rules that govern one or the other aspect of social life’ (Scholte 2002: 146). We are especially interested in this book in understanding the actions of those organizations which – unlike business groups engaged in campaigns in support of continental integration – have mobilized in national and transnational actions in protest against the socially disruptive effects of North American integration.

Contentious North Americans: A social movement perspective Social movement research has documented extensively the relationship between the development of the modern state and its political institutions and the successful mobilization of national protest movements as they pursue social change goals. States create political opportunities for civil society groups to mobilize protest campaigns, where sympathetic elites, alliances of political parties and even electoral volatility structure a movement’s potential (McAdam, McCarthy and Zald 1996; Tarrow 1998). Yet, under increasingly globalized conditions, states clearly no longer contain all forms of contentious politics, as the proliferation of international institutions and political processes continues to shape popular mobilization. In particular, the dissemination of the neoliberal economic paradigm internationally – through multilateral institutions and regional and global investment and trade regimes – has sparked an upsurge in transnational coalition building, political exchange and collaboration between national social activist groups (Smith and Johnston 2002b; Bandy and Smith 2004; Della Porta and Tarrow 2005; Smith 2007). Policies supportive of unregulated free trade, privatization, deregulation, reduced public services, unrestricted capital mobility, tax cuts and pressures for fiscal discipline have antagonized a wide swath of civil society groups which have engaged in increasingly contentious political behavior across varied national and regional settings (Ayres 2001; Otero 2004b; Della Porta 2007). We frame our discussion within the concept of contentious politics as developed by Sidney Tarrow. Tarrow defines contentious politics as ‘collective activity on the part of claimants – or those who claim to represent them – relying at least in part on non-institutional forms of interaction with elites, opponents, or the state’ (Tarrow 1996: 874). Moreover, as opposed to a single movement or protest campaign, contentious

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politics connotes a longer-term pattern of both institutional and noninstitutional activity: from routine lobbying of elected legislatures to violent clashes with police. Thus, contentious political behavior, of the types analyzed herein, contains a broad spectrum of activity that ebbs and flows, typically embracing several social movements, protest campaigns, declarations, petitions, coalitions, strikes and other forms of collective activity. Our concern is over the still evolving pattern of North American–centered contentious activity that has been shaped by NAFTA, and which recently has continued anew with debates over deepening continental integration through the SPP. Over the past 15 years, civil society groups have engaged in a variety of both national and transnational forms of contentious political action. Certainly, some of this increased contentious activity predated the formal implementation of NAFTA in 1994. This is especially true for the various incidents of national protest and social movement mobilization – from nationalists in Canada organizing in the late 1980s against the Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA), and US workers fighting deindustrialization in the American heartland, to Mexican and US human rights groups assisting refugees displaced by conflicts in Central America. Yet, critically, for most of the works presented herein, NAFTA has dramatically altered the political landscape for contentious politics. Canadian, US and Mexican groups challenged the perceived elitist and exclusionary NAFTA negotiating process, rallied against the narrow neoliberal economic policy framework that privileges trade and investment liberalization across the continent, and collaborated transnationally, exploiting both the labor and environmental side agreements and, more generally, the broadened, continental political space for civil society mobilization.

Contentious North Americans: A transnational politics perspective Research on what might be labeled ‘transnational political processes’ has evolved considerably since the 1970s, when scholars initially began to construct alternative models to the then stubbornly dominant realist paradigm. Realists assumed that states were the only relevant actors in international relations, and focused heavily on security and military issues. With the development of the so-called ‘complex interdependence’ school, scholars such as Keohane and Nye sought to break from this realist conceptual stranglehold, asserting that international relations had become much more complex, with states increasingly enmeshed in a network of interdependence, and challenged by other

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non-state actors that sought to participate on the world stage (Keohane and Nye 1977). The concept of complex interdependence described a world where states were connected by multiple channels, the dividing line between domestic and foreign issues had become blurred, and military force had become less useful as a means of resolving disputes. This new line of analysis helped to draw attention in particular to the growing international economic transactions between states, as well as the increased stature being enjoyed by multinational corporations (Tarrow 2001). However, the end of the Cold War ushered in a new era of ‘international deregulation’ (Haas 1995), with new alignments, alliances and actors pushing the transnational politics paradigm beyond the narrow emphasis on transnational economic relations. Three trends during the 1990s in particular drew the increased attention of investigators: the rapid globalization of the world’s economy, which has been buttressed by newly emerging regional and global trade and investment regimes; the development and spread of the Internet as a communications tool that has broken down barriers to cross-cultural information exchange; and the explosive growth in non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other non-state actors and forms of transnational activism. North American contentious politics clearly has been shaped by all three of these trends, with states and non-state actors alike linked at multiple levels across North America. Researchers of transnational politics have for some time now recognized that NGOs have become increasingly ubiquitous and influential actors challenging states’ monopolies on domestic and international policy-making processes (Chatfield 1997; Sikkink and Smith 2002). Defined as ‘private, voluntary nonprofit groups whose primary aim is to influence publicly some form of social change’ (Khagram, Riker and Sikkink 2002: 6), NGOs have become celebrated protagonists of a wide variety of international campaigns: banning land mines, protecting the Brazilian rainforest, ensuring women’s rights, encouraging debt relief for some of the world’s poorest states and working to ban sweatshop labor practices across free trade zones. NGOs have engaged in these campaigns with a variety of forms of activism: from transnational advocacy networks, social movements and coalitions as well as other forms of contentious political behavior that has increasingly been coordinated across borders. We see contentious North Americans adopting a variety of these forms of transnational advocacy and collective action. Ultimately, we think these NGO activities make North America an ideal case study for

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appreciating the challenges and opportunities that exist for bridging the gaps that exist between Northern and Southern NGO mobilization potentials. Canadian, US and Mexican NGOs have held trinational conferences, engaged in simultaneous solidarity actions and collaborated in transnational citizen petitions to the institutions of the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC) and the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC). A consistent theme in these continental NGO campaigns has been to highlight the imbalance in the narrow neo-liberal underpinnings of NAFTA. There remain a number of obstacles to sustaining collaboration, including the growing political variety of those critical of North American integration, but the renewed impetus toward deepening North American integration seems to have refocused NGO criticisms. Mobilization efforts have been renewed across the continent to challenge the imbalance in these NAFTA-plus propositions, and a variety of continental NGOs have issued new calls for citizen input into the creation of rules and institutions that might support social justice, civic participation and environmental sustainability.2

Contentious North Americans: A global governance perspective The global governance literature provides an additional perspective to understand different dimensions and implications of what we have called North American contention. Global governance has been defined simply but aptly as ‘institutions for managing relations between states across a range of issues’ (Halliday 2004: 489). Much of the attention in this field has been directed toward identifying the rules and norms created and institutionalized at the global level in such institutions as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) (O’Brien et al. 2000; Wilkinson 2002, 2005). However, we might also consider whether the struggle over the establishment of rules of engagement between states, institutions and NGOs is applicable to unfolding governance processes in North America. In contrast with the European Union (EU), where the distinct politics of the postwar era led to the emergence of ‘social Europe’ and institutions that created an opening for citizen participation, the integration process in North America has been elite-centered and focused primarily on business and government priorities. Yet, the neo-liberal prescriptions that have dominated North American continental integration have not gone uncontested. The older ‘club model’ (Keohane and Nye 2002) in which states (especially wealthy

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states) were the sole actors constructing norms buttressing institutions of global or regional governance is cracking. Processes of contestation from civil society actors, as well as the rise of regional powers in the South that are skeptical of neo-liberal policies, have contributed to the derailing of various elite-driven projects, including the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and the recent breakdown in the WTO talks. As seen in this collection, in North America, the lack of transparency and accountability to non-state actors and their concerns has been challenged for over a decade. Citizens groups from Canada, the United States and Mexico have contested the exclusionary model that marked the NAFTA negotiation process, and have demanded greater attention to transparency, legitimacy and representation (Macdonald 2004). As is common in the field of social movement activism, contentious politics in the region has experienced ebbs and flows. The first phase of citizen activism emerged in Canada, in opposition to the CUSFTA of 1989 (Ayres 1998). Canadian activists found little support from American counterparts in this period, but the NAFTA negotiations of the early 1990s sparked the emergence of coalitions within the three countries of the region as well as diverse forms of cooperation between these actors across borders. Neither of these trade agreements officially incorporated civil society consultation, but citizen opposition in the United States eventually led to the inclusion of the labor and environmental side accords after the election of President Bill Clinton. As a result, some observers would call what continues to unfold across the continent regional ‘complex multilateralism’ (O’Brien et al. 2000), in which a much more complicated mode of engagement between states, new actors and new nodes of authority has hinted at the potential for a more pluralistic form of regional governance. Conceptualizing contentious North American governance, then, would draw attention to the variety of new actors, new types of interactions, policy implications and institutional modifications emerging from the multi-level processes of engagement across the continent. In fact, for example, North America under NAFTA has arguably witnessed the emergence of new mechanisms for novel engagement between states and civil society through the NAALC and the NAAEC, as discussed in several chapters of this book. However, these citizens’ submission processes are an example of limited regional governance at best. Commenting on an earlier collection of research on global governance, Wilkinson finds ‘a marked imbalance wherein the needs and desires of transnational business are served through an on-going process

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of liberalization, but where a corresponding acknowledgement of civil sensitivities is largely absent’ (Wilkinson 2002: 12). This imbalance is particularly apparent in the North American region, and has arguably intensified in the period since the attacks of 11 September 2001. As discussed in the chapter by Julián Castro-Rea in this book, those attacks led to increased attention to issues related to security and border control, pushed by both the US government and the efforts of Canadian and Mexican elites to maintain secure access to the US economy. The securitization of the North American agenda has, we argue, severely constrained spaces for popular sector participation in decision-making processes. For example, the recommendations of the 2005 Council on Foreign Relation’s Task Force on North America are largely bereft of civil society concerns, and the membership of the body is drawn from the ranks of business and academic elites. This elite bias in processes of contemplation on North America’s future leaves unanswered the pressing question of how to better nurture a process of engagement that includes all voices and actors concerned about evolving frameworks for governance within an agenda for deepening multiple relationships across the North American community (Macdonald 2004). The establishment of the SPP of North America by the three governments of the region in Waco Texas in 2005 solidified the elite-dominance of process of North American integration (Ackleson and Kastner 2006; Ayres and Macdonald 2006; Anderson and Sands 2007; Gilbert 2007). Designed not to replicate the trade and investment agreement exemplified in NAFTA, the SPP has unfolded as an expansive initiative between the executive bodies of the three NAFTA states, with formalized input from business actors, designed to initiate a broad-based process of multi-sectoral regulatory harmonization. With little vision of political institution building across North America, the SPP rather envisions the regional integration and convergence of a space of ‘market-oriented harmonization’ with ‘very little in the way of state role or infrastructure’ imagined (Gilbert 2007). For critics of the SPP, the clearest sign of the elite-bias of the process is the creation of a North American Competitiveness Council (NACC), composed exclusively of corporate leaders from the three countries, to advise the leaders regarding issues of competitiveness and prosperity in the North American region. The NACC is clearly situated in a privileged position vis-à-vis other civil society actors, having been created and selected by governments, and invited to present directly to the leaders at meetings in Montebello and New Orleans, in contrast with other civil society actors who were excluded from these meetings. The lack

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of transparency, legitimacy and inclusiveness of the SPP process may lead to a new upswing in contentious politics across the region, as civil society actors seek ways to derail or influence the elite-driven process of continental integration. In this context, a clear evaluation of the nature, impact and limitations of contentious political activity in the region to date becomes imperative.

Organization and plan of the book This book provides an overview of contentious politics within and across the state borders of North America, and is divided into three main parts. The first part discusses the nature of neo-liberal continental integration in North America, thus setting out the challenges and opportunities to which social movement activists have been responding. The chapters in the second part of the book provide examples of different forms of national and transnational contentious political activity within the region, with particular emphasis in several case studies on the evolution in social movement dynamics in Mexico since the implementation of NAFTA. The third part evaluates North American governance institutions, and more extensively the ways in which social movements have engaged with the institutions established under the NAFTA side agreements that were designed to protect and promote labor rights and the environment. The final chapter draws analytical conclusions and reflects upon the uncertain futures of civil society within the unfolding processes of North American integration in the SPP era. Following the introductory chapter, the next two chapters provide an overview of the nature of the evolving relationships between the three economies and states of North America. These chapters provide an indication of the challenges and opportunities confronted by civil society actors in their struggles to contribute to the construction of a more equitable and democratic North American region. In Chapter 1, Stephen McBride discusses the political and economic shifts in the three countries of North America that led to the NAFTA agreement. McBride argues that the economic and political choices made by elites in the 1980s and 1990s led to the establishment of a highly asymmetrical regional arrangement under the banner of neo-liberal ideology. McBride maintains that neo-liberalism acts to constrain both sovereignty and democracy, giving rise to responses from social movements that wish to protect these values. While McBride focuses on the economic logic behind North American integration, in Chapter 2, Julián Castro-Rea examines the foreign policy

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and security dimensions of the North American region, focusing especially on the period since the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. Castro-Rea argues that the events of September 11 have led to the adoption of a range of policies that, similar to the economic policies discussed by McBride, constrain citizens’ choices, restrict their liberties and reduce state sovereignty. The foreign policy and security context in North America after September 11 thus creates real challenges for contentious political action in the region, although it has also given rise to the emergence of important forms of resistance and anti-war protest, particularly in the United States. The next part of the book highlights examples of ways in which social movement actors within each of the three countries of the region have responded to the trends outlined in Part I. In Chapter 3, Dorval Brunelle and Sylvie Dugas provide a broad overview of the evolution of opposition to free trade in Canada (including actions specific to Quebec), the United States and Mexico. They analyze national actions as well as the development of cross-border ties, distinguishing three phases in the process of social mobilization around the project of North American integration, and raise concerns about the viability of social mobilization in the face of the continued evolution of neo-liberal North American integration. Following this chapter, the rest of this part provides a series of case studies of forms of contentious activity around different issues. In Chapter 4, Joe Bandy presents an analysis of the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras (CJM), a transnational movement network that was formed in order to promote the rights of workers in the maquiladora sector of the Mexican economy. After briefly describing the origins and evolution of the CJM, Bandy examines some of the challenges and opportunities the CJM has confronted and what these tell us about how we think about North American transnational movements. While Bandy’s chapter focuses on movements that are primarily binational, the next three chapters provide a collection of case studies on the dramatic changes to Mexican civil society and social movement dynamics following the implementation of NAFTA. This part particularly emphasizes the Mexican experience because of the especially contentious nature of recent Mexican politics. Also, one of the clear failures of NAFTA and the neo-liberal model in which it was rooted was its inability to address high levels of poverty and inequality in Mexico, or the gap in living conditions between Mexico and the other two countries of the region. Chapter 5 by Armando Bartra and Gerardo Otero focuses on a movement whose form of action has been primarily national. In this chapter, they analyze the evolution

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of peasant movements in Mexico, groups that have been hit hard by the impact of market liberalization. Chapter 6 by Jorge Cadena-Roa provides an in-depth analysis of contentious politics and social movement mobilization across a number of cases in Mexico under the shadow of continental integration. Finally, in Chapter 7, Marie-Josée Massicotte analyzes the experiences of the Mexican Action Network on Free Trade (RMALC), a broad-based Mexican civil society coalition, and the building of cross-border coalitions. Part III of the book presents an assessment of North American governance as well as several analyses of how institutions of regional governance have shaped contentious politics in the North American region. In Chapter 8, Stephen Clarkson and Antonio Torres-Ruiz discuss the extent to which and in what ways North America exists as a meaningful political entity. The chapter assesses various manifestations of trans-border politics in North America, some of which evolved well before free trade, others that developed in the shadow of NAFTA and now the SPP, and those that were prompted by the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. The next two chapters look at the limited opportunities created for citizen engagement in the structures of the two NAFTA side accords. In Chapter 9, Jonathan Graubart studies the way in which labor movements in the region have interacted with the NAALC, the labor side agreement, while Blanca Torres, in Chapter 10, focuses on the other NAFTA side agreement, the NAAEC, and the strategies of environmental activists and transnational activism around the environment. The final chapter in this part, by Michael Dreiling and Tony Silvaggio, provides an assessment of the forms of contention over international trade in North America over the last couple of decades. Dreiling and Silvaggio argue that the forms of contention developed before and during the NAFTA era have clearly become transnationalized, and have created a dynamic ‘alliance and conflict system’ that is now quasi-permanent. In the concluding chapter, Stephanie Golob draws together the theoretical and empirical contributions of the various authors. She argues that, taken as a whole, the chapters in this book provide us with an alternative ‘map’ of the still unfolding North American regional system, one that is more often than not obscured by the reigning perception of a purely corporate- or elite-driven model of integration. In short, this book holds promising theoretical implications for further generalizing about how regional governance processes are shaping instances of national and transnational collective action. We now know much more about contentious political activity in Europe, especially

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how the deep supranational institutions of the European Union have shaped protests and social movement mobilizations that have targeted both European states and EU institutions and policies (Imig and Tarrow 2001). After nearly 15 years of NAFTA, and with continued negotiations over the SPP, there is a need for a collection that assesses incidents of contentious politics and their continued potential policy implications for the future of North American integration. It clearly no longer makes sense nor is it politically practical to ignore the spread of civil society protests against international trade and investment regimes, or, more generally, civic demands for greater inclusion in multilateral negotiation processes such as the SPP. However, the much more sparse institutional structure established by the NAFTA agreement, in contrast with the wide range of institutions established in the EU, presents a very different political opportunity structure. In our view, the failure of policy makers to attempt to build bridges with civil society opponents of free trade has created a deeply polarized political environment that limits potential for constructive discussion about the future of North America. This book will help researchers, policy makers and activists develop a better understanding of the perspectives, goals and initiatives of civil society actors in their efforts to contest the still exclusionary mechanisms of governance across North America.

1 The Political Economy of Neoliberalism in North America Stephen McBride

Introduction During the 1980s and 1990s, the ideological and political landscape shifted in all three North American countries. Neoliberal ideology became much more influential and, some would say, hegemonic. One result was that Canada and Mexico became much more integrated with the United States economically, through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). That agreement, while technically trilateral, can more accurately been described as three bilateral agreements (Canada–United States, Canada–Mexico and Mexico–United States) cobbled together (Kerr 2001: 1175). The agreement embeds a number of asymmetries: in important ways it is less binding on the United States than on the two smaller powers; and the rights of capital are privileged in comparison to those of other social actors and to the capacity of the state itself. NAFTA is far more than a mere ‘trade’ agreement and serves as a ‘conditioning framework’ for domestic politics in the Canadian and Mexican ‘spokes’ if not in the American ‘hub’ (see Grinspun and Kreklewich 1994). For domestic elites in Canada and Mexico who favor neoliberal policy outcomes, this is a welcome constraint. For those involved in contentious politics, the sovereigntyand democracy-diminishing impact of neoliberalism, together with its impact on society, are key mobilizing issues.

The theory of neoliberalism The first elected neoliberal (or neoconservative) regimes were in Great Britain (1979) and the United States (1980). In Canada, piecemeal movement toward a neoliberal policy agenda was first evident in the 16

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mid-1970s, driven by concerns over inflation and, subsequently, budget deficits. But it was only in 1984, with the landslide victory of the federal Progressive Conservative Party led by Brian Mulroney, that a systematic shift in this direction occurred at the national level. In Mexico, the shift to neoliberalism was driven by the debt crisis, which followed a period of ‘credit-financed populism’ in the 1970s. International indebtedness led to the demise of import substitution developmentalism that had long been a feature of the activist Mexican state (Babb 2001: 12; see also Otero 1996a: 6–9). Abandonment of statism and the policy of import substitution was initially imposed on Mexico by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) (Alvarez 2004: 98). In the United States, perceptions of the country’s relative decline, fuelled by its defeat in the Vietnam War, faltering economic prosperity and ‘stagflation’ triggered by the oil crises, but blamed on government budget deficits, fostered the rise of a ‘New Right’ that pledged to restore American primacy. The core ideological thrust of neoliberalism is laissez-faire economic doctrine. In the hands of conservative politicians this is sometimes combined with the values of social traditionalism; hence, an emphasis on ‘family values’ and related themes, and the oft-applied label, ‘neoconservatism.’ However, the addition of such values does not seem to be a necessary element in neoliberalism per se and is largely confined to the United States. Laissez-faire economics is not, of course, a new idea. But its rediscovery provided a sharp contrast to the limited state interventionism characteristic of liberal thinking in the postwar period. Under the influence of the ideas of John Maynard Keynes, themselves triggered by the experience of mass unemployment during the Great Depression of the 1930s, economists and governments had come to accept that an active government could help maintain full-employment and, in the process, supply a far broader range of social services (generally summed up as ‘the Welfare State’) than formerly. Even before Keynesianism, Mexico and Canada, typical of countries occupying a peripheral or semi-peripheral role within the international economy, had relied on a significant degree of state intervention to achieve economic development. Indeed, even the United States had been protectionist toward its developing industries while playing catch-up with the United Kingdom and other European powers (Senghaas 1985). The kind of Latin American developmentalism practiced in Mexico was far from identical to Keynesianism. In particular, as Ayres and Macdonald argue in the introductory chapter to this book, the Mexican

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state was much more pervasive and authoritarian, protectionism was much stronger, and the economy far less developed. In discussions of European Keynesianism, the label ‘corporatism’ was often applied to describe the collaborative relations between the state, labor, and capital. The literature made it clear that this was ‘societal’ corporatism (or corporatism from below) in contrast to the ‘state’ corporatism (‘from above’) typical of interwar regimes (see Schmitter and Lehbruch 1979). Neither Canada nor the United States registered very highly on indicators of corporatism, but Mexico could be regarded as a case of state corporatism rather than the milder ‘societal’ form found in Europe. There were, therefore, significant differences between Mexico and the other North American countries in the postwar Keynesian period. Nevertheless, Babb has argued convincingly that Mexican statism ‘paralleled and complemented Keynesianism’ in a number of ways. First, both perspectives rejected the doctrine of minimalist government and supported a strong role for government in the economy. Second, Keynesianism challenged the neo-classical idea that ‘there is a single set of economic laws applicable at all times and in all places.’ It therefore created space for alternative perspectives like that of the developmentalists (Babb 2001: 8). Certainly, an important strand in Mexican neoliberalism was, as President Salinas’ speechwriter put it, ‘an end of faith in the Leviathan’ (cited in O’Toole 2003: 270). Mexico’s transition to neoliberalism started from a different point from that of industrialized countries that practiced some version of Keynesianism in the post-war period, but its discourse emphasized similar themes. The doctrine of neoliberalism1 is essentially a refurbished version of neo-classical economics. A number of ingredients make up the basic doctrine. Monetarism assumes that, given a sound monetary policy, market economies will automatically adjust to full-employment. As a technical doctrine that addresses itself to the relationship between public expenditures and their financing, monetarism postulates that government budget deficits have inflationary consequences, although it does not declare whether the way to eliminate public deficits is through raising taxes or cutting expenditures. For supply-side economics, properly designed tax cuts can increase growth, prosperity and employment, but for different reasons than those claimed by Keynesian economists. Unlike in the Keynesian model, tax cuts to the poor and middle classes are not necessary to stimulate consumer demand. This is because it is supply that drives the economy, not demand. Rather, cuts in taxes should be directed toward the wealthy and business to induce savings and investments.

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In addition to a policy agenda favoring generous tax relief to capital, supply-siders are concerned with labor-market flexibility and ensuring that welfare benefits do not act as a disincentive to work. They believe that generous social benefits produce disincentives to work and that trade unions create monopolies of labor, forcing up the price of wages. Similarly, unions work to undermine the tendency of the price of labor to drop during periods of unemployment and recession. Similarly, they argue, welfare measures such as unemployment insurance insulate individuals from market forces, often encouraging them to pursue leisure over work, which shrinks the size of labor markets, driving up the price of labor. Thus it is argued that by creating an extensive welfare state, the government seduces people into becoming its dependent clients. The basic rationale behind neoliberal economic theory has also been extended to the analysis of politics in the shape of ‘public choice’ theory. This theory provides reasons why the state should be distrusted and its role be limited. By this logic it follows that if business people are self-interested, the same will be true of government officials who will seek to maximize their power. But whilst this is presumed beneficial in a business context, in the public sector it is viewed as dysfunctional. Milton Friedman (1989) contended that the widespread perception that the government is geared to satisfying the ‘public interest’ is fallacious. In the political marketplace there is a great incentive and benefit for special interests to push their own policy agenda at the cost of the interests of the public at large. Hence, public choice theory operates to delegitimize the notion of a ‘public’ sector and feeds into populist disparagement of ‘big government’ and ‘bureaucracy.’ For these theorists, democratic government has come to mean that the state is being forced to correct the problems confronting differing interest groups within society; government overload is the inevitable end result as demands come to exceed governmental ability to deliver. The economic consequence of political-demand overload is inflation, and the political result is ungovernability. For neoliberals, government intervention in the private sphere must be minimized. This is a restatement of classical liberalism’s view that the chief threat to liberty comes from those who wield political power. The theory is blind to the effects of concentration of economic power in a supposedly free market. Indeed, a major assumption of neoliberalism is that there is a direct relationship between democracy and capitalism, with the existence of a capitalist marketplace being an essential precondition for both economic and political freedom. Governments must be

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circumscribed in their ability to interfere with the marketplace and thus maximize the ability of individuals to enjoy property. Through the theory of comparative advantage, and subsequent embellishments,2 the same laissez-faire prescriptions are extended to international economic relations. Thus, government restrictions on freedom of trade and investment are a major target of neoliberals. In the late twentieth century, a plethora of international trade and investment agreements were signed, all underpinned by liberal trade theory, itself rooted in Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage. Comparative advantage provides the rationale for viewing free trade as a welfareenhancing, positive-sum situation from which all participating states benefit. Critical perspectives on liberal trade theory vary but share a skepticism about its general welfare-enhancing claims: ‘reliance on comparative advantage primarily serves to reproduce deep inequalities in the distribution of wealth and welfare’ (Korzeniewicz 1999: 127).3 Skepticism is partly based on the belief that the assumptions underlying comparative advantage may not hold in real-world situations (Urmetzer 2003: 65–73), and result, instead, in growing inequality between states and classes.

A world to win: The paradigm shift to neoliberalism When old ways of thinking about policy problems and solutions are displaced, and new ones become dominant, it usually follows a period of intense political struggle over the direction of the state. The outcome is rarely exclusively determined by the merits of the ideas themselves. Rather, the link with dominant societal forces is crucial. In the shift to neoliberalism in North America, domestic and international influences and both class-based and state actors are all implicated, though in different combinations. The era of neoliberal globalization has been widely depicted as an era in which finance capital has achieved a hegemonic position in leading states and, through them, internationally (Carroll 1989, 2004; Harvey 2003: 64; Duménil and Lévy 2004). The implications of the fusion of control over capital that the concept of finance capital embodies are far reaching. These can briefly be summarized as: developing new organizational forms for pressing capital’s demands on the state at all levels; redefining and articulating business interests to express the general goals of fused, flexible and mobile capital rather than the specific interests of sectoral or fixed capital; increasing the structural power of

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finance capital; implicating states in realizing business’ policy goals and ensuring a major flow of benefits to finance capital. The liberation of capital from states’ control coincided with the demise of the Keynesian era and the Bretton Woods system. Bretton Woods had included controls on capital movements, and rejected the laissez-faire ideology and doctrines of ‘sound finance’ traditionally associated with banking and financial interests (Helleiner 1994). It privileged national economies and their industrial bases (Duménil and Lévy 2001: 585–588; Harvey 2003: 57). The demise of the Bretton Woods system triggered a period of volatility in the international financial system and provided an opportunity for business to assert a new paradigm, the implementation of which would enable finance capital to emerge into a hegemonic position. The increasing fusion of different types of capital created a demand for flexibility in its deployment. The neoliberal policy package, both domestically and internationally, conformed to this requirement on the part of finance capital. It is for this reason that modern ‘trade’ agreements like NAFTA extend far beyond the trade in goods that was the traditional coverage of such agreements. Investments (very broadly defined), services (supplied in any of a variety of ways), non-tariff barriers and protection of intellectual property rights loom large in the new agreements. Simply put, they serve to protect almost all forms of economic activity and capital investments from excessive state intervention. During the transition period which followed the collapse of the Bretton Woods system new methods were devised to represent business interests. The sense of crisis in the 1970s provided the opportunity for long-standing critics of the Keynesian revolution in economic thought to emerge from obscurity. The economics profession, undergoing what amounted to a paradigm shift, returned to a version of neoclassical orthodoxy of the kind that Keynes and like-minded economists had overturned two generations earlier. The revived ideas found powerful backers, mostly in a business sector concerned about increasing state intervention in the economy. This coalition of neoclassical economists and corporate interests pushed right and centre political parties to a decisive break with Keynesianism. Moreover, the electorate proved susceptible to the appeals of the incoming paradigm, particularly its claim that balanced budgets and sound finance would eventually restore a degree of economic security that inflation and declining real incomes had eroded. In Canada, business efforts to articulate and win the state to neoliberalism were coordinated by a peak-level association of chief executive

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officers, the Business Council on National Issues.4 The process was facilitated by a royal commission on Canada’s economic prospects5 and by the eventual adoption of neoliberal platforms by both of Canada’s main political parties. Part of the package was a free-trade agreement with the United States. The effect was to diminish Canada’s sovereignty, an outcome which raises the question of why the Canadian state voluntary pursued such a strategy. One answer is that, as with Mexico’s initial abandonment of its traditional economic policy, there was nothing voluntary about it, that Canada had little option but to pursue economic integration with the United States. This might be attributed to US pressures, such as protectionism, or to more general influences promoting globalization but which, in the North American context, produced continentalism. There is no doubt that external pressures of this sort existed. However, the fact that Canada was the demandeur in the original free trade talks (Clarkson 1991), and that the initiative was part of a comprehensive reorientation of both domestic and international policy demanded by Canadian business, points to a more domestic causation. In September 1985, the Macdonald Commission report was released to the public. Its message was unambiguous: ‘market liberalization, social adjustment, and limited government were the cornerstones of the Macdonald Commission’s public philosophy’ (Bradford 1998: 113). At the centre of this analysis was conclusion that free trade with the United States was essential to any Canadian economic strategy. But there were to be major domestic implications as well. The Commissioners argued that ‘our basic international stance complements our domestic stance. We must seek an end to those patterns of government involvement in the economy which may generate disincentives, retard flexibility, and work against the desired allocation of resources’ (cited in Bradford 1998: 114). In effect, the royal commission served as the launch pad for the new policies – Canada–United States free trade abroad, and neoliberalism at home. The recommendations were quickly seized upon by the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney. In Mexico, there is considerable evidence that the domestic transition to neoliberalism was led by a technocratic elite mostly consisting of US-trained economists, occupying state positions, supported by international interests and mobilizing support in the Mexican big business sector. Business representation was restructured in a similar fashion to that adopted in Canada and the United States. In 1975, the Consejo Coordinador Empresarial (CCE – Entrepreneurial Coordinating Council)

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was founded: ‘Its project, as was soon evident, was to parlay the private sector’s economic supremacy into supremacy within the state, purging the latter of populist or neoconservative officials in decision making circles and reinforcing the linkages with the conservative (mostly financial) bureaucracy’ (Valdes Ugalde 1996: 135). Mexican business favored a more market-based approach involving privatization and deregulation, more power for the private sector and less power for labor (Valdes Ugalde 1996: 136–140). The success of this strategy produced much greater structural power for business in the 1980s, much greater influence in the policy process amounting to ‘a profound transformation in business-state relations’ (Thacker 2000: 186). Yet it is unclear whether domestic business was driving the process or merely a participant. Gilpin (2000: 242) puts the emphasis on American-trained economists and technocrats inside the state who believed that joining NAFTA, for example, would ‘lock-in’ neoliberal reforms which they had initiated (see also Erfanick 1995: 153; Vadi 2000: 84). The rise of this technocratic group was facilitated by the debt crisis and by the conditions attached to WTO and IMF loans. Under their guidance, ‘Mexico underwent a free market revolution that utterly transformed the developmentalist policies of previous years’ (Babb 2001: 171). Mexican indebtedness led to dependence on international institutions such as the World Bank and IMF, foreign lenders such as the United States, and foreign investors. A succession of Mexican presidents believed that negotiations with these actors could best be handled by individuals whose credentials inspired trust and confidence (Babb 2001: 20–21). So the shift to neoliberalism in Mexico was achieved by elements within the state backed by an international constituency and, over time, a domestic one in the form of big business interests. The US Business Roundtable had pioneered the format of centralized peak-level associations of business executives from different economic sectors. Founded in 1972, the Business Roundtable was composed of the chief executives of 200 leading corporations and had two major goals: ‘(1) to enable chief executives from different corporations to work together to analyze specific issues affecting the economy and business, and (2) to present government and the public with knowledgeable, timely information, and with practical, positive proposals for action’ (Business Roundtable 2004). Dye (2001: 62) not only considers the Business Roundtable to be the ‘most prominent elite coordinating institution’ but also shows that it sits atop and amidst a host of institutions – foundations, think tanks, policy-planning organizations – intended to devise business-friendly policies and to win public opinion

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to their support (see Smith 2000: 57–62). Together with other coordinating institutions, such as the Council on Economic Development, the Business Roundtable engages in a deliberate effort involving ‘elite consensus-building and coordination of policy formulation’ (Dye 2001: 61).6 Notwithstanding the large numbers of business associations in the United States, and the propensity of individual corporations to act politically on their own behalf as well, there is evidence of a high degree of business unity in the United States. A comparison of positions taken by the narrowly representative Business Roundtable (top 200 corporations) and the far more broadly based Chamber of Commerce found agreement on 96 percent of issues on which both organizations took a position (Smith 2000: 61). A long tradition of elite analysis in the United States suggests a hegemonic role for American business (for example, see Useem 1987). Of course the adoption of neoliberalism, or neoconservatism as it is commonly described in the United States, was more complex than simply a response to the articulated needs of capital. Neoliberal economic and social nostrums of less government, lower taxes and a less generous welfare state were linked to a more aggressive stance toward communism abroad, and to the moral agenda of evangelical fundamentalist Christians on issues like abortion and gay rights. Eventually a politician emerged, Ronald Reagan, who was able to tie the strands together in a winning coalition for President in 1980. Neoliberals fought and won a battle for ideological hegemony against their Keynesian opponents. Having won, a distinctive US neoliberal policy model emerged. Its features included, ‘deregulation of financial markets, privatization, weakening of institutions of social protection, weakening of labor unions and labor market protections, shrinking of government, cutting of top tax rates, opening of international goods and capital markets, and abandonment of full employment goals . . . ’ (Palley 2004: 4–5). These ideas came to inform the actions of international organizations (Chossudovsky 1997) through what is termed ‘the Washington consensus’ (see Williamson 2000: 252–253). Through a mixture of emulation (in some developed countries) and imposition (on many developing countries) the US model has made significant inroads into formerly dominant policy packages. While the North American countries have not followed identical prescriptions – in part because their starting points were quite different – it is clear that all have been strongly influenced by neoliberalism.

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Neoliberalism in practice: Impact and contradictions With the support of powerful business interests and sectors of the state, neoliberals have been highly successful in engineering, and to this point in time consolidating a paradigm shift in which their ideology has moved from the margins of society to hegemonic status. With what effects?

General performance A cross-national comparison of performance in the 1960–1980 and 1980–2000 periods (the latter seen as one of intensifying neoliberal globalization) found that rates of economic growth declined compared to those of the earlier 20-year period (Weisbrot, Baker, Kraev and Chen 2001). The same study revealed that on a number of other socioeconomic indicators – life expectancy, infant and child mortality and education and literacy – progress was much slower in the later than the earlier period. The authors were careful to note that they had not proven that the policy changes associated with neo-liberal globalization and free trade had produced slower progress. Rather, they argued that their findings ‘present a very strong prima facie case that some structural and policy changes implemented during the last two decades are at least partly responsible for these declines. And there is certainly no evidence in these data that the policies associated with globalization has improved outcomes for most low to middle-income countries’ (Ibid. 3). The consequences of neoliberalism in Mexico have been particularly serious. Growth was higher in the era of import substitution developmentalism (ISD), inequality has increased since ISD was abandoned and real wages in manufacturing have declined. Moreover, the economy has been wracked by economic crises like that in the mid-1990s (Babb 2001: 195–197). The Peso Crisis of 1994 led to a devaluation of the peso by 50 percent. It was argued that this would be beneficial to Mexican exports in global trade, but domestically government supports had been decreasing, and agricultural inputs purchased abroad became more expensive. Lack of access to credit and domestic capital made boosting production difficult for Mexican producers. Farm foreclosures due to bad debt forced farmers off the land. Due to devaluation, wages dropped, and many campesinos came to depend on off-farm labor for income (IRC 1995). Prior to 1994, there were 8 million Mexican rural farmers. At the tenyear mark, of the NAFTA, this number had dropped to 6 million (PC 2004: 4). According to the Carnegie Endowment For International Peace’s

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Report on ‘NAFTA’s Promise and Reality’ (2003), 1.3 million Mexican jobs were lost since the signing of the NAFTA (Audley et al. 2003: 6). Since the inception of the NAFTA, exports to the United States from Mexico did increase, but the job growth that was hoped for did not materialize, and out-migration did not slow down (Papadementriou 2003: 51). Originally when the NAFTA was signed, there were hopes that the development of export crops such as fruits and vegetables would increase the employment of Mexicans and ward off cheap US imports. But Mexican farmers could not produce these agricultural products as efficiently as their American counterparts. Mexican farmers have had little incentive or possibility to transition to the production of other crops than what has been traditionally produced for domestic consumption (for example, maize and beans). As Richter, Taylor and Yunez-Naude note, the transition from ‘importables’ to ‘exportables’ has forced labor markets to reform to new market realities (2005: 3). Debt drove many farmers who could not make the transition or pay off their debts off of the land. Mexico’s dependence on food imports has increased since the inception of the NAFTA, while peasant farming has been discouraged. Mexico now imports maize free of tariffs that directly competes with domestic producers, since January 2003, when a number of tariffs on agricultural goods were eliminated under the NAFTA. However, due to special products measures, Mexico does not have the same access to US markets for its maize and other agricultural products (RMALC 2005). Historians and economists have argued that out-migration and urbanization are part of the economic development of middle-income countries (Papademetriou 2003: 46). The result has been out-migration of displaced rural peoples to find work elsewhere, either in urban settings, maquilas or in the United States. In 1997–1998, 77 percent of the US agricultural workforce was Mexican. This was an increase from 57 percent in 1990 (Richter et al. 2005: 2). The population of illegal Mexican workers in the United States doubled from 1990 to 2000 (Papademetriou 2003: 40). Immigration from Mexico increased from 350,000 in 1992 to 500,000 in 2002; 60 percent of migrants were undocumented (Women’s Edge Coalition 2005: 2). While the effects on Canada have been less dramatic, data compiled comparing the neoliberal era with that of the Keynesian period showed poorer performance in the recent period on indicators like economic growth, unemployment and changes in real wages (Stanford 1995). Subsequent Statistics Canada analysis reveals rising inequality amongst

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wage earners, with very slow or stagnant rates of real wage increases between 1997 and 2007 for most workers (Morissette 2008). Moreover, even the much-vaunted export boom to the United States may have more to do with the declining value of the Canadian dollar and the US propensity to import from many sources in the 1990s (Stanford 2000). Many have pointed to the booming US economy in the 1990s as one of neoliberalism’s success stories. It is difficult, however, to disentangle the effects of the United States’ emergence as the world’s sole hegemon and the consequent willingness of the rest of the world to tolerate and finance simultaneous trade, capital account and budget deficits. Certainly the US economic miracle was accompanied by increased income inequality, higher poverty rates (than in Europe, for example), longer working hours and, for those in the bottom half of the income hierarchy, wage stagnation. Moreover, the sustainability of the triple deficits and the possibility of blowback from America’s imperial adventures abroad cast a cloud on the sustainability of its performance.

Sovereignty, neoliberal constitutionalism, and democracy Krasner (1999: 9–10) offers the following typology of usages of sovereignty: domestic sovereignty, referring to the organization of public authority within a state and to the level of effective control exercised by those holding authority; interdependence sovereignty, referring to the ability of public authorities to control transborder movements; international legal sovereignty, referring to the mutual recognition of states or other entities; and Westphalian sovereignty, referring to the exclusion of external actors from domestic authority configurations. Globalization, either in the guise of the increased structural power of private actors such as multinational corporations or through the provisions of international economic agreements, touches on all these forms of sovereignty generally, it is argued here, with a diminishing effect. Only international legal sovereignty remains intact. Indeed, maintenance of international legal sovereignty is necessary for states to engineer the diminution of the other forms of sovereignty. To the extent that the agreements alter the configuration of domestic authority, or restrict the scope for exercising such authority, they represent a negotiated, by-invitation infringement of other forms of sovereignty.

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In a democracy, other things being equal, reducing the state’s capacity through diminished sovereignty reduces the scope within which democratic governance can be practiced. In Mexico the scope of changes wrought by neoliberalism has transformed society and state. The changes include sweeping privatization of industry, trade liberalization and constitutional changes to permit agriculture to be commercialized. These and other changes all ‘convey the neoliberal message that Mexican “sovereignty” is dependent on a private economy made strong through exposure to world market standards of competition’ (Erfanick 1995: 162). Similar sentiments are often expressed in Canada where participation in closer integration with the United States is depicted as an ‘expression of sovereignty’ rather than a diminution of it (for example, Dobson 2002). NAFTA constrains the state’s ability to intervene in the economy, triggered legislated limits on the state’s regulatory and property rights capacity prior to signing the treaty, and extends US style property rights provisions through its protection of foreign investors (Erfanick 1995: 173–178). In Canada it can also be argued that constitutional change is being accomplished through the mechanism of international economic agreements (McBride 2003). The new trade agreements provide opportunities for external actors to participate in Canadian authoritative institutions and, in some cases, for external authorities to overrule domestic institutions (see McBride 2006). Over very broad issues Canada (and, with the exception of energy, Mexico) have accepted a reduced scope for domestic decision-making and transferred important judicial functions to international tribunals. Even in the United States, concerns have been raised about the impact of the agreements on US constitutional rights and democratic decisionmaking. This is because the agreements function to constrain, limit, direct, and ‘condition’ decision-making in areas far removed from trade as traditionally understood. Neo-liberal globalization, in the shape of involvement in the new generation of multilateral and bilateral trade and investment agreements, has modified the potential reach of democratic governance.

Social solidarity: Insecurity and inequality In Mexico the Chiapas rebellion came to symbolize the increased social fragmentation characteristic of the neoliberal period. Poverty, racism, and inequality were certainly causal factors and some argue that these had been exacerbated by a decade of neoliberal policies

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(Harvey 1996: 187). The conflict between indigenous peoples and the state continues to simmer. Efforts by the Fox administration to engage in dialogue with the Zapatistas ended with the passage of legislation which denied territorial rights to the indigenous population but gave business a free hand in exploiting biodiversity and natural resources in the disputed lands (Alvarez 2004: 94–95). The Chiapas situation is the most visible aspect of a broader set of social tensions in contemporary Mexico. In the neoliberal period there has been weak economic growth, greater inequality than formerly, financial crises, foreign domination, and more instability and insecurity (Rochlin 1997: 23). By the time the financial crisis of the mid-1990s occurred there were few social services remaining to cushion its impact. During the 1980s, social development spending had been slashed (Kurtz 2002: 304–306). The National Solidarity Program reinvigorated social policy in 1990, in the framework of the second generation of structural adjustment programs. This policy justified compensation for the adverse effects of this economic model, but in the confines of fiscal balance and repayment of external debt. The result was a higher concentration of income. The Peso Crisis affected every level of society, even the very rich. By 1998, the richest segment of the population gained financial ground, while economic participation of the very poor fell by 20 percent, to its lowest point in 20 years (Reveles and Terán 2001: 130). The privatization of the collective land tenure system (ejido) was a major change beginning in the 1992. So was dissolving government programs that provided farmers with cheap credit, subsidies, and guaranteed prices for their commodities. By permitting the rental or sale of farmland, many small-scale farmers sold their land in order to seek outside employment. This contributed to the migration of rural populations to urban centers in hopes of finding a secure source of income (MONCF 1998). National poverty-alleviation programmes, first PRONASOL and then PROGRESA, aimed to provide limited targeted support to those in extreme poverty, rather than to improve conditions for the society as a whole. They were based on income-support policies to the extreme poor but did not deal with economic contexts that cause poverty (MONCF 1998): the PROGRESA policies were based on ‘fashionable’ ideas of human capital and only focused on specific groups (Hogenboom 2003: 141). Participants charged that this policy of targeting resources was used for political-electoral ends, and failed to provide for the most basic needs of the poor. Furthermore, fiscal policies included removing subsidies on basic food items (such as milk and tortillas), as well as price increases

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for basic goods and services and new taxes on food and medicine. These caused additional hardship for low-income people. Women, children and the indigenous population have been those most negatively affected (MONCF 1998). In 2000, almost US$ 13.8 billion was paid out to public debt repayments, and US$ 4.1 billion for bank bail out packages. The combined amount was nearly three times that spent on social development in Mexico. When oil prices fell, social spending was one of the first government expenses cut. With each financial crisis since the 1980s (1983, 1985, 1986, 1995), social spending has been reduced. Only one-third of the employable adult population has secure, full-time employment with corresponding legal benefits. The remaining 26 million people are in temporary employment without access to social security benefits. A 1999 OECD report shows that productivity of Mexican workers increased by 3 percent from 1994 to 1998, but without corresponding salary increases (Reveles and Terán 2002: 131). Lack of consistency in economic policies created regional cleavages in Mexico. Infrastructural gaps undermined Mexico’s economic competitiveness and growth (Ros 2003: 229). General poverty in Mexico has increased, and wages have declined nationally, with real wages down significantly. The real minimum wage is down 60 percent since 1982, 23 percent under NAFTA. Sixty percent of the employed do not receive any of the benefits mandated by Mexican law. One-third of the economically active population is in the informal sector. The number of households living in poverty has grown 80 percent since 1984, with some 75 percent of Mexico’s people now below the poverty line (Wise and Gallagher 2002). Meanwhile money was diverted to repay the foreign debt. One estimate is that between 1980 and 2002 Mexico paid some $300 billion in interest and amortization payments on a consolidated debt that never exceeded $100 billion (Alvarez 2004: 102). Real minimum wage rates were dropping continuously for 20 years after 1977 and fell catastrophically by 71 percent in 1995 and by a further 70 percent in 1996 (Rochlin 1997: 27). A number of factors were involved in deteriorating labor conditions including trade liberalization (Gruber 2000: 125). The effects on organized labor were predictable – it lost strength relative to capital (see Rochlin 1997: 27–32) but arguably the effects on small and mediumsize business were also negative (Thacker 2000: 92). Neoliberalism had a negative impact on many sectors of society. In Canada, one clear impact of the shift to neoliberalism was government downsizing. By 2001–2002 federal program spending was

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11.3 percent of GDP, down from 19.4 percent in the early 1980s, and its lowest level since 1948–1949. Government employment fell from 21.25 of the labor force in 1990 to 17.0 in March 2003. Neoliberals in Canada, like those elsewhere, targeted Crown corporations and state regulatory activity (Laux 1991: 289–291). Governments privatized a significant range of Crown corporations. Under the Mulroney governments, and their successor Liberal governments in the 1990s, incrementalism and ‘stealth’ produced fundamental change in the social policy area. Common techniques included transforming universal into selective programs, tightening eligibility requirements and imposition of ceilings on program costs (see McBride 2005). Changes introduced in the 1995 federal budget permitted provincial experimentation in the design of assistance programs. The number of recipients across Canada declined by 43 percent between 1995 and 2003 (National Council of Welfare 2004: 82–83). Welfare Incomes published by the National Council of Welfare (see National Council of Welfare 2004) documents the impact on the most needy. In virtually every provincial jurisdiction, in virtually all welfare categories, real levels of benefit support declined from 1995 to 2003 (and, for that matter, between 1989 and 2003; see National Council of Welfare 2004: 36–41). Federal budget restraint provides an important part of the explanation for this deterioration. Moves to restore some of the funding cuts and repair some of the damage inflicted on social programs were made in the late 1990s. Nonetheless, real expenditures, as a percentage of GDP, remained substantially below those of the early 1990s. The election of a minority Conservative government in 2006 meant that this situation was likely to persist. The government’s approach to social policy had predictable results, including the growth of inequality (Yalnizyan 1998: 127). Always unequal, ownership of wealth became even more skewed. The richest 10 percent of the population increased its share of total wealth in Canada from 51.8 percent in 1984 to 55.7 percent in 1999 (Kerstetter 2002: 12; see also Morissette, Zhang and Drolet 2002). Income statistics show a similar trend. Statistics Canada data on family income found that after-tax income in 1998 had risen only slowly over the previous decade and exceeded, by only 1.7 percent, average after-tax income in the pre-recession peak year of 1989 (Statistics Canada 2000). Reduced spending on social support led to increased emphasis on ‘active’ measures that would enable individuals to enter or re-enter the labor market rather than remain on social assistance. Coverage provided

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by the employment insurance system declined sharply (Canadian Labour Congress 2003). In the United States, social policy illustrates the impact of the neoliberal model in the social assistance area. This consists of emphasis on market-based solutions that involve increasing commodification of labor; greater reliance on private initiative and personal initiative; and decreasing consideration for social rights (Van Voorhis 2003). The already residual US welfare state came under sustained rhetorical and actual attack after Ronald Reagan declared as one of his key objectives ‘rolling back the welfare state’ (Goodin et al. 1999: 62). The United States has become the primary laboratory for social policy as an instrument of labor flexibility. In this model, social policy aims at recommodification and enlarging the pool of low-waged labor. The American welfare model is individualistic, focused on work incentives, economically driven by the neoliberal-governing consensus, but is shaped also by strong moral sentiments derived from its neo-conservative political base among the fundamentalist religious right. It does not seek to ensure social protection or equality, but is aimed at nurturing economic competitiveness and fiscal imperatives on the one hand, and social control and moral discipline on the other. In 1996, President Bill Clinton accepted a policy agenda that was designed to decimate the post-war welfare state in the United States, removing the Keynesian objectives of ensuring social and economic rights, and replacing welfare policy with a universal policy program of self-sustaining economic independence (O’Connor 2002). Goodin et al. (1999: 63) highlight the significance of the change that this involves: ‘in the wake of the 1996 reforms, not even means-tested assistance will any longer be available for those with long-term needs. That constitutes a renunciation . . . of traditions of poor relief dating back to 1601 and beyond’. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), 1996, ended all direct federal involvement and responsibility in ensuring a minimum standard of living and protecting social entitlement, and replaced this traditional welfare model with a system in which time-limited assistance is supplied to citizens in exchange for work. The overarching rhetoric of the welfare reforms emphasized family values and the work ethic. In economic terms, the latter consists of the recommodifcation of a pool of labor that had previously been decommodified and making it available for low-end employment. The rhetoric of family values adopts a narrow vision of what constitutes a family and imposes a code of ethical behavior on social

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security recipients. This moral agenda is premised on a strictly conservative delineation of family and provides financial rewards to states that are able to discipline welfare clients’ behavior. Each year the federal government provides a ‘separate $100 million annual appropriation for bonuses to the five states that have the great success in reducing their out-of-wedlock birth rates, while also reducing their abortion rates’ (Congressional Digest 2002: 199). As each state now enjoys the flexibility to enact restrictive programs, the incentive for moral policing has grown exponentially. The second objective of Clinton’s welfare reform, instilling a work ethic among welfare recipients has rhetorically driven the aim of ending the culture of welfare dependency. This involved encouraging and ultimately requiring the transition from welfare to self-sustaining employment (some provision was made to assist disadvantaged families with the necessary resources to care for their children). Under Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), if welfare clients failed to participate in the workfare programs, their benefits were either reduced or terminated (exceptions were directed at sole parents with children under six who might be excused from the work requirement if they are unable to obtain childcare) (Congressional Digest 2002: 198). Instituting time limits transformed a public assistance program into a labor market program: when the poor exhaust time-limited public assistance benefits they become a labor market rather than a welfare problem. . . . Removing the federal responsibility for providing long-term cash assistance to the poor shifted the problem of poor support away from social welfare and into labor policy. However, the absence of sound federal labor policy results in a crippled minimum wage, a lack of guaranteed health care insurance, and few workplace protections. Consequently many of the poor occupying secondary labor market jobs face an even shakier economic foundation than under the tainted public policies of AFDC. (Karger 2003: 387) For the working poor, the government used a tax credit scheme in which low-income families and individuals received a direct cash payment through Earned Income Tax Credits. This means-tested program replaced child allowances and operated to decrease the taxes paid by the working poor while increasing annual income to levels above the poverty line. The system rewarded low-wage employers while punishing

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low-income workers who entered poorly paid dead-end jobs with few if any benefits. Low-wage employers were also rewarded by not being required to provide employees with a minimum number of hours, benefits or other employment perks. These employers were further subsidized by not being compelled to pay a living wage – the requisite salary to support a worker and their family (Karger 2003: 389). The various initiatives taken to decrease welfare rolls and increase labor participation were administratively successful. The various changes to the system produced a 63.2 percent decrease in the welfare rolls from 1996 to 2001 and an increase in labor participation rates (Rodgers 2003: 89–90).

Conclusion: An alternative world to win From the standpoint of society as a whole, neoliberalism has not been particularly successful economically in North America. This means that the material basis for its hegemony is potentially unstable. Further, it has quietly altered the constitutions of Canada and Mexico, diminished their national sovereignty, and thus these countries’ capacity for democratic choice. Contentious politics can therefore draw upon potentially powerful nationalist sentiments in framing their opposition to neoliberalism. Finally, neoliberal policies have undermined social solidarity and, in the name of flexibility, created economic insecurity and social fragmentation. These conditions create the potential for successful counter-hegemonic social forces to arise.

Acknowledgment I would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for funding under a Major Collaborative Research Initiative grant on globalism and its challengers (Primary Investigator: Gordon Laxer), and Lisa Clark and Garrett Virbalas for research assistance.

2 North American Politics after September 11: Security, Democracy and Sovereignty Julián Castro-Rea1

The world changed dramatically after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001. The manner in which governments and other political actors around the world have reacted to these events has had enormous repercussions in world politics. In this chapter, I will focus attention on the major political implications of the attacks on the United States and the North American continent. Arguably, North America can be understood as a single unit of analysis, rather than a simple collection of three separate countries – Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Indeed, implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) after 1994 not only formalized the ongoing integration of continental markets, investment, and production, it also consolidated and increased existing continental connections at every level of societal realities and created new ones. Moreover, from the moment Canada formally entered the negotiations leading to NAFTA, in February 1991, major political events in one country in the continent have implications for the other two (Castro Rea 1996). Therefore, it is increasingly necessary to incorporate into the analysis the numerous cross-border alliances different political actors have cemented over the past decade and a half, and the resulting continental contentious politics. While a number of the chapters in this collection are concerned with the transnational ties formed by popular actors, usually identified with the political left, this chapter examines the growing ties and coordinated action among elite actors and the right. It can be argued that the securitization of the North American agenda has dramatically affected the political opportunity structure facing contentious political movements, enhancing the prospects of elites 35

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to positively respond to the critiques raised by progressive actors to the current shape of North American integration. Stressing the interconnectedness and interdependence of the three countries of North America does not mean, however, that all governments or political actors influence continental dynamics the same way. On the contrary, profound disequilibria in terms of wealth, power, and influence persist among them and within them. After 15 years of accelerated economic integration, inequalities have only deepened, instead of diminishing as promised (Hansen-Kuhn and Hellinger 2003; Ayres 2004; Gereffi and Martínez 2004). Furthermore, country, regional interest, and class disparities act to tilt the balance of influence even more in favor of the most powerful actors, whether at diplomatic bargaining tables or in everyday interactions among economic and political stakeholders. Within this increasingly integrated yet uneven continental political context, what I call a ‘transnational right’ has developed in North America. In this chapter, I will argue that September 11 was seized by various members of this transnational North American right as a golden opportunity to consolidate and promote their respective agendas, which have converged into a coherent whole. They are doing so in issues ranging from putting security and defense at the top of public priorities to restricting mobility of people across borders, from enhancing government control over citizen dissent, protest, and organization to creating a business environment friendlier to large corporations, along with increased public spending to achieve these goals. In order to probe this thesis, I will provide an overview of the major political events and policy changes in North America since September 11, as a way of assessing their impacts on security, democracy – including human rights, civil liberties, and electoral politics – and sovereignty.

Making sense of North America’s transnational right I introduce here the term ‘North American transnational right’ to refer to a loose alliance, neither formal nor always visible, of conservative parties, conservative wings within more moderate political groups, non-governmental organizations, think tanks, writers and intellectuals, interest groups, business organizations, government agencies and bureaucracies active in law enforcement, surveillance and defense, both public and private, based on either Canada, Mexico, or the United States. In other words, this is a transnational network that includes social groups and diverse political actors whose common feature is being

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‘advocates of neo-liberalism’ (Ayres and Tarrow 2007); they directly benefit from the consolidation of the economic and political status quo and have therefore a vested interest in preserving it and limiting possibilities for change. Within North America, unconditional support for NAFTA, despite its glaring shortcomings, and its more recent securityrelated components, described below in this chapter, is a common endeavor of the transnational right. This transnational right does not include elements of the far right in the United States who retain traditional nationalist perspectives and reject the integrationist project (particularly evident in their opposition to migration reform in the United States). To be sure, this transnational right is not always consistent or self-aware. Borrowing from the classical Hegelian differentiation, this alliance is mostly a coalition by itself rather than for itself. However, awareness of commonality of purpose among its members and the advantages of supporting each other increase dramatically at critical junctures, when preservation of the conservative and neo-liberal status quo is at stake. It would be misleading to assume that all these groups work in perfect concert, or, worse, are engaged in a conspiracy to control North America. Components of this informal alliance are in fact so diverse and heterogeneous that quite often their only real link is shared support for conservative policies, including market deregulation, limited state intervention in economic and social issues, pro-business bias, emphasis on law and order, advocacy of strong police and military institutions, defense of the traditional family, and rejection of homosexuality, abortion, and alternative lifestyles. Although for analytical purposes we could draw distinctions between these disparate objectives, as either pertaining to economic, fiscal, social, or political conservative agendas, in reality these values are present simultaneously within the transnational North American right, reinforcing one another. As an illustration, consider the personal profiles of the three current executive leaders in North America, Harper, Calderón, and Bush: all three are deeply religious men who defend socially conservative agendas, while at the same time promoting strong law enforcement state apparatuses and advocating market solutions, such as trade liberalization and tax cuts. No single theoretical approach fully explains the nature of this North American transnational right and its political activism. It is partly a social movement, to the extent it involves voluntary grass-roots organizations that openly vie for the public’s attention over specific issues, on the basis of collective identity and shared values (Phillips 1996). It is

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also an expression of international civil society, because it reaches out across state borders to create agency networks focused on issues of their concern (Colás 2002). The transnational right is also partly an epistemic community, as think tanks and members of academia also contribute to support the alliance’s claims to superior scientific expertise over policy options (Haas 1992: 3). Finally, the transnational right is also a policy community because it includes political parties, business lobbies, and other assorted interest groups and government bureaucracies, working together on promoting specific policies (Pross 1992). The North American transnational right involves a range of political actors stretching from grass-roots organizations to the inner circles of governmental decision-making within the three North American states, cooperating with one another at different moments in time in the pursuit of a conservative agenda. This joint pursuit is truly a search for hegemony, understood as an expression of broadly based consent, manifested in the acceptance of ideas and supported by material resources and institutions. Search for hegemony is thus an ‘opinion-molding activity’, rather than one requiring brute force or dominance to impose one’s views (Bieler and Morton 2004). Furthermore, this ‘opinion-molding activity’ seeks to define a wider ‘common sense’ to which the public can comfortably adhere because it is sanctioned by governments and prestigious social actors alike. As Gramsci (2003) explains, these popular beliefs provide an ideological reinforcement for hegemonic material interests. Manufactured ‘common sense’ is perhaps the most important strategy the transnational right resorts to. While, as Dreiling and Silvaggio’s chapter in this book points out, there are other means to neutralize challenges to the status quo – such as restricting opportunities for autonomous organization, draining resources from opponents, cooptation, and so on – the pursuit of hegemony is crucial for enlisting the acquiescence and even the active support of large constituencies in favor of the conservative project. Hegemony of a leading class can be projected internationally. Once hegemony has been consolidated domestically, it may expand beyond a particular social order to move outward on a world scale. Neo-Gramscian scholars have identified elite-level alliances which promote the neoliberal ideal. According to Gill and Law (1989), key to the legitimization and maintenance of the hegemonic system are ‘elite patterns of interaction’, which occur between agencies (business people, politicians, bureaucrats, and members of international organizations), institutions (World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, World Bank),

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and even the media (Wall Street Journal, Economist, and so on). In these elite patterns of interaction a variety of actors and institutions are brought together under a common rubric of neo-liberalism to become the prevailing internationalized ‘common sense’ – the dominant logic, in fact – which seeks to subjugate or transform other moral and ideological perspectives. The transnational right did not appear overnight, nor is the result of an explicit, conscious, and concerted effort. It rather draws its strength from existing domestic interest groups with their own agendas, which over time converged over their goals, and eventually realized the advantages of working together across borders. Their activity either supported or was supported by partisan politics. In association with successful conservative parties they made their way to the centers of political decision in North America. The transnational right presently prevails over North America due to a sequential and mutually reinforcing combination of factors. First, the collapse of the Soviet bloc in the early 1990s discredited leftist movements and parties worldwide. Secondly, North American integration was defined from the outset mostly as a business endeavor, therefore unfolding exclusively within the parameters of market competitiveness. Systemic economic shocks during the last two decades of the twentieth century created a sense of emergency to which advocates of free markets were quick to respond with policy prescriptions. Fourth, since 2006, openly right-wing parties are in control of the federal governments across North America, something that had never before occurred on the continent.2 Finally, and decisively, the transnational right successfully established conservative values as ‘common sense’ to which any responsible polity must aspire. This chapter will show how the transnational right agenda was strongly reinforced by the post–September 11 political environment. The sense of emergency that the attacks promoted was capitalized by the conservative coalition to further entrench their axiological and policy preferences, over various domains of public life.

Impacts on security Within North America, the clearest and most immediate political impact of September 11 was felt at its borders. Borders in the continent have become over the centuries bulwarks of state authority, synonymous with state sovereignty over the respective territories. Trade liberalization heralded by NAFTA was supposed to diminish their importance as physical

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barriers as the three governments would actively work toward making trade increasingly fluid. However, this goal was abruptly contested after 11 September 2001. The importance of borders dramatically increased since then, because the US government saw them as weak spots from where further attacks could be launched (Andreas 2003: 9–11). From the US perspective, September 11 meant that security would from then on trump trade, and members of the transnational right from Mexico and Canada were forced to incorporate US-based security concerns into their proposals. As a consequence, the US government operated a drastic enhancement of border security. Immediately after the attacks, alert levels at all US borders were raised at their highest, with dramatic consequences for trade, just-in-time production, the flow of people and trans-border shopping. Within two months, sweeping legislation aimed at enhancing security was introduced, notably the USA PATRIOT Act in October 2001, followed by the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act (EBSVERA) in November 2001 and the Homeland Security Act in November 2002. Among other measures, the first act granted expanded surveillance powers to enforcement and security agencies, increased three-fold personnel along the border with Canada, enhanced technological monitoring capabilities, and created tougher requirements for entry of people into the United States. EBSVERA increased funding for monitoring agencies and created a system of cross-agency cooperation for information sharing, visa issuance, inspection, and admission of people.3 Further, the Homeland Security Act created a brand new Department of Homeland Security, effective 1 January 2003. The new department merged parts of 22 agencies and took 170,000 employees under its mandate. For fiscal year 2004 alone, it secured a US$30 billion budget. Additionally, a refined system of control for people entering the United States was set up with the US VISIT program, incorporating biometric measurements and database checks. Pressures to make sure Canadian and Mexican security standards would meet US requirements ensued (Jeffrey 2003; Klein 2003). Two separate bilateral agreements were adopted: the United States– Canada Smart Border Declaration of 12 December 2001 and the United States–Mexico Border Partnership Agreement of 22 March 2002. Although these agreements mostly resulted from US pressure, they also represent the implicit acknowledgement of the impossibility of effective unilateral action if the US territory is to be adequately protected. However, this interdependence would be managed not in a trilateral way, but

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following two parallel bilateral paths. This departure from trilateralism would, from then on, become the standard approach to security matters in North America. The Smart Border declaration is a detailed 30-point plan whereby Canada agrees to cooperate with the United States to achieve a more secure flow of people and goods, put a more secure infrastructure in place and to share information and coordinate enforcement. In 2002, Ottawa created the Border Infrastructure Fund, with a budget of CA$600 million over five years. It became the basis for new operational initiatives. The less ambitious United States–Mexico Border Partnership Agreement comprises in turn 22 items dealing with operative coordination at the border, infrastructure enhancement and protection, pre-cleared frequent travelers, and development of technological compatibility and training. Under US pressure, Canada and Mexico also adopted changes into their domestic security apparatuses. Canada implemented an Antiterrorism Plan, allocating CA$5 billion to enhance surveillance and border checks. More importantly, Canada adopted three major legislative changes: the Anti-terrorism Act (Bills C-36 and C-42), introduced in October 2001, the Public Safety Act of 2002, and a revised Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (Bill C-11), effective from June 2002. The combined effect of these new pieces of legislation is increased governmental capacity to gather information, scrutinize the flow of immigrants, supervise financial transactions and the like. Later on, in May 2004, a Public Safety Act was passed, allowing security officials to issue interim orders in emergency situations decided by themselves, to gather private information related to air passengers; and to share it with other agencies in either Canada or the United States. Additionally, mirroring the US example,4 in April 2004 a comprehensive national security policy was announced, for the first time ever in Canada (Canada 2004). The new policy created a permanent National Security Advisory Council, granting coordination powers to a newly created Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness. All new measures are funded with CA$690 million, additional to the CA$7.7 billion allocated to security-related issues after September 11. In Mexico, in the aftermath of the attacks, President Fox stated that his government would provide ‘total support’ to the United States. He ordered Mexico’s National Security Council to increase surveillance in airports and sensitive infrastructure, create new controls over migration, monitor large financial transactions, make new efforts at stopping arms smuggling, and promote cross-departmental and international

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exchange of information, especially with US agencies (Anonymous 2001). However, he could not make the Mexican Congress approve comprehensive anti-terrorist legislation. His attempts were resisted by opposition parties dominating Congress, echoed by a public opinion reluctant to increase security cooperation with the United States. Those changes were only possible six years later, when on 26 April 2007 Mexico’s Senate approved a package of legislative reforms allegedly aimed at combating terrorism (La Jornada 2007). In general, measures adopted in Canada in coordination with the United States to increase security were more specific and produced more concrete results than the ones taken in Mexico. The Mexico–United States agreement is more about political declarations and long-term goals. In contrast, the Canadian agreement is more operational, spelling out concrete procedures for integration of information and procedures. It is no wonder that progress reports of the Canadian agreement show more concrete results, even adding supplementary items to the original Smart Border commitments. Canadian actions were built on existing policies and programs of cooperation with the United States. For instance, Canada has allowed US authorities to establish migration and customs checks at the main Canadian points of entry long time before September 11. Scarcer resources on the Mexican side are only part of the difference. More importantly, Mexican authorities have traditionally been wary of a too intimate collaboration with their US counterparts. This is partly motivated not only by a perceived tendency of US agencies to act paternalistically, dictating standards and procedures, but also by the reluctance of the US government to incorporate Mexican bilateral concerns within the new policies. For instance, border agreements have notably failed to address the issues of Mexican migrants in the United States and bi-national border communities (Meyers 2003: 21–22), both groups deeply affected by the new realities in place after September 11. Whereas former President Fox would have preferred to provide as much support as possible, the opposition-dominated Congress was more cautious and felt alienated by the way new priorities were decided, if not imposed. On this, Congress mirrored public opinion. For that reason, most executive cooperation with the United States must be made hidden from public scrutiny. Within that context, more effective coordination has been achieved for control of cross-border movement of goods than of people. To varying degrees, then, the Canadian and Mexican governments yielded to US demands to beef up border security. Both governments

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were not so much motivated by the actual fear of being targeted by terrorist activities, but rather concerned by the consequences of being perceived as neglecting US priorities. The cost of enhanced surveillance at the border, however, is very high for the United States’ neighbors, both governments and business alike. For this reason, transnational business interests have been pushing for the creation of a fully integrated economic space in North America. Working in concert with similar interests in the United States, Canadian business associations and business-oriented think tanks identified with them – notably the Fraser and C. D. Howe Institutes – called for the adoption of common security standards that would allow for doing away with borders within North America in exchange for a common North American security perimeter. In fact, these proposals implicitly accept the adoption of US standards for dealing with security, including the integration of security apparatuses (as does Dobson 2002). Another policy area where renewed concerns for security had a noticeable impact was the movement of people, for either travel or migration purposes. Increased requirements were imposed on Mexican visitors to the United States, such as mandatory visas for flight connections. Similarly, privileges of Canadians visiting their Southern neighbor were restricted, as under the new Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative policy a passport is required for admission by land starting June 2008. Moreover, the US government insisted that its Mexican and Canadian counterparts adopt tougher controls over the admission of people into their territories, for either short or long periods. In Canada, under Bill C-11 new regulations were adopted to process applications and deal with permanent immigrants. The Mexican government has in turn implemented tougher controls at its Southern border, and restricted migration from other Latin American countries. The post–September 11 environment also led to important shifts in the defense policies of the North American partners. The United States created a unified military command to deal with security threats within the North American continent. Implemented since 1 October 2002, the ‘US Northern Command’ (NORTHCOM) encompasses an area of operations that includes the continental United States, Canada, Mexico, parts of the Caribbean and the waters 500 miles out in the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. This is the first time US defense has assigned the security of the North American continent to a regional Commander in Chief, thus acknowledging that the September 11 attacks made US territory a potential combat zone (Freedberg 2002).

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Perhaps the main distinction between Canadian and Mexican responses to September 11 lay in the area of military cooperation with the United States. The Mexican armed forces, traditionally reluctant to undertake such cooperation, shied away from any commitment to support the worldwide US military campaign against terror. In contrast, while Canada, under previous Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, refused to support the US war against Iraq, Canada actively participated in the offensive in Afghanistan. This support was partially due to the close military cooperation Canada has had with the United States, including Canada’s membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The organization considered that the attacks on the United States were also an attack on NATO members as a whole, and invoked Article 5 of the treaty committing all member countries to mobilize in self-defense. Canada has paid a high cost for its involvement in the war: since 2001, more than 13,500 Canadian soldiers have served in Afghanistan (CBC 2008a). By mid-2008, 2500 of them were deployed; between 2002 and July 2008, 87 Canadian soldiers had been killed (CBC 2008b); the military costs for the mission reached CA$2.6 billion until March 2007, or nearly CA$1.3 million per day of the mission. Creation of NORTHCOM was preceded by meetings with Canadian and Mexican civilian and military officials aimed at enlisting their support. These meetings provoked mixed reactions in the two countries, spanning from empathy to alarm among both officials and the public at large. In Canada, NORTHCOM was largely presented as an extension of military cooperation with the United States existing since 1940, specifically in the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). In Mexico, however, the initiative was groundbreaking, because that country has traditionally been a reluctant US partner on military issues, especially after World War II (Weissert 2002). The prospect of the US military increasing over-flights and satellite surveillance, if not the gradual take over of Mexico’s security systems, is of concern to Mexican military analysts, who consider either option would be a violation of Mexico’s sovereignty (Ross 2002: 2). This is not to say the Canadian government is fully in agreement with US plans. To some extent, cooperation paradoxically resulted from a concern of not being left outside security schemes that would involve Canada’s territory anyway. For that reason, despite the seamless integration of Canadian and US air defense systems, Canada retained the right to pull out from NORAD operations at any time. Moreover, Canadian military personnel follow orders coming from Ottawa, not Washington.

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The Canadian government expressed its preference to keep those basic rules in place for cooperation in the US Northern Command (Freedberg 2002). Indeed, Donald Rumsfeld, then US Secretary of Defense, indicated that NORTHCOM would mirror NORAD’s dual structure, whose commander would also head NORTHCOM (Blanchard 2002). In June 2005, Canada’s Department of National Defense announced the creation of the ‘Canada Command’ that ‘will be responsible for the conduct of all domestic operations – routine and contingency – and will be the national operational authority for the defense of Canada and North America’. That means the Canada Command will thenceforth be this country’s equivalent of NORTHCOM (CBC 2008d), in an apparent attempt at paralleling US initiatives without being engulfed by them. Regardless of some resistance and hesitation, the importance given to the security issue keeps growing in the North American agenda. On 23 March 2005 the three North American government leaders gathered in Waco, Texas, and issued the joint declaration named ‘Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America’ (SPP) (White House 2005). This declaration in fact launches a new agenda for cooperation in North America, where the imperative of security is entrenched and prevails over previous priorities like trade promotion and deregulation. The declaration calls for sweeping policy harmonization in areas like border management, emergency response, intelligence, movement of people and cargoes, bio-protection, energy, transportation, financial services, technology, food supply, and disease prevention. The agenda is openended; more items can be added as the agreement is ‘an ongoing process of cooperation’. It also confirms the departure from trilateralism initiated with the 2001–2002 border agreements, as it allows any two partners to move forward on specific issues even if the third one is not ready or not willing to follow. This new agreement has crucial implications for the future of North America. It means that security now permeates every sphere of cooperation, which implies the extension of the US ‘law and order’ security state to the whole continental area. It also depoliticizes complex issues, which are disembedded from the logic of politics and power and framed within the discourse of security and risk (Jayasuriya 2007). Moreover, civil society is also subject to the policy of contention, because it is perceived as the potential ‘enemy within’ that needs to be kept under close surveillance. This last feature has important implications for the institutions and values of liberal democracy.

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Impacts on democracy Law-making and enforcement, arguably intended to stop future terrorist activities, have also become areas where the North American continent is experiencing significant changes after September 11, with important political consequences. Canada, the United States, and, years later, Mexico, as previously discussed, passed legislation presumably aimed at making terrorist activities more difficult. Intended to be comprehensive, these laws cover a wide array of policy areas. Critics have therefore highlighted the ability of these laws to infringe upon lawful activities of common citizens. In the name of making those countries more secure, critics argue, citizens are forced to give up fundamental civil rights. The USA PATRIOT Act (adopted in October 2001) is no doubt the most intrusive piece of legislation. It expands governmental capacities for surveillance, detention of suspects, and limit judicial review. It also dramatically increased controls over immigration and gave extraordinary powers for the exclusion, detention, and deportation of terrorism suspects. Additionally, the new Department of Homeland Security has been granted extraordinary powers to enforce anti-terrorism measures, even bypassing Congress and the judiciary. In Canada, Bill C-36 and the Public Safety Act make it easier for law enforcement and intelligence agencies to engage in electronic surveillance, information sharing, and tracking and freezing financial transactions. Intelligence and enforcement agencies adopt very broad definitions of terrorism, understood as virtually any act intended to influence government policy by intimidation or coercion. US laws have stuck to this broad definition, spreading concern among political groups and government agencies over the consequences for legitimate protest. Indeed, this legislation lumps together people like peace activists, civil right lawyers, and government critics, as well as full political organizations, with suspects of terrorist activities. In Canada, Bill C-36 originally included a similar broad definition of terrorism. However, under heavy public criticism, Parliament modified that definition and limited terrorism to the intent of causing death, serious bodily harm, or risk to public safety for political aims (Anonymous 2002; Smith 2003: 150–153). Mexico’s legislative reforms, even if operated several years later, paradoxically reproduced the US-inspired expansive definition of terrorism (La Jornada 2007). In all three countries, the new legislation and policy changes have been met with skepticism. The extensive powers of surveillance granted

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to state agencies are also a threat to privacy (Bennett and French 2003). Freedom of association is also challenged to the extent that the state keeps an attentive eye on the activities of organization, fundraising, recruiting, and so on of dissident groups. Because of these concerns, the Canadian Bar Association suggested that the law should expire three years after its adoption. The suggestion was partially followed, as Parliament made the law expire after five years. Once this period elapsed, however, Harper’s Conservative government attempted to renew it for three more years, until 2010. Although most of the legislation was kept in place, opposition parties scrapped two components of the original law: authorization for police to arrest suspects without a warrant and detain them for three days without charges; and permission for judges to compel witnesses to testify in secret about past associations or pending acts. Witnesses could go to jail if they did not comply (CBC 2007, 2008c). In the United States, surveillance reaches political organizations and anti-war demonstrators, who are also targeted by anti-terrorism police squads (Lichtblau 2004). Some individuals are especially targeted, such as people of Middle-Eastern descent, even when they are US citizens (Khalema and Wannas-Jones 2003; Anonymous 2004). In this new security-obsessed environment, US intelligence agencies have attempted to access Mexican and Canadian government records, sometimes successfully. For instance, the information firm ChoicePoint5 provided the US Department of Justice with Mexico’s voter registration lists, along with drivers license and records of Mexico City’s vehicles, acquired through undisclosed means. Thanks to this purchase, the US government had access to personal, detailed records of up to 65 million Mexicans. The Canadian government is reluctant to share unlimited amounts of personal information with US authorities. Paradoxically, the US government does not seem to understand Canadian and Mexican concerns, partly because private access to government records is a common practice in that country and also because Washington feels those concerns are an excuse to limit cooperation with ‘the war on terror’. Nowadays, in North America ‘ . . . borders no longer guarantee privacy’ (Ross and Hendrix 2003). Violations of human rights allegedly justified by the ‘war on terror’ also include ‘torture outsourcing’ and abuses against prisoners of war. In order to avoid legal obstacles, some suspects of collaboration with terrorist organizations living in or even traveling through the United States are deported to countries where torture is a usual method for exacting information from prisoners; a practice officially called

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‘extraordinary rendition’. Even more disturbing is the fact that some Canadian government agencies have cooperated with their US counterparts for renditions, even involving their own citizens. Witness the infamous deportation of Canadian citizen Maher Arar to Syria, where he spent ten months in prison accused of terrorist links, frequently isolated and tortured (Mayer 2005). The US security apparatus operates a network of offshore prisons where abuses are common occurrence. The best known among them is the infamous Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba, where prisoners from Afghanistan and Iraq have been even denied the Prisoner of War (POW) status in order to circumvent their protection under the Geneva Convention. Again, POWs are kept outside US territory in order to duck legal liabilities and to keep them away from public and media scrutiny. The terrorist attacks had also an enormous impact over the ideological environment in North America. This is where their effects favoring the transnational right are more direct. In the United States, the Bush administration, despite an initial hesitant reaction to the attacks, soon adopted the ‘war on terror’ as its keystone policy. The war against terror became the articulating element of numerous policy initiatives and indeed the leitmotiv of the whole administration, giving legitimacy to a faltering administration, which had started on contested, polemical grounds due to the ambiguous circumstances of its election. However, after September 11 public opinion, led by the overwhelming majority of the media, endorsed Bush’s policies as if they were the best and only possible way of action to overcome a perceived sense of vulnerability. This way, September 11 helped consolidate a major ideological realignment within the United States, whereby extreme conservative positions became acceptable to a wider spectrum of people, not only among the right-wing but also among the general public (Micklethwait and Wooldridge 2004: 198–224). The impact was especially important on foreign policy matters (Van Appeldoom and De Graaff 2008), as we will discuss in the next section of this chapter. The successful boost in presidential popularity after September 11 explains why the Republicans made use of the war on terror as the main theme in the 2002–2004 mid-term and presidential elections. The strategy was successful in 2002, when the trauma of the attacks was still fresh in the memories of the voters. It was still effective in 2004, even if those elections also showed high levels of public opinion polarization over Bush’s policies. Nonetheless, Bush was re-elected, this time by a majority of US citizens, and the Republicans consolidated their control over Congress. This way, in the name of enhanced security, the majority of

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US voters overlooked the huge and constantly increasing human toll and financial costs their country is paying for the invasion of Iraq, the scandals over abuses committed by their soldiers against prisoners of war and even the shortcomings in the governmental decisions and actions before and after the attacks, as exposed by the commission set up to shed light on the September 11 events (United States National Commission 2004: 348–360). The consolidation of Republican dominance had effects throughout North America, and tilted the ideological balance to the right. It may have encouraged many Canadian voters to opt for the right-wing alternative represented by the Conservative party in the January 2006 elections. From his first few months as government leader, Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper displayed an unusually open attitude vis-à-vis cooperation with the United States, and even about following US policy lead within the Canadian government. If in the future the Conservative party is able to form a majority government, these trends will undoubtedly be reinforced. In Mexico, a right-wing party was elected to the federal government before September 11, starting in December 2000. Rapprochement with the Bush administration occurred from the start. A receptive executive thus governed over Mexico at the time of the attacks, ready to enhance the level of cooperation on every item suggested from Washington. Cooperation indeed was enhanced, mostly under the form of administrative agreements and away from Congress scrutiny and the public limelight. The Bush administration’s failure to achieve promised migration reform proposals eventually led to some distance between Fox and Bush. The Calderón government, however, has in many ways intensified the trend of close cooperation with the Republican government. Approval of the Regional Security Cooperation Initiative (RSCI), commonly known as ‘Mérida Initiative’, in June 2008 entrenched Mexico’s governmental cooperation with US security objectives. Agreed upon in March 2007, it consists of a US$1.4 billion security aid package provided to Mexico and Central America by the US government. Officially intended to help receiving countries increase their drug interdiction and intelligence capabilities, it is in fact a comprehensive plan to link even further Mexico’s armed forces, police, and intelligence services to the objectives of United States’ ‘war on terror’; broadly modeled after the infamous Plan Colombia (Castro-Rea 2007; Carlsen 2008a). The long protraction of the war in Iraq and rising economic problems in the United States have led to a dramatic reduction in Bush’s popularity levels, and led to the election of Democratic candidate Barack Obama in the November 2008 presidential elections. This ideological shift in the

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United States may isolate Bush’s allies in Canada and Mexico, and may reverse the ideological pendulum.

Impacts on sovereignty September 11 triggered a major overhaul of the foreign policy approach and doctrine predominant in the United States, with major impacts for the sovereignty of its North American neighbors. This new approach was spelled out in the National Security Strategy (NSS) released on 20 September 2002 (Bush 2002). In this document, the US government asserts its right to pre-empt the creation of threats to its national security by taking unilateral action wherever in the world those threats seem to be developing. Additionally, it announces that the United States will actively promote the spread of its democratic and free enterprise values throughout the world. The main thrust of NSS is clear: to declare the right, indeed the duty, of the United States to lead the world to a future of peace and prosperity. The achievement of this goal, according to the document, requires the preservation of US supremacy (Panitch 2003), by discouraging competition from any other potential global rival and by building unmatched military capabilities. The NSS is a detailed formulation of the so-called Bush foreign policy doctrine, implicitly announced soon after the September 11 attacks and encapsulated in the phrase ‘you are either with us or against us’. This doctrine sanctions pre-emptive action, when it comes to determining what the United States deems to be a threat in the making. The NSS also announces a protracted process of US military expansion all over the globe, and the conditioning of development assistance to specific US-defined guidelines of market-oriented economic policies (Burkeman and Walsh 2002). Radical as it is, this statement builds from a number of policy recommendations and decisions adopted over the previous decade. However, September 11 promoted a political environment wherein those recommendations became official policy. Several individuals advocating NSS-like policies reached influential positions in the first Bush administration: Dick Cheney became Vice-President; Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense; Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense; Lewis Libby, Cheney’s Chief of Staff. Elliot Abrams, former Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs under Ronald Reagan, was appointed Director for Democracy, Human Rights and International Operations.6 John Bolton became Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, Richard Perle, Chairman of the Defense Policy Board,

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among many others. September 11 made neo-conservative influence even stronger. Overnight, their radical view of the world and the way the United States should deal with it became acceptable, even necessary, within the government and among the public opinion. Micklethwait and Wooldridge (2004: 209–210) suggest that, thanks to September 11, neo-conservatives were able to articulate the fears and doubts of the whole US conservative movement around a simple and coherent paradigm, assorted with specific recommendations for action. Put in other words, neo-conservatives became a successful epistemic community leading the conservative movement, making their diagnosis and solutions appear as ‘common sense’. Clearly, the United States’ continental neighbors were not exempt from the application of the new foreign policy agenda. Canada and Mexico were pressured to endorse US endeavors in Afghanistan and Iraq. Here again, the Canadian and Mexican governments reacted differently. However, both countries adopted a similar critical position regarding the war against Iraq, supporting the United Nations Security Council’s reluctance to authorize the use of force and opposing US military designs (Cordon 2003; Kaplan 2003). Nonetheless, the impasse in the Security Council was never overcome. There was no new resolution voted over in the Council, and the United States unilaterally decided to attack Iraq on 21 March 2003, supported by a ‘coalition of the willing’. In sum, a review of post–September 11 foreign policy developments reveals the prevalence of extreme conservative positions in the United States, which in turn put pressure on the neighbors’ governments to endorse their actions. Although this pressure had mixed results, it clearly tilted the balance of foreign policy options to the right. In the process, the sovereignties of US neighbors were compromised. Under the transnational right’s influence, Canadian and Mexican cooperation with US global objectives has restricted their ability to freely decide how to handle the critical post–September 11 world environment.

Conclusion The events of 11 September 2001 had profound political impacts over North America. Conservatism was reinforced, consolidated, and entrenched in the United States, its standard-bearers being capable of articulating the response to the perceived emergency. Through calculated manipulation of people’s fears, conservative groups successfully modified several public policies to reflect their vision. The result is a new political environment where dissent with conservative views is

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seen with suspicion, where the state has the right to unilaterally limit civil rights, signaling a departure from the basic principles regulating relations between citizens and the state in liberal democracies. This rarefied political environment makes the activity of legitimate political dissenters an uphill battle. In turn, it plays in favor of the transnational right’s objectives of protecting the status quo by locking in policies that favor the coalition’s interests. Foreign policy was especially affected; as a conservative, unilateral vision asserting the right of the United States to preserve its dominant role in the world by all necessary means was accepted and became official policy. Mexico and Canada immediately felt the full impact of that conservative vision. The ideological landscape in both countries was colored by US hegemonic conservatism, resulting in the election or legitimization of governments eager to collaborate with the Bush administration. Its leadership ultimately led to the adoption of conservative border management, intelligence, defense, and domestic security policies North and South of the US borders. Under intense pressure, Ottawa and Mexico City largely accepted US premises and prescriptions, somewhat moderated by domestic political cultures and the political rapport de forces in each country. Bilateral relations with the United States were redefined to accommodate the new security agenda. In contrast, their own bilateral priorities were largely sidestepped. Moreover, the few attempts they made at influencing the foreign policy of their common neighbor turned out to be futile. The conservative vision consistently won the day, leaving little room for alternative projects to define the political dynamics in North America. Throughout the continent, specific political actors supported this conservative vision, and made use of it to promote the consolidation and expansion of the conservative and neo-liberal status quo. The North American right they collectively represent converged in promoting its interests and vision of how the three countries and their interaction are to be run. They were very influential over public policy. Most changes operated at that level are detrimental to the security, democracy, or sovereignty of the continent as a whole or each of its constituent countries, even if, paradoxically, public actions claim to be implemented on behalf of those very principles. In particular, the added cost of all programs forced upon the Canadian government after September 11 creates a paradoxical situation. As discussed in the chapter by McBride in this book, since 1995 Ottawa has adopted a policy of budgetary restraint aimed at eliminating the public deficit. Pursuing that objective, many government programs and

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agencies were either terminated or reduced in scope. Social programs such as education, health care, welfare, and employment insurance suffered the bulk of the cuts. Eventually this reduced governmental intervention brought balance to the books, and Ottawa turned deficits into profits. However, in the post–September 11 environment, expenses resulting from priorities defined in the United States and supported by the transnational right, such as enhanced border security, NORTHCOM and the conflict in Afghanistan, not to mention ballistic missile defense, are absorbing budget surpluses. Public savings, hard-won through compromising state intervention in support of the quality of life of many Canadians, are being employed to pay for items like increased border security or military expenditures, none of which is a priority for Canada, instead of being reinvested in education, health care, or communities or citizens in need of public support. For Mexico, in turn, the post–September 11 political environment means its foreign priorities are no longer given preferential attention in Washington. Redefinition of Mexico–United States relations on a new basis, addressing Mexico’s concerns, was an important component of the Fox government’s platform. September 11 meant such redefinition did not happen, thus perpetrating the sense of alienation many Mexicans feel regarding the way the US treats their country (Castañeda 2003). The Calderón administration has been unable to reverse this situation. Moreover, Mexico and Canada are being associated internationally with the aggressive unilateral drive in which the United States is presently engaged. US unilateralism, manifested mainly in open disregard for multilateral organizations and rules and massive military presence in the Middle East, has turned a formerly sympathetic international public opinion against that country (Nye 2004). Paradoxically, ‘the war on terror’ has made the world less secure for the United States, and it is less likely that in the future it will count on enthusiastic allies and supporters. Contamination by this decreasing international popularity is especially affecting Canada, active participant in the war in Afghanistan and the reconstruction of Iraq; but it also reaches Mexico, in particular in its relations with Latin American countries. The fact that influence from the transnational right is growing and is now predominant does not mean that it is uncontested; quite the opposite. As several chapters in this book show, transnational politics in North America is an active battleground where values, interests, and policy prescriptions clash with one another, with outcomes usually not easy to predict.

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Part II Contentious Politics: National and Cross-Border Variations

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3 Civil Society Organizations against Free Trade Agreements in North America Dorval Brunelle and Sylvie Dugas1

The analysis of civil society mobilization against free trade agreements (FTAs) in North America raises a number of empirical and theoretical concerns for two basic reasons. First, because the convergence of nationally based coalitions to oppose the Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) failed dismally on both occasions, a result which is not easy to reconcile with the prevailing optimistic view about the relevance of social mobilization. And secondly, because the emergence of armed struggle in Mexico, led by the Ejercito Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN – Zapatista Army of National Liberation),2 the day the agreement came into force, 1 January 1994, deeply affected the relevance and legitimacy of any further reformist opposition to NAFTA. In turn, this could explain the swiftness with which North American coalitions against NAFTA shifted their mobilizing capacity to embark on an antiFree Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) campaign, and the consequent disinterest toward any further mobilization against NAFTA. If anything can be credited either directly or indirectly to the coalitions against the CUSFTA, it is probably the exemption extended to cultural industries in article 2005 of the agreement, and if anything can be credited to the coalitions against the NAFTA, it is probably the addition of two side accords on labor and the environment imposed by President Clinton, and reluctantly accepted by the other partners. These limited victories are small consolations indeed when they are juxtaposed to the numerous innovations found in both agreements – especially when consideration is given to the fact that the NAFTA goes much further than the CUSFTA – and when one underlines that they also set 57

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the stage for the implementation of a new mode of consultation which basically benefited the business sectors to the detriment of all others, including parliamentarians. In a sense, as Stephen Clarkson and others have argued, NAFTA did indeed usher in a new form of governance for North America (Clarkson et al. 2004). Transnational mobilizations against the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) and the FTAA ended up defeating both projects (see Barlow and Clarke 2002 and Dugas 2006). In contrast, not only did mobilizations in North America fail to prevent the FTAs from going through, they did not even succeed in delaying or in scaling down the huge normative and institutional leap which separates CUSFTA from NAFTA. Today, all three NAFTA governments are still very much in favor of free trade, and neither 20 years of social opposition and mobilization, cross border or otherwise, nor a total of 13 changes of governments, or eight political alternations in the three countries involved have led to any significant reorientation. On the contrary, the proliferation of NAFTA type agreements signed by the three governments over the years with other partners all over the world and the launching of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP), in March of 2005, show all too well that the opposition to free trade has had little or no impact on the strategy of market liberalization at a macro-economic level. In order to evaluate the results of these social mobilizations against CUSFTA and NAFTA, we will start off by presenting the political and institutional context in which they emerged. Our analysis will show that social mobilizations against FTAs in North America had little influence on the content and substance of these agreements, especially when one sets out to compare the advantages extended to the corporate sector within the negotiation process. This analysis will seek to tie the dynamics of social movements to political processes (Giugni, McAdam and Tilly 1999) and to opportunity structures (Ayres 1998: 82). And if our subject is apparently close to the contribution of Dreiling and Silvaggio to this book, who devote attention to the formation of a transnational alliance against the free trade policies adopted by the governments of Canada, the United States and Mexico, our own focus is quite different, since we will explore the reasons why these movements were unsuccessful, which could go a long way toward explaining the swiftness with which they shifted their attention to the FTAA project. One of these reasons, as we have hinted earlier, could be ascribed to the emergence of the armed opposition to NAFTA carried out by the EZLN (the Zapatistas), which erupted onto

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the media and political scene on 1 January 1994, the very day NAFTA came into force. By resorting to armed insurrection and the manipulation of a militaristic political discourse Subcomandante Marcos and his troops managed to occupy the ideological high ground and, consequently, to overtake the softer forms of opposition (see Subcomandante Marcos 1997). This evolution is particularly revealing, since some authors view the current phase of citizen mobilization – which they see as starting with the intervention of the EZLN against NAFTA – as qualitatively different from the type of mobilizations that prevailed earlier. According to Benasayag and Sztulwark, in particular, the EZLN ushered in a new type of mobilization steeped in a ‘new radicalism’ (see Benasayag and Sztulwark 2002). But when we cast a closer look at this ‘new radicalism’, we see that it covered up the previous forms of public opposition to free trade in North America and, in this regard, it probably had a profound negative political impact on the extension of these mobilizations, even though the EZLN’s discourse itself, by ranging far and wide, played a significant role in bringing NAFTA to world attention. Nevertheless, the distinction provided by Benasayag and Sztulwark between a new and an old radicalism is interesting because it can explain the emergence of a profound rift within the opposition to free trade in North America which will oppose those civil society organizations (CSOs) that operated within a classic form of opposition along the lines of what these authors call ‘pure militancy against’, to movements whose radicalism would be characterized by ‘the development of multiple practices . . . and ways of life that, concretely, go beyond the individualism of the system’ (2002: 6). Obviously, the oppositions to free trade in North America analyzed in this chapter do not fall under the new radicalism of the EZLN type, which does not mean that they are purely oppositional either, since a number of CSOs chose to participate in consultation processes and make their own propositions and recommendations.3 This being said, these considerations should not lead us to overlook a dimension of these movements that represents an important part of their originality: the transnational dimension of their practices. This aspect affects both the content of internal initiatives – such as when an organization incorporates elements from the outside into its actions and initiatives at home – and external actions at the level of the political opportunity structure itself. To account for this evolution, two broad explanations have been provided. One suggests that this process is the result of an ever-widening

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citizen involvement fueled by an expanding international consciousness (Kriesberg 1997: 3–18), an optimistic hypothesis which not only dodges the issue of overextension and the effect of an expanded consciousness on involvement in home affairs, but also fails to tie the process of extension to deeper institutional transformations occurring on the home front. Another sees this as the result of a plurality of globalizations which contributes to the establishment of a ‘transnational public sphere’ (Guidry, Kennedy and Zald 2000: 5–30), a hypothesis which gives due consideration to framing and the transformations which have taken place within the structures of political opportunity. This hypothesis offers an interesting point of departure especially if one can tie the emergence of a transnational public sphere to two complementary processes: first, to the growing incapacity of the domestic public sphere to pry open the black box of free trade negotiations, and, secondly, to the extension of a transnational private – and secluded – sphere where politicians and businessmen make decisions on questions of trade that have a growing impact on the public interest. And the issue of free trade is as good as any to illustrate how this works, because the ever-expanding number of matters that are covered by trade agreements and the multiplication of trade negotiations themselves at the global, regional, or continental levels has led to an ever-increasing extension and multiplication of domains coming under the purview of commercial matters. Even if the resort to secrecy in trade negotiations could be defended in the past, its maintenance today is more and more unjustifiable. In what follows, we will turn first to social opposition to the CUSFTA (Section 1) and then the NAFTA (Section 2), before offering a glimpse into the advantages gained by the business sector (Section 3), advantages that have been carried even further into the SPP process (Conclusion).

Opposition to CUSFTA President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Brian Mulroney officially opened trade negotiations between Canada and the United States at the ‘Shamrock Summit’ in Quebec City, in March 1985. Following this event, a large debate on the pros and cons of free trade captured public attention up to the federal election of 1988. On one side, the adversaries of free trade included both the unions and the nationalists, all political parties of the opposition, including the official opposition, the Liberal Party of Canada, as well as most provincial political parties, with the notable exception of Alberta, and especially Quebec, where both

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the party in power – the Parti Libéral du Québec (PLQ – Liberal Party of Quebec) – and the opposition – the Parti Québécois (PQ) – were in favor of an FTA with the United States. On the other side, the promoters of an agreement included the Business Council on National Issues (BCNI), a host of multinational corporations (MNCs) – notably American Express – and most major think tanks operating in Canada – the Hudson Institute, the C. D. Howe Research Institute, the Conference Board, and the Fraser Institute – while others – the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the Association of Canadian Manufacturers, and the Conseil du Patronat du Québec – extended a lukewarm support at best (Brunelle and Deblock 1987: 34–35; McBride 2005: 51–58). Unions and other civil society organizations pointed to the threats that FTAs would pose to employment, labor legislation, and for Canadian social policy and culture at large. To shore up their claims, they invoked three predictions all drawn from the same source, the 1985 Report of the Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada, better known as the Macdonald Report. First, the commission predicted that ‘a liberalization of trade would especially be felt in our manufacturing sector’, and added, ‘This sector currently represents less than 20 percent of jobs in Canada. So, at worst, trade liberalization would only have a direct effect on a fifth of the Canadian workforce’ (369), a consequence that the opponents of Canada–United States free trade promptly denounced. Secondly, the Macdonald report also indicated that such an agreement could have negative effects ‘on regional economic development’, as well as on ‘cultural initiatives’. To confront these challenges, the commission proposed that such matters should be left out of the agreement, thus preserving federal as well as provincial governments sphere of authority (395). Finally, the report underlined that free trade ‘would force the provinces to abandon some of their prerogatives’ (401), a requirement that could have deep repercussions on the labor force as well as on social affairs since they both come under their jurisdiction. Furthermore, we should recall four events that had an impact on the public debate at the time and fed the prevailing concerns as to the eventual spill over effect of free trade into other domains and particularly, in social affairs. The first was the day-to-day monitoring of the progress of negotiations with its twists and turns which challenged social actors and unions. At one point, the media had reported on the misunderstandings between the American negotiator, Peter Murphy, and the Canadian negotiator, Simon Reisman, regarding the inclusion of social programs in the draft agreement. The American negotiators had demanded the

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inclusion of these programs, since they viewed them as non-tariff barriers, while the Canadian negotiator had to fend off public outcry about such an eventuality.4 A second event that occurred during negotiations was the offensive mounted by East Coast fishermen in the United States against the Canadian scheme of unemployment insurance which they denounced as an unfair trade practice since it the Canadian scheme provided premiums to seasonal workers while the US seasonal workers did not receive this benefit. They claimed that such a measure exerted a downward pressure on salaries in Canada in relation to US salaries and thus provided an unwarranted advantage to Canadian fleet owners.5 A third occurrence was the release of the results of a survey carried out in the summer of 1986 among MNC executives regarding the impact of free trade on government policies. According to the survey, the agreement would jeopardize existing government procurement policies, curtail provincial jurisdiction over their own affairs, and roll back Canadian environmental regulations. Finally, the last event was the Conservative government’s parallel strategy to restrict access to social programs, more specifically to old age pensions and family support.6 Canadian publisher Mel Hurtig summed up the dark mood prevailing in some quarters when he said, ‘What is on the table is Canada itself. We are not talking about sovereignty association with the US. What we are talking about is association sovereignty. We get the association and the United States gets the sovereignty.’ In the same spirit, Ed Finn from the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) declared, ‘The Tories [Mulroney’s Conservative Party] have given up on Canada and its people. They want to bring Canada into the American empire. Those of us who still have faith in this country, and in our ability to stay free and independent, must commit ourselves to this historic battle’ (both quotes are taken from Robinson 1990). In such a polarized context, with free trade being bandied about, it was not long before ‘disparate groups’ (Ayres 1998: 32) began emerging in a most haphazard way and to converge on two parallel tracks along a linguistic and national divide with an aggressive Canadian coalition on one track, and a lukewarm Quebec coalition on the other. The first coalition against the agreement, the Pro-Canada Network (PCN), was formed in 1987. It included the Canadian Labour Congress, environmentalists, anti-poverty organizations, nationalist groups, women’s organizations, including the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, peace groups, farmers, nurses, teachers, seniors, as well as churches. Arising from the initiative of diverse activists like John Trent

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and Tony Clarke from Bishops University, as well as Duncan Cameron from the University of Ottawa, it was built in the midst of the establishment by the Catholic church of a solidarity movement, the Social Solidarity Network, created to combat poverty and promote social equality in Canada. This vast network launched the greatest non-partisan campaign of public education in the country in order to prevent the adoption of the FTA. But since Quebec nationalists were offended by the use of the name ‘pro-Canada’ so soon after the referendum of 1980, the patriation of the Constitution in 1982 and the interminable debates that ensued in Quebec at least, the network changed its name to ‘Action Canada Network’ (ACN) in order to rally them to its cause. Thanks to its links with members of the US Congress, the coalition succeeded in denouncing the lack of transparency of the negotiation process and a campaign was promptly launched. This step permitted activists to acquire better analytical capacity and research on the issues at stake. The Canadian coalition also succeeded in sparking a large debate around and about the social and cultural consequences of free trade. On the other hand, the situation in Quebec was quite fuzzy. Social organizations and the union movement in particular, after having been deeply involved alongside the PQ during the referendum campaign of 1980, could not bring themselves to either join the PCN or its successor, the ACN, essentially because, with very few exceptions, the organizations making up these coalitions had never been remotely sympathetic to their cause. It would have been untenable on their part to simply ignore this and band together on this new issue, especially because it seemed ironic somehow that they should now be seen as defenders of Canada so soon after having failed at reforming its basic institutions or even, as some would have it, after having failed to break it apart. Furthermore, a distancing on their part was all the more legitimate in the circumstances since, looked at from Quebec at least, the extended social and public debate in which Canadian organizations, their militants, and intellectuals were engaged about the survival of the country and the fate of its basic institutions, was but a replication of a debate that had deeply divided Quebec society, pitting individuals, families, groups, and organizations one against another from the moment the referendum campaign was launched up to the episode of patriation almost three years later. Nevertheless, a Quebec coalition against free trade (Coalition Québécoise d’Opposition au Libre-Échange, or CQOL – Quebec Coalition of Opposition to Free Trade) was duly set up in 1986. It included

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the three largest labor unions – Centrale de l’Enseignement du Québec or CEQ (Teacher’s Union of Quebec), the Confederation des Syndicats Nationaux or CSN (Confederation of National Unions), and the Fédération des Travailleurs et Travailleuses du Québec or FTQ (Federation of Quebec Workers), as well as the farmers – the Union des Producteurs Agricoles, or UPA (Union of Agricultural Producers). However, despite the distribution of pamphlets on the economic impact of an FTA on the Quebec economy and society, and despite numerous interventions within the union movement itself, the coalition’s capacity to influence public debate was not comparable to that of its Canadian counterpart. This relative weakness can be attributed to three factors: first, to the craftiness of the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney which succeeded in tying together the recognition of Quebec as a ‘distinct society’ in the Canadian Constitution in the ultimately failed Meech Lake Accord of 1987 and the free trade issue;7 secondly, to the fact that both provincial parties, the PLQ and the PQ, had come out in favor of an FTA despite the fact that, in assuming such a position, the PLQ government of Robert Bourassa was breaking rank with the official opposition’s own stance on this matter in Ottawa, and, thirdly, to the historical lack of any convincing institutional connection and constituency building either between unions or between social organizations in Quebec and in Canada on issues of national importance. Of the three factors, the first is indeed the most important and should be given precedence over the other two basically because it was the double-pronged strategy put in place by the Progressive Conservative government soon after it came to power, in September of 1984, which carried the day. By reaching out to Quebec, the Mulroney government hoped to succeed where the Liberals of Trudeau had failed, and this strategy proved most rewarding in the election of 21 November 1988, which was basically fought on the issue of the CUSFTA. To understand why Quebec voters rallied around the Progressive Conservatives, securing the party a majority government, we should recall both their profound resentment toward the federal Liberals for having bungled repatriation of the constitution by ignoring Quebec’s dissent and their unreserved approval of the Meech Lake Accord of 1987 which was still in the process of ratification by the province at the time. This process extended to 1990, and it is only that year that the failure of ratification by Manitoba and Newfoundland would prove fatal to the agreement.8 In fact, conscious of the fact that good will toward constitutional negotiations could be used to prop up its trade policy, the federal government embarked on a strategy to enlist provincial support

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to free trade. This was the rationale behind the conference of provincial and federal economic ministers known as the Regina Economic Summit held in mid-February 1985, which dealt with investment, international trade, regional economic development, and manpower training. Moreover, the fact that the two main political parties in Quebec both supported free trade is another element that explains the profound differences between the behavior of social organizations in Quebec and in Canada on this issue. The PLQ’s position was basically reactive, tied to the nationalist economic policies implemented by successive federal Liberal governments since 1963. Both Robert Bourassa and René Lévesque blamed these policies for having reinforced the concentration of economic activity in Ontario and for having led to the relative decline of Quebec’s share within the Canadian economy. The most publicized illustration of this concentration is undoubtedly the importance of the shift of the headquarters of several large Canadian and US companies to Toronto during this period. As for Quebec exports to the US market, even if they had improved by 25 percent in 1984, those of the rest of the country had improved by 33 percent that year, with the result that Quebec’s share of Canadian exports to the United States did not stop dropping until it fell to 16 percent in 1985 (Black 1985). Furthermore, the PQ’s stand on free trade was also tied to the fact that the party had little inclination toward the Canadian system and was more inclined to deal directly with American interests, even though some analysts claimed that the PQ’s economic nationalism was better safeguarded by protectionism than free trade. As a result, the debate on and about free trade in Quebec was basically tied to what was best for the Quebec economy with very little – if any – consideration given to what might be the reasons why free trade was either promoted or vilified elsewhere in Canada. Similarly, the debate on free trade in the rest of Canada was less concerned about market access versus protectionism, and more about the effects of free trade on the Canadian society, its values, and culture. These differences in framing go a long way toward explaining why convergence between Quebec and Canadian organizations on this issue was impractical. They can also explain the extent of the anti-free trade movement in Canada, a movement that brought together trade union, social, cultural, and religious groups, while by contrast the first Quebec-based coalition had a very limited membership. In any case, the federal election of the fall of 1988 was won by the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney, largely due to the support

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of Quebec voters. This result had a devastating effect on the opponents of free trade in Canada. Shortly afterward, the coalitions suspended their activities. Moreover a few groups and unions actually formally opposed the subsequent round of negotiations with Mexico when it was announced, but refused to commit themselves further.

Opposition to NAFTA9 In the United States, the first two cycles of bilateral trade negotiations, with Israel in 1985 and with Canada in 1989, did not have much impact on civil society organizations. But by contrast, the opening of negotiations with Mexican authorities led to the formation of coalitions against NAFTA at both extremes of the political and ideological spectrum. On one side, Republican preacher Patrick Buchanan and the independent candidate to the presidency Ross Perot, both came out virulently against the project. On the other, the trade unions – especially the main union federation, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), and environmental movements – especially Sierra Club and Greenpeace – mounted a strong social opposition to NAFTA. The strategy adopted by these organizations played out in two phases. In January 1991, they launched two parallel networks, each with a specific mission. The first network, called the Citizens Trade Campaign (CTC), developed an essentially political strategy aimed at the legislators in Congress, in order to prevent the passage of the so-called ‘fast-track’ procedure requested by President Clinton in expectation of the forthcoming trade negotiations. The second network, called the Alliance for Responsible Trade (ART), was made up of a host of organizations, as well as think tanks based in Washington, the International Labor Rights Fund, Development Gap, and the Institute for Policy Studies. ART was to form a large social coalition against free trade with a double mandate: first, to develop alternative proposals for the Americas in order to raise environmental and labor norms in the region, and to promote equitable and sustainable development; and secondly, to establish links with similar coalitions in Canada and Mexico. The originality of the second dimension of this mandate should be emphasized because historically the AFL-CIO had been known to act as a staunch promoter of US government policy. During the Cold War, in particular, the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) had carried out the defense of so-called ‘moderate’ unions close to authoritarian or dictatorial regimes, against progressive or radical

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unions. In this regard, opposition to NAFTA represented an important shift on the part of US labor, which subsequently entered a phase of transnational collaboration with international labor unions and the other organizations opposed to their own governments on the issue of free trade. The AFL-CIO’s opposition to NAFTA can be explained by the direct link that analysts had established between the free trade and the loss of jobs. This loss would result from the relocation of industrial activities in Mexico by corporations seeking lower salaries and benefits compared to those extended to unionized workers in the United States. Also evoked were questions regarding child labor, illegal immigration, as well as social dumping. Furthermore, for tactical reasons, the labor movement sought alliances with another adversary of free trade, the environmental movement, even though relations between the two had historically been strained because trade unions and environmentalists were at odds regarding the detrimental effects of environmental protection on job creation (Wiarda 1994: 124–125). In Mexico, the background of the anti-free trade movement was quite different from those of both the United States and Canada, especially because of the political dominance exercised by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI – Institutional Revolutionary Party) not only over the political system but also over the country’s major economic and social organizations from 1929 to 2000. The country’s main corporatist social organizations, including the Confederacion de Trabajadores de México (CTM – Confederation of Mexican Workers), received state support in return for obligatory affiliation with the PRI. The official trade union movement was thus not in a position to sustain or defend an autonomous position regarding the government’s economic policy. The official labor movement’s lack of autonomy was displayed in its support for free trade at the dawn of the 1990s, despite the fact that Mexican authorities had systematically adopted protectionist policies throughout preceding decades. Moreover, the political realignment carried out by Presidents de la Madrid and Salinas de Gortari, the former at the end of his mandate and the other at the beginning of his, rested on an unprecedented rapprochement with the United States.10 The most striking phenomenon in the Mexican scene in the 1980s is the swiftness of the shift in public support for protectionism to all-out liberalism, thereby reinforcing the legitimacy of opening up bilateral commercial negotiations with the United States (Villarreal 1986; Loaeza 1994). This shift is attributable in part to the effectiveness of the PRI

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and its propaganda instruments within civil society, but it was also due to the fact that an important segment of public opinion saw a trade deal with the United States as an opportunity to loosen the grip that the PRI had maintained over Mexican society and to expand democracy at home. These factors explain why most CSOs, instead of openly rejecting economic integration within North America, chose instead to propose alternatives to the official project. In 1991, a coalition of independent trade unions, the Red Mexicana de Acción Frente al Libre Comercio (RMALC – Mexican Action Network on Free Trade) was established, a coalition made up of trade unions, human rights groups, environmentalists, peasant, and indigenous groups, as well as academics. As discussed by Marie-Josée Massicotte in her contribution to this book, the RMALC had the responsibility of promoting opposition to NAFTA and brainstorming on an alternative project to free trade which would integrate the demands coming out of member organizations. RMALC’s strategy developed in two phases, during and after the official negotiations. Between 1991 – the opening of the negotiations – and 1994 – the coming into effect of the agreement – RMALC argued that the free trade negotiations should be opened to public debate, and that civil society organizations should participate in this debate. During 1991–1992, RMALC launched a series of trinational reunions, rallying opponents of NAFTA in order to prepare a joint trinational strategy. An informal but effective trinational concentration of national coalitions was also developed during the negotiation of the parallel accords on labor and the environment, as well as during the ratification procedures for the agreement, in 1993. Nevertheless, once the agreement came into force, on 1 January 1994, RMALC concentrated its energies on the analysis of NAFTA’s impact on the national economy, in order to feed the discussions around the proposal of an alternative agreement that would effectively promote a sustainable and just development (see Arroyo Picard et al. 1997). The RMALC also enlarged its horizons by mobilizing around Mexico’s entry into the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the WTO, and the FTAA. Finally, shortly after Canada became partner to the trade negotiations in progress between the United States and Mexico, in the winter of 1991, trade unions, environmental groups, religious, international development, and human rights organizations formed a coalition against NAFTA – Common Frontiers (www.commonfrontiers.ca/aboutus.html) – within which the voice of the Canadian Labour Congress was quite predominant for a while in the definition of strategies and policies.11 The first of a series of transnational actions took the form of a small

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Canada–Mexico solidarity project launched by a group of trade unionists and members of international development NGOs in Toronto. Quebec organizations followed suit and a Coalition Québécoise sur les Négociations Trilatérales (CQNT – Quebec Coalition on Trilateral Negotiations) was set up. This coalition changed its name to Reseau Québécois sur l’Intégration Continentale, (RQIC – Quebec Network on Continental Integration), in November of 1995, when it decided to concentrate its energies on the mobilizations against the FTAA project launched at the first Summit of the Americas, held in Miami the previous year, in December of 1994. This shift in framing had one positive effect since coalitions from both Canada and Quebec would henceforth work more closely in mobilizing against the FTAA, and on the organization of the first People’s Summit of the Americas, held in Santiago de Chile, in April 1998. This summit was convened by the Hemispheric Social Alliance (HSA), an inter-American coalition made up of national coalitions against free trade all over the Americas, and held in the wake of the second Summit of the heads of state and governments of the Americas, which also took place in Santiago de Chile. Later, the coalitions from Quebec and Canada would both be responsible for the organization of the second Peoples’ Summit, held in Quebec City, in April 2001, immediately before the third Summit of the Americas.

Business involvement in trade negotiations While social mobilization had little impact and little say on the final content of both the CUSFTA and the NAFTA, business organizations and think tanks did play a major role and made important contributions to the agreements, even though the nature and extent of such contributions is difficult to establish (see McQuaig 1991). But, in retrospect, the creation of the Americas Business Forum (ABF) in 1994 and its promotion to full-fledged consultant status at the first trade ministers meeting in Denver, in June 1995, can shed some light on this issue. In a document released at its fifth meeting held in Toronto, in November 1999, the ABF had this to say about its role in the FTAA negotiations: ‘many of the recommendations proposed by participants in the San José Forum – of March, 1998 – are reflected in the mandates of the FTAA negotiating teams, and in the Plan of Action issued by the Summit of the Americas in 1998’ (ABF-Canada 1999). Thus, these stakeholders had a direct impact on the end use of their recommendations both on the official negotiations and eventually on the terms and provisions of the agreement itself.

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By contrast, the status of CSOs as ‘stakeholders’ is at best undefined with the result that their own recommendations are given an altogether different treatment. They are either ignored pure and simple or their demands are simply endogenized or cannibalized, being merely integrated into preambles of declarations and action plans which have no legal impact whatsoever. This contrast between the consultative status of the ABF and that of CSOs can best be analyzed by resorting to the analytical grid proposed by Diego Carrasco of the Chilean Plataforma Continental de Derechos Humanos: The status of civil society in treaties can take different forms. It may be that of observandi or observers, such as the one we have before the assemblies of the United Nations. Or it may be as consultandi or concurrendi, when the assemblies or bodies allow the civil society organizations to voice their opinion or be part of an agreement of some kind. Thirdly, there is that of proponendi, when the organizations are invited to propose specific clauses in treaties, such as the well-known labor clauses, democratic clauses or, as in the case of some treaties in Europe, to sit on administrative committees comprising civil society and the states. Lastly, there is the status as resolutio, the highest level, where civil society may appoint a representative who does not have decision-making powers, but may settle disputes that are regulated by a treaty. (Carrasco 2000) Even though there was no equivalent to the ABF at the North American level at the time of the CUSFTA and the NAFTA negotiations, there nonetheless remains the fact that consultations with business circles were conducted at the time, that these were subsequently formalized during the FTAA negotiations, and have since been integrated into the ongoing ‘deep integration’ process formalized by the SPP of March 2005, as discussed in the introduction of this collection by Ayres and Macdonald. These confer to the business sector a status equivalent to that of proponent (proponendi), the second highest in importance after the capacity to act in a dispute resolution mechanism (resolutio), while the CSOs must at best be satisfied with the status of observer (observandi), the weakest of the four. Such a tight relationship between business and governments was duly formalized under the SPP process which relies heavily on the recommendations coming out

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of the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC) made up of 30 representatives of multinationals, ten per country. On the other hand, this type of direct collaboration between governments and business organizations increases the concentration of political power in the hands of executive powers to the detriment of the legislatures for two reasons. First, because Parliaments, and not Cabinets, are the institutions appointed to act as public arbitrators of collective as opposed to particular interests, and, secondly, because members of Cabinets are only accountable to Parliaments, not to businesses (Brunelle 2007). Consequently, when one looks at these issues from the CSO perspective, the question arises as to whether it would not be more efficient to do the same, and to address members of Cabinets directly instead of Parliaments, since governments have gained total command over the negotiation process, including consultations, which in other circumstances should fall within the purview of Parliaments. In this regard, both the extension of the political activities of MNCs, on the one hand, and the behavior of governments during negotiations, on the other, induce an important democratic deficit, not only because of the type of control private actors have secured over the negotiation process itself, but also because the scope and ultimate result of this collusion is not open to the scrutiny of parliamentarians. Furthermore, this evolution has put CSOs in an awkward position, not knowing which way to turn: either they stick to the old way of doing things and submit to parliamentary commissions and other such initiatives set up by Parliaments at the risk of having little or no impact on the negotiating process itself or they strive to gain ascendancy in the eyes of Cabinet, at the risk of gaining a formal status without any real influence on the outcome of negotiations.

Conclusion Since NAFTA came into effect, we have witnessed a succession of three shifts among opponents to a trade deal for North America. First, the eruption of the EZLN on the world stage induced a marked radicalization at the fringes, but confirmed the others in their propositional stance that had, and still has, little impact on either the ongoing process of economic integration or on the terms of an oncoming security-led ‘deep integration’. The second shift is tied to the adoption of the two parallel agreements which have led the organizations involved – the trade union movement and the environmental movement – to divert some energies to the mechanisms created by these agreements and to forsake

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full-fledged mobilization against the NAFTA. The third and last shift has to do with framing and the opposition to the FTAA after the first Summit of the Americas convened by President Clinton in Miami, in December 1994. This has prompted these two movements, as well as other CSOs, to place the struggle against NAFTA on the backburner and to get involved in mobilizing against the FTAA with other coalitions all through the Americas. But this benign neglect has had dire consequences because, in the meantime, the three North American partners were quickly moving toward deep integration (Campbell 2003; Grinspun 2007), a strategy that took on a new meaning after 9/11. And since then, few organizations in either country seem capable of mobilizing on this issue even though a host of studies have shown that continental integration has been detrimental to citizens and workers in all three. According to the AFL-CIO, some 766,000 jobs were lost from 1994 to 2001 in the United States to NAFTA. In Canada, a surge in imports has resulted in the loss of 276,000 jobs between 1989 and 1997, according to a study carried out by researchers from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the Economic Policy Institute and the Colegio de Mexico (Scott, Salas and Campbell 2001). In Mexico, more than 1.8 million people have lost their jobs since 1994, according to a study conducted by Arroyo Picard (1997: 52–53). Moreover, NAFTA is faulted for the growing economic inequality, the weakening of labor bargaining power, as well for the decline in the living standards of whole sectors of the population. Nevertheless, it remains to be seen whether the evolution of the economic and political context will contribute to a remobilization of social forces against NAFTA in North America. There are some indications that this could happen. For instance, the ravages wrought by imports from the United States in the agricultural sector in Mexico have led to the creation of coalitions which have organized huge demonstrations over the years both against NAFTA and against the ongoing negotiations under Chapter 7 on agriculture. After several highly visible actions including the blockade of the capital city, on 30 January 2003, the Mexican government set up eight dialogue tables on agrarian questions. At the time, both in the United States and in Canada, political campaigning in 2003 and 2004 led to brief but significant openings, such as when Democratic candidate, John Kerry, agreed to review all FTAs, including NAFTA, during a period of 120 days after his election as president, and as when, following the elections of 28 June 2004, the minority government of Paul Martin was expected to acquiesce to a proposal coming from opposition parties to set up a public citizen evaluation of NAFTA.

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Of course, the return to power of President George W. Bush in January 2004, the election of a Conservative minority government in May 2006 in Canada, as well as the declaration of victory by Felipe Calderón from the center-right PAN in the Mexican elections of July 2006, put an end to this discussion. In the meantime, the signature of the SPP, on 23 March 2005 (http://pm.gc.ca/fra/news.asp?id=443), ushered in a new phase in the process of deep integration under way in North America, but for the time being at least, and considering their past experience in their failed mobilizations against the CUSFTA as well as against the NAFTA, CSOs are particularly ill-equipped to face up to this challenge, as the modest mobilization against the third Security and Prosperity Partnership Summit in Montebello, Quebec, 22 August 2007, showed all too well. Finally, it remains to be seen if, following the election of Barak Obama as the 44th president of the United States, November 4th, 2008, the file on NAFTA will be reopened as was promised on a number of occasions during his presidential campaign, thereby providing social movements with an opportunity to vent once more their opposition to the deal, or if, as is more likely, it will be laid dormant owing to the pressing and urgent nature of a host of other issues.

4 Paradoxes of a Transnational Civil Society in a Neoliberal World: The Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras∗ Joe Bandy

Our current moment of contention over globalization is only the latest phase of conflict between an expansionist model of liberal capitalism and resistance movements. In today’s neoliberal moment, a variety of movements are articulating grievances against polarizing inequalities, unaccountable corporate power, and declining social and environmental health. As states limit their redistributive and regulatory functions, these movements are coalescing into cross-border networks (Keck and Sikkink 1998; Guidry, Kennedy and Zald 2000; Smith and Johnston 2002a). In the process of sharing frameworks of grievance and action, these movements are shaping transnational civil societies,1 public spaces that span geographic, cultural, and political borders (Basch, Glick Schiller and Szanton Blanc 1994: 7), and are relatively autonomous from governments and market actors (Alvarez, Dagnino and Escobar 1998: 16–17; Florini 2000). While transnational civil societies vary, those challenging neoliberalism typically offer a counter-hegemonic globalization, or a ‘globalization from below’ (Falk 1998; Brecher, Costello and Smith 2000). But can the marginalized of the world unite to realize this vision? As Mustapha Kamal Pasha and David L. Blaney argue, ‘the democratic possibilities of transnational actors and networks . . . must be judged . . . in relation to specific institutions, groups, and networks, and specific problems, activities, and contexts’ (1998: 434). This research discusses one endeavor for transnational civil society, the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras (henceforth CJM), and the many paradoxes it faces as it struggles to protect labor rights for the 1,223,180 workers 74

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in Mexico’s export processing factories, or maquiladoras (colloquially, maquilas) (INEGI 2006). Organizationally, the CJM is a transnational movement network, which, borrowing from Sidney Tarrow (2001: 11) and Jonathan Fox (2000:7), this research defines as a collaboration of movement organizations in at least two countries that exchange information, provide mutual support, share a partially organized social base, and engage in joint strategic campaigns. Since 1989, the CJM has brought together 179 religious, labor, women’s and community organizations from Mexico, the United States, and Canada, making it one of the largest and most influential transnational movement networks in the Americas. In analyzing the CJM, this research began with one question: What are the possibilities and problems of constructing a transnational civil society in the era of neoliberalism? In what follows, I will argue that there is one overarching paradox that penetrates much of the CJM’s efforts, one that reveals broader contradictions of our world system within which endeavors for transnational civil society must struggle. Transnational civil society, like its national predecessors, is both enabled and constrained by liberal capitalist expansion. On the one hand, economic liberalism has fostered democratic public spheres by creating mass urban publics, championing liberal freedoms, promoting representative states, and sparking citizen’s movements. On the other, liberal capitalism has contributed to vast power inequities, political corruption, cultures of competition, and social conflicts of almost infinite variety and scope. These, in turn, have fractured civil society and constrained democratization. Similarly today, globalizing neoliberalism has provided the many conditions for cross-border alliances among workers’ movements, yet expanding inequities, not to mention the repressive counter-movements of capital itself, have constrained and fragmented transnational civil society. One consequence of this paradox is a persistent tension in the CJM, as in most social movement networks, between radical and reformist visions for social change. From the beginnings of modern capitalism in Western Europe, public figures have touted ‘civil society’ both as a means of perfecting political-economic liberalization and as a social force to resist it (Trentmann 2000: 5–6; Skidmore 2001: 53–56). As Antonio Gramsci claimed, civil society ‘is the sphere in which a dominant social group organizes consent and hegemony. It is also the sphere where the subordinate social groups may organize their opposition and construct an alternative hegemony – counter-hegemony’ (cited in Amoore et al. 2000: 23). Today, some argue that transnational

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civil societies reproduce more than remedy the legacies of violence and inequality in our capitalist world system (Alvarez, Dagnino and Escobar 1998: 17), and are only vehicles by which Western non-governmental organizations (NGOs) impose their liberal vision of politics and civility onto others (Trentmann 2000: 4–6). At other moments, transnational civil societies have created cultures of solidarity that help to align working peoples’ critiques of global political-economic processes and build the social capital necessary for movement campaigns of broad scope. Thus, some have suggested that transnational civil society should not be underestimated in its creation of a ‘new imagined community’ (Ribeiro 1998) of ‘cosmopolitan citizens’ (Norris 2000: 158–161) who are fostering a global public and reshaping global society. I will argue that the CJM paradoxically represents an effort at transnational civil society that both reinforces and disrupts the circuits of power that define our neoliberal order. This research took place between 1996 and 2002 and is drawn from three data sources: interviews, participant observation, and movement documents. First, I conducted 30 extended interviews with CJM staff, board members, and activist affiliates. The sample came from CJM member lists and conference participants. Interviews were between one and three hours, were semi-structured, and occurred in spaces convenient to interviewees. All interviews were taped and transcribed, and all translations from Spanish are the author’s. Second, the research involved participant observation in five of the CJM’s annual conferences, as well as in five worker/activist exchanges sponsored by the CJM and member organizations, including the Support Committee for Maquiladora Workers, Casa de la Mujer/Grupo Factor X (Women’s House/Factor X Group), the Centro de Información para Trabajadores y Trabajadoras Asociación Civil (The Worker’s Information Center), and the Centro Estudios y Taller Laboral Asociación Civil (Center for Labor Studies). These took place in Tijuana, Ciudad Júarez, Matamoros, and Torreon. Lastly, reports and newsletters of the CJM and its affiliates have been invaluable. Below, the names of organizations and individuals are absent to protect anonymity, except when disclosure was permitted or already public.

A brief history of the coalition for justice in the maquiladoras In the maquilas the struggle has been planted with the seeds of our pain, the anguish and desperation of workers. . . . [O]ur aspirations,

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as workers, are the same, a dignified life and jobs with justice where none of our brothers and sisters would have to lose their jobs, or exist under exploitation. Together, we will defend and fight for what belongs to us: democracy and social justice. . . . [Maquila workers] have proven to be more than mere robots of production, and with the same hands used in the assembly lines they continue to clamor for justice and build ties of solidarity. We are maturing and growing, overcoming our limitations, and strengthening our links with our working brothers and sisters of this continent. . . . The workers know this fight is long but they will not give up because they know they are not alone and the solidarity from all CJM members will not only give them strength to resist, but to advance and triumph in our goals and objectives. . . . In our hands, we have the power of determination and the firmness to build a new chapter of history. (Martha Ojeda in CJM 1999a) The CJM is a tri-national coalition of Mexican, Canadian, and US organizations that has its origins in the late 1980s, a period of rapid economic restructuring in North America due in part to the development of export-processing in Mexico and deindustrialization in the United States. With the growth in foreign direct investment, particularly in automobile, textile, and garment manufacturing, US and Canadian workers feared job loss and economic dislocation, while Mexican workers reported mounting labor abuses. Although conditions vary, maquila workers continue to cite wages below subsistence levels, poor health/safety equipment or training, injuries due to overwork and speedups, toxic releases, pregnancy testing and firings of expectant mothers, as well as sexual harassment and assaults (Sklair 1989: 170; Tiano 1994; Human Rights Watch 1996; Peña 1997; Safa 1998; Carrillo and Kopinak 1999; Kelly 1999; Kourous 1999; Kamel and Hoffman 1999; Hathaway 2000; USDOL 2008). Additionally, when workers have organized, corporate and state institutions have opposed them, especially government-supported unions that have initiated anti-union campaigns involving mass firings, libel, intimidation, spying, sexual threats, protection contracts, union election-rigging, physical coercion (Quintero Ramírez 1997; Tong 1998; Bouzas, Alfonso and Riveros 2001; De la Cueva 2001; USDOL 2008), and imprisonment (Hernández 1996; Tong 1998). Beginning in 1982, the Texas Coalition for Responsible Investment (TCRI), the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) began to investigate workers’ complaints. Rooted in transnational models of human rights

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activism, these US-based groups began to organize with Mexican citizens. In 1989, after a cross-border conference entitled Problemas sin Fronteras, the CJM was born (CJM 1999b: 1). The CJM became, simultaneously, a coalition of organizational members working in common, an informal network of non-member activists, a hierarchical organization with a representative structure and staff, and a forum for dialogue and debate.2 Organizationally, the CJM was based in San Antonio with a three-person staff, and an Executive Board with representatives from the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), the AFSC, the ICCR; and community organizations such as the Comité Fronterizo de Obreras (CFO – Border Committee of Workers). Its members, currently 179 organizations, constitute a General Assembly with ultimate decision-making authority. In the early 1990s, the CJM’s strategies were focused on a repertoire of actions derived from the religious human rights movements that shaped it, including public education via reports, shareholder resolutions, public letter writing campaigns to corporate and state officials, labor and environmental litigation against US corporations, and the promotion of a ‘standard of conduct’ that would ensure labor rights and environmental health (CJM 1993a, 1993b, 1994: 4). Over time, strategies changed. In 1994, after the North America Free Trade Agreement’s (NAFTA) institutions presented new opportunities, and after greater involvement of labor unions, CJM activists sought justice through petitions to NAFTA’s National Administrative Offices (NAO) citing violations of the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation. By 2008, the NAO (now renamed the Division of Trade Agreement Administration and Technical Cooperation, or TAATC) heard 29 complaints, and all of the 14 filed in the United States against maquilas included CJM affiliates as petitioners (USDOL 2008). In eight of these, the NAO/TAATC recommended ministerial consultations due to violations of labor law, health/safety codes, and gender anti-discrimination laws. However, since 2000, as Jonathan Graubart notes in Chapter 9 of this book, labor organizations, including those influencing the CJM, have focused increasingly on organizing workers into independent unions, so as to achieve labor rights through collective bargaining. To date, the CJM has focused its members in over 30 corporate campaigns. The most intensive and protracted ones have been against Stepan Chemical, Química Fluor/DuPont, Sony/Magnéticos de México, ALCOA, CustomTrim/Breed, Han Young/Hyundai, and Duro/Hallmark. In these campaigns, neither the CJM nor any other organization has had great success in reforming corporate behavior, much less maquila

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labor relations or trade policy. Litigation has been protracted, resource intensive, and has yielded little legal precedent or regulatory oversight. The NAO/TAATC, despite favorable rulings, has limited enforcement powers, and unionization strategies typically have encountered severe restrictions by corporate and state counter-movements. However, some practical achievements are worth noting. The CJM and its member organizations have helped to mobilize directly an estimated 20,000 workers, and indirectly, potentially many more. In doing so, it has educated unorganized workers, particularly women, about their legal rights and economic conditions, and it has given them opportunities to participate more fully in civil society. At the level of corporate reform, the CJM and its members have gained precedent-setting NAO/TAATC rulings against companies including Sony and Dana. This, arguably, has helped to limit repressive actions by corporate and government officials, as occurred when Sony halted mass firings or when Han Young temporarily allowed the certification of an independent union (CJM 1999b: 1–8). Further, CJM-supported litigation has yielded settlements that, however small, have ensured toxic cleanup (Stepan Chemical, GM), health/safety improvements (Fabrionics, Zenith, ALCOA), severance or profit-sharing payments (Ford, GM-Delco, Lear, Ararat, Custom-Trim), wage increases (ALCOA), the re-hiring of fired activists (GE), or at least financial payment for damages (American United Global, Mallory Capacitator). The CJM also assisted members organizing two independent maquila unions that set precedent for receiving official government certification. One was organized at the Han Young maquila in Tijuana only to be disbanded when the company divested from Mexico (Tong 1998); the other at the Duro maquila in Rio Bravo is still struggling against corporate managers and official unions who have used violence, firings, and political corruption to block contract negotiations (Labor Notes 2007).3 Lastly, the CJM staff and some of its member organizations helped to persuade US congressional representatives to argue against and defeat NAFTA Fast Track authority in 1997. With this brief history as background, we may turn to an analysis of the possibilities and limitations of the CJM.

Coalescing transnational civil society All movements face the challenges of coalition building since each must mobilize diverse constituents into a common framework of identity and action. Coalition building has become a primary topic for movements operating at all spatial scales and across various sectors of civil

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society, national and transnational (Brecher and Costello 1990; Adam 1995; Lichterman 1995; Whittier 1995; Anner 1996; Rochon and Meyer 1997; Young 1997; Ayres 1998; Mantsios 1998; Rose 2000; Bystydzienski and Schacht 2001). Of course coalitions always are made possible by different social conditions or ‘political opportunity structures’ (Tarrow 1994). The CJM is no exception. The global extension of corporate institutions and consumer markets has presented citizens of different nations with common problems and opportunities to dialogue about their solutions. Growing movement resources in the late 1990s enabled movements to engage in new coalitional ventures. New technologies of communication have facilitated contact between coalition members. And, the United States/Mexico border, the primary home of the CJM, gives the coalition an added geographical advantage since it is a local/transnational space in which there are many transformative exchanges of people and ideas, exchanges directly associated with the opportunities and problem of North American free trade.4 However, the strategic, purposeful efforts of coalition building lie at the center of the CJM’s efforts – what Douglas McAdam, Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tilly refer to as social movement ‘brokerage,’ the mediation of connections between two or more members (2001: 26, 102 and 142). As Nella Van Dyke has shown, multi-issue organizations like the CJM are vital to movement coalitions insofar as they forge organizational and ideological bonds among members (2003: 245). This brokerage may be organized into two interrelated categories: (1) fora for cooperation and (2) processes of dialogue and conflict resolution.

Coalition fora Regular fora for communication and education represent the emergent space of transnational civil society. They allow movement organizers from different locations to meet, learn from each other, share grievances, and develop common strategies – a process Snow et al. (1986), borrowing from Erving Goffman, refer to as ‘frame alignment’. Practically, these fora include conferences, workshops, protest events, internet spaces, and worker exchanges. All of these fora enable the CJM staff and board to facilitate inter-movement education, inter-cultural awareness, organizational capacity building, and strategic coordination. But worker exchanges have been invaluable fora for the development of CJM’s transnational civil society. Worker-to-worker exchanges allow activists and workers from the United States and Canada to meet their counterparts in Mexico, where they may discuss their experiences

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and common struggles for labor rights. Exchanges may be considered ‘democratic schools for community’, insofar as they institutionalize communication, mutual trust, and politicization (Rose 2000: 159). They also provide face-to-face interpersonal contact, which is crucial to the development of cross-border solidarity (Brown and Fox 1998: 455) and recruitment (Snow, Zurcher and Ekland-Olson 1980; Johnston and Lio 1998). CJM members have cited worker exchanges as being the most profoundly empowering, for four reasons. First, as Mexican and US workers are exposed to the humanity of one another’s lives, they have been able to overcome prejudice and distrust. In separate interviews, reporter David Bacon (2002), Ed Feigen (AFL-CIO), and Benedicto Martínez (Frente Auténtico del Trabajo, or FAT – Authentic Labor Front) claimed that the CJM’s exchanges have helped to replace US racism and nationalism with multicultural sensibilities – a process Guillermo Gómez-Peña has called ‘gringostroika’ (1993). Antonio Villalba of the Frente Auténtico del Trabajo (FAT) put it as follows: [the] exchange of workers . . . has yielded good results already, in overcoming differences, discrimination, and prejudice. Since 1991, when we began collaborating with US unions, we have seen their relationships with us become one of equals. This is all due to worker exchanges. I remember a powerful US union leader who came to Mexico. He thought that Mexicans were taking jobs from US workers, that we had little intelligence, that we could not be organized. . . . He visited factories and conversed with us, as workers. After that, he was convinced that we were not his enemy. A second transformation occurs when workers recognize their shared dilemmas and identify with one another across borders, shifting from nationalist frames of resistance to ones rooted in international labor rights. Maureen Casey (New York Labor-Religion Coalition, NYLRC) cites her experiences leading exchanges: ‘This has been a life-changing experience for me,’ said several participants. Over and over again, the New York visitors expressed their admiration for the determination and creativity of workers organizing against tremendous odds. . . . Since November of 1997, more than 45 people from around New York State have visited the border towns of Mexico. . . . In all cases, people have returned to their homes changed, knowing that ‘free’ trade simply costs too much.

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They remain committed to working with people of vision and hope in Mexico to bring justice to the world of the maquiladoras and to the global economy. (CJM 1999c) In identifying with one another, the grievances of both Mexican and US workers jump in scale from the local to the transnational. Workers shift from understanding their problems as simply an effect of bad corporate management or poor national policies, to seeing them as a result of transnational economic processes they can resist together. Third, greater cross-border identification encourages US and Mexican workers to become activists and develop more substantive organizational cooperation and strategic action. Most of the US activists interviewed in this study – including Susan Mika (Benedictine Sisters), Bobby Stockard (United Auto Workers), Judy Ancel (Cross Border Network for Justice and Solidarity – CBNJS), and Maureen Casey (NYLRC) – became committed organizers because of exchanges. There, they learned more about the political, economic, and cultural contexts of activism on both sides of the border, and they developed the expertise to shape more robust transnational action strategies. As Susan Williams (Tennessee Industrial Renewal Network) argued, ‘It’s a huge educational experience for people to go on the exchanges – the learning and activism doesn’t happen any other way. . . .’ (cited in Kidder and McGinn 1995: 17). The fourth, and possibly most significant, effect of worker exchanges is that they give participants hope in solidarity. Participation in social movements has powerfully affective dimensions, and thorough assessments of movement efficacy cannot discount them (Melucci 1989: 70–80). Hope for many transnational activists is the expectation of justice, grounded in past successes or a simple faith in the changing tide of history. But hope also speaks of a pride in an emerging transnational civil society felt in interpersonal bonds, shared commitments, and the self-esteem derived from a new found sense of belonging (Baumeister, Dale and Muraven 2000: 240–241). This language of hope cannot feed or clothe workers in need. It alone does not regulate capital. And it can hang by a thread. Yet, it cannot be underestimated since, in the absence of labor rights enforcement, it is a primary source of workers’ commitments to movement participation. In the words of Martha Ojeda (CJM), ‘[Maquila workers] are convinced that, through international struggle and solidarity, justice will come and things will change one day. . . . Through CJM’s international solidarity, workers are no longer numbers and robots, rather, they are human beings with a face, a name,

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feeling and a voice.’ Indeed, pride can transform isolation and ‘sequestration into solidarity’ (Britt and Heise 2000: 262).

Dialogue and conflict resolution A second method of brokering coalition in the CJM is dialogue across differences, which takes its most intensive form in conflict resolution. ‘Brokers’ such as Martha Ojeda, Betty Robles, Carmen Valadez (Grupo Factor X), and Susan Mika (Benedictine Sisters) have acted as movement translators by translating between languages, political ideologies, and strategic orientations. They initiate contacts, communicate between members, and define a ‘common language’ that articulates multiple interests into action agendas. The more successful brokers endeavor to approximate Habermas’s ‘communicative rationality’ (1984) through which coalition members may engage in public dialogue to develop a deeper, if always incomplete, understanding of one another. They use well-established frames of critique and action that help to socialize members into shared discourses of resistance. These, and the inclusive ethos they embrace, represent what I will call a ‘micropolitics of democracy’, insofar as they strive for an atmosphere of mutual respect. This further inspires them to champion a flexible coalition organization that accommodates member autonomy and diversity, even as it unites members around basic goals. Ojeda (CJM) regards this network model of flexibility as necessary for the survival of transnational civil society insofar as it helps to avoid absolutist identity politics and factionalization. In her pragmatic ideals of coalition, CJM activists like Ojeda have echoed the anti-essentialist politics of postcolonial feminism and the ideals of reconciliation articulated in Chicana feminist notions of difference (see Alarcón 1994; Dean 1996; Sandoval 2000). Yet coalitional unity often comes only after resolving difficult conflicts. The most effective brokers in the CJM regard conflict as an opportunity, not a problem. As María Estela Ríos (Asociación Nacional de Abogados Democráticos [ANAD – National Association of Democratic Lawyers], a CJM member) said, ‘the advantage of conflicts is that they give you a chance to resolve them, before they give rise to failure’. Typically, conflict resolution begins with efforts to humanize workers of different identities and interests, often via informal settings that are familiar and secure. Also, when conflict arises, the most effective CJM brokers open agendas to discussion and work toward reconciliation and accommodation. When this is insufficient, brokers may invoke common problems or values as a way to reinforce a shared identity. As Van Dyke

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(2003: 244) and Nepstad (2002: 137) have shown, coalition movements may derive coherence from narratives that vilify a common external enemy and ask members to participate in redemptive struggles – what Cullen calls ‘managed sublimation’ (2004: 264).

Conflict in transnational civil society Coalition building is very hard work and it frequently fails, especially as it stretches across national borders. Transnational movement networks confront tangled sets of differences emblematic of historic divisions in our world-system, each revealing deep wounds of inequality and violence. As Bernice Johnson Reagon proclaimed, coalition building is ‘some of the most dangerous work you can do. . . . Most of the time you feel threatened to the core and if you don’t, you’re not really doing coalescing. . . .’ (1983: 356–357, 359). The forces of racialized imperialism, Cold War interventions, and economic competition, just to name three, have constructed profound international antagonisms that have yet to vanish from the global stage. And today’s volatile and polarizing features of neoliberal restructuring have magnified inequalities and made efforts at transnational civil society less than civil. As Pasha and Blaney argue, neoliberalism contributes to the disturbance of ‘dispositions toward global conviviality’ (1998: 11). The flames of conflict can be fanned further by the actions of counter-movements that – despite galvanizing some activists around common threats (Van Dyke 2003: 244) – often have demobilized international solidarity by inciting fear and distrust. In the CJM, there have been three central areas of internal conflict – over strategic agendas, over organizational form and resources, and over identity politics of nationalism, gender, and class, among others. In practice these conflicts not only intersect, but they can be displaced onto one another, making coalition building exceedingly difficult. In the interest of brevity, this analysis will focus on the latter two areas of conflict.

Organizational conflicts During the CJM’s 2000 annual meeting, organizational tensions crystallized when members of the CFO read a complaint to the CJM’s Executive Board: Several times the CFO has expressed to the Executive Board that the CJM should not make decisions for the people, nor have the

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Executive Director determine what the workers need. . . . Unfortunately, many times we have seen in the staff of the CJM a lot of insensitivity to the opinions of CFO and to our legitimate desires to . . . carry on our own activities, national and international. We do not agree to continue having the staff of the CJM as our middlepersons, because we do not believe the coalition should be above, or intend to represent, all the members of the coalition. We expected the CJM to support more and more directly the groups of workers from the maquiladoras. . . . The new Executive Board should eliminate the barriers that make the CJM bureaucratic and minimally functional, and answer better to grassroots workers, not just activists who are too involved in mere discussions about the workers. This statement entails two critiques. The first – of the CJM’s inauthentic representation of workers – represents an organizational conflict over the structure of coalition democracy. With growing membership, the CJM gravitated in the late 1990s toward a more formal, representative system of authority, with a staff that served board members elected by the General Assembly. Many activists, especially those of larger NGOs, saw this as a way to offer a rule-bound and representative system of governance that could protect democratic process, member accountability, and administrative continuity. However, several community and union organizations, like the CFO, found the coalition to be less participatory. They wished to have more direct control over resources, and to pursue their own strategic campaigns. This resonated with an institutional culture typical of smaller groups, in which there is little or no decisionmaking hierarchy and a strong sense of ‘authentic’ local accountability. One CFO activist said, ‘It’s very easy to sit here, expose all of your problems and talk, and write things down on paper. But you don’t live it like I’m living it, or like someday my child will live it.’ A unionist also argued that a more flexible CJM would avoid the rigidities and inefficiencies of what he called a ‘one size fits all approach’. As the CJM grew, it suffered from the tensions over how to balance broad representation with the satisfaction of the needs of minority members (see also Williams 2002: 106). Advocates of both more and less formal governance claimed to be more democratic than the other. Over the last four years these conflicts have yet to be resolved, and several organizations, including the CFO and AFL-CIO, have reduced their participation in the CJM and resigned from its board. This loss spells troubled times for the coalition. The CFO statement referenced a second organizational tension: resource inequalities. Some CJM organizations, typically in Mexican

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workers’ communities, have barely enough financing to maintain an office and survive on volunteer labor. Others, such as international unions or religious groups, have sufficient wealth to support shareholder, legal, and strike campaigns. The resources of CJM members vary widely, and the poorer organizations rely upon the wealthier ones, both for many of their day-to-day expenses and for the special needs of campaigns. More resourced organizations, such as the ICCR, ANAD, or AFL-CIO – often from the United States, Canada, or Mexico City – also have provided important legal and public relations services to the coalition. As Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink have demonstrated, this pattern is not atypical since transnational movement networks often arise from the needs of NGOs to seek resources from wealthier NGOs in other nations (1998). Despite expressed desires to participate as equals, coalition members often have unequal power by virtue of these differences in wealth and expertise. Several problems can result. First, wealthier organizations can achieve, if only informally, a powerful voice in shaping the coalition. This can corrupt endeavors to build a democratic coalition and it can constrain participation, limiting movement strength and efficacy. Second, hierarchies can result in an unequal division of labor in which community organizations do most of the day-to-day worker mobilization, while more professionalized organizations engage in the strategic planning and public relations. The latter groups can appear to assume too much power, and credit for the work of locals, offending community activists and potentially commandeering the resources of new patrons. Third, ‘resource dependencies’ (Gordon and Turner 2000) can provoke resource competition among poorer members (Van Dyke 2003: 245). Some CJM members have resorted to spying and subterfuge to secure patronage of wealthier members.5 Clifford Bobb confirms that ‘global civil society may be less a realm of altruistic behavior than a competitive arena in which many weak groups vie for the attention of potential patrons’ (2001: 328). Together, these problems can yield profound resentments that fragment coalition. In 1992, the Southwest Organizing Project left the CJM because its leaders believed that US and Canadian groups had too much control. In the mid-1990s they were not alone in this criticism, and the CJM reorganized in 1997 to grant Mexican organizations 50 percent control over the Executive Board. Wealthier coalition members also have felt frustrated, since, given their investment of resources and expertise, they have wanted to ensure that coalition strategies embody their interests. In part because of these tensions, the CJM has lost much of its

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support from the AFL-CIO, the Canadian Labour Council, and even the FAT. And without the vital support of unions, many CJM members – rich and poor – have become uncertain about the benefits of solidarity. In the understated words of Alejandro Villamar, from the Red Mexicana de Acción Frente al Libre Comércio, the resource ‘challenge the CJM is facing is enormous’.

Identity conflicts Another significant set of conflicts in the CJM is that over identity. Political identities are both self-concepts and practices of group identification that are continually changing. Identities are constructions of intersecting social forces that vary over time, space, and social context. Each difference of identity – gender, class, race, nationality, and so on – has many implications for transnational coalition. In movement practice, collective identity is fundamental to participation, and competition between identities is all too familiar (Stryker 2000: 21–23). Indeed, I have explored with Jennifer Medndez elsewhere (2003) some of the gendered conflicts within transnational coalitions, including the CJM. Given limited space here, it is more useful to address merely one identity conflict, one that is a window onto the challenges of transnational coalition building: nationalism. The term ‘nationalism’ refers to multiple ‘imagined communities’ (Anderson 1983) or ‘invented traditions’ (Hobsbawm 1994) that tie discourses of citizenship and state sovereignty to cultures of gender, race, ethnicity, and language. CJM activists regard nationalism as antithetical to transnationalism, and thus have inhibited its most reactionary forms. However, at times nationalism has been a force of disruption, taking the forms of protectionism and paternalism. Protectionism combines nationalist pride with investments in threatened economic entitlements, while paternalism is a nationalism grounded in cultural, economic, and racial/ethnic assumptions of superiority. While protectionism has reared its head among US and Mexican workers, especially among those rank-and-file workers who feel threatened by foreign influence over domestic labor markets, all activists interviewed argued that protectionism is waning, if not absent, among CJM members. Therefore, even though this is debatable, for the sake of brevity this analysis will focus on paternalism. There is still frequent mention of US paternalism in the CJM. US paternalism typically assumes that Mexican workers do not have the ability to mobilize a successful or democratic labor movement, and thus it is

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up to US activists to intervene and solve Mexicans’ problems for them. One Mexican activist said his US counterparts act as ‘saviors.’ Another summarized the attitude: ‘The American, global current says, “How do they know how to resist? They do not have the experience [in Mexican affairs]. We need to intervene.” ’ Instead, she argued, ‘We who know our problems best should direct the movement.’ For example, in a workerto-worker exchange for which I was translating, a steelworker asserted that local poverty is an indication of Mexico’s cultural backwardness and that US workers have a responsibility to ‘educate’ them about development. Here is evident among the US working class an echo of modernist discourses in which the United States has a responsibility to lead the developing world into modernity. This colonial sensibility is frustrating to Mexicans because it deprives them of agency and power over issues in their own nation, and it reproduces the very discursive regimes that have shaped imperial economic relations between the United States and Mexico. Thus, although nationalisms are waning under the influence of the CJM, they can resurface and threaten to disrupt coalition unity.

The paradoxes of transnational civil society in North America Returning to the questions that began this research, what lessons does the CJM teach regarding the possibilities and problems of transnational civil society in a neoliberal world-system? Let us consider first the potentials of the CJM’s transnational civil society, before discussing its limitations. In many ways the CJM is a testament to the possibilities of transnational civil society. To Pasha and Blaney, global civil society is ‘an emerging agent and sphere of a nascent world politics. A medley of boundary-eclipsing actors – social movements, interest groups, indigenous peoples, cultural groups, and global citizens – are seen to be constructing networks, knowledges, and practices that entail a reshaping of the political architecture of international relations’ (1998: 2). At the very least, many non-governmental actors have begun to develop a ‘new imagined community’ (Ribeiro 1998) rooted in NGO fora, protest events, and communications networks. Among those who challenge neoliberalism, an emerging community focuses on trans-cultural values grounded in principles of democratization – a participatory democracy modeled in the power of labor and humane trade rules (Lipschultz 1992; Falk 1998; Pasha and Blaney 1998: 9; Yúdice 1998: 353). As transnational

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civil society exceeds national cultures of action, some claim we are witnessing the emergence of a ‘flexible citizenship’ (Ong 1999: 6) embodied in a ‘cosmopolitan citizen’ (Norris 2000: 158–161) who are the ideal brokers of transnational networks. They identify with their nations but also with their continents and the world; they have greater hopes in global governance; and they are accustomed to the cultures and economies of a globalizing world. Like the term ‘civil society’ itself, which is general and flexible (Trentmann 2000: 7 and 22), champions of transnational civil society prefer a dynamic and ‘grassroots postmodernism’ – one that embraces participatory democracy but no master narrative or grand ideology such as liberalism or socialism (Esteva and Prakash 1998). In this way its leaders are self-limiting, advocating a radically democratic civil society and an inclusive global public sphere but in incremental and reformist terms (Cohen and Arato 1992). In this effort, they act toward a ‘nonterritorial democratization of global issues’ through an ‘activism at a distance’ (Ribeiro 1998). Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri argue that these actors are exercising their ‘right to reappropriation’ (2000: 406), claiming transnational spaces and transforming them into ‘subaltern counter-publics’ (Fraser 1993: 14). Here, they may be outlining the principles of a transnational civil society, one that could embody a democratic and redistributive justice for the world-system as a whole. At times, the CJM and its brokers exemplify this ideal vision of civil society. Its mobilizing efforts have educated workers to deconstruct borders of difference and re-aligned them within a common frame of resistance. It has developed a flexible and strategic model of coalition that, at times, is extremely effective in balancing member autonomy with unity around basic goals of labor rights and common projects of workplace democracy. Further, the CJM has made these unifying goals practical in form, and has been self-limiting in its articulation of grand political and economic goals (Cohen and Arato 1992). This has helped the CJM not to preclude membership or damage the scope and power of a diverse civil society, especially in a context of neoliberal hegemony embodied by powerful counter-movements. The CJM has enabled workers’ grievances and actions to address the local and the global simultaneously. In doing so, the CJM has been a leader in continental efforts to diminish nationalisms and has provided workers with skills of international cooperation. And it has maintained a culture of solidarity among many members, granting workers hope that another world is indeed possible and thereby engaging in a counter-hegemonic

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project for alternatives to neoliberal globalization. Most of all, the CJM has survived, despite the hegemony of liberalized trade, the overpowering opposition of transnational capital and government, and internal disruptions. However, the CJM also causes us to question any romanticization of transnational civil society. Alvarez, Dagnino, and Escobar confirm that civil society is often ‘a terrain of struggle mined by sometimes undemocratic power relations and the enduring problems of . . . exclusion’ (1998: 17). These problems are not new, since the ideals of democratization and the realities of inequality, the aspirations to tolerance and the practices of exclusion, have gone ‘hand in hand’ throughout modern history (Trentmann 2000: 17). The CJM reveals that movement networks are far from harmonious global villages and that transnational civil society is home to great inequalities of material, political, and cultural capital. Despite successful self-criticism born out of years of brokerage, transnational networks like the CJM often re-articulate rather than resolve the power differences of our world-system. Resource differences, typically between organizations in the developed and developing worlds, continue to structure informal hierarchies. Colonial discourses and nationalist resentments resurface in the form of paternalism, if not protectionism. Hence divisive tensions of our world system, new and old, continue to tear at the fabric of civil society within the CJM. Additionally, even though the CJM has many informal processes of dialogue and brokerage, it has few formal rules of participation, resource sharing, or decision-making by which members may be accountable to one another. Thus, tensions born of difference and fractured dialogue have even greater potential to fragment coalition, placing a far too heavy burden on the brokers of the CJM and their informal methods of coalition building. As a result, brokers have avoided the worst internal conflicts by limiting the CJM’s actions to the most widely accepted goals of protecting labor rights. But this can inhibit long-term engagement with US or Mexican governance, and can constrain the CJM’s capacity to change policy and fill the regulatory vacuum surrounding export processing. In turn, this can give members, especially the most experienced and developed organizations, reason to question the long-term benefits of coalition, leading to even more discontent. Indeed, the CJM reveals how transnational civil societies are at risk of continual cooptation and repression by powerful alliances between states and capital, severely containing their efforts to build a robust and democratic global public sphere.

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Conclusions In sum, the CJM confirms that transnational civil societies in a globalizing world represent many paradoxes, not unlike their national predecessors. This vexed conclusion resonates with other contributors to this book, including Dreiling and Silvaggio in Chapter 11, who recognize the ongoing limitations and possibilities of contention over social change. Several antinomies structure the CJM’s efforts at transnational civil society. The CJM is both enabled and constrained by a globalizing neoliberal economy. The expansion of liberal political economy and globalizing social forces allow workers and citizens to share ideas and build transnational publics. Yet, the power and reach of corporate actors and their state allies disrupt the growth of democratic development. Socioeconomic deprivation enables labor movements of different nations to coalesce around common grievances, strategies, and targets. But deprivation also excites conflicts that limit civil societies’ strengths and transformative possibilities. Transnational civil societies show great capacities to align grievances and broker common movement cultures of opposition. However, cultural and organizational hierarchies, and external provocateurs, may excite lingering resentments and divisive animosities among workers of different identities. Thus, if the CJM is a generalizable example, transnational civil society faces tremendous difficulties in building a counter-hegemonic opposition to neoliberal globalization. Nonetheless, the CJM demonstrates that transnational civil society can have marked successes promoting a culture of solidarity among North American labor movements. This culture of solidarity is far from complete, but the CJM has diminished conflicts among North American workers and activists over organizational orientation, strategic goals, and identity politics. The immediate value of this solidarity is the hope participants gain in resistance, one that is fed by incremental, if embattled, gains. It is also emboldened by opportunities present in the broader global context, one that displays recurrent legitimation crises of neoliberal policy in growing opposition movements, the emergence of state allies critical of neoliberalism, and the halting development of free trade regimes. Whether these hopes of transformation are fulfilled, endeavors for transnational civil society like the CJM are likely to provide a space of possibility for a globalization from below.

5 Contesting Neoliberal Globalism and NAFTA in Rural Mexico: From State Corporatism to the Political-Cultural Formation of the Peasantry?∗ Armando Bartra and Gerardo Otero

Throughout most of the twentieth century, Mexico’s political system was variously described as an authoritarian, one-party-dominant, or semi-democratic regime. Three features of this system stood out and accounted for Mexico’s legendary political stability and solid domination by the ruling party. First, this party had dominated Mexican politics since its foundation in 1929, even though it changed its name twice: from the Partido Nacional Revolucionario (PNR – National Revolutionary Party), to the Partido de la Revolución Mexicana (PRM – Party of the Mexican Revolution) in 1936, and then to the current name of Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI – Institutionalized Revolutionary Party) in 1946. The PRI finally lost the presidency in 2000, but continues to be a major force in Congress and holds most state governorships. Second, the corporatist nature of the state had been under construction since the Mexican Revolution, which lasted for almost a decade, from 1910 to 1920, and in which one million people died in combat. State corporatism meant that subordinate groups and classes became organized, but their organizations had to be acknowledged and legitimized by the state, a feature that continues after 2000. In fact, the formation of organizations was often initiated and encouraged by the state, as was the case with the Confederación Nacional Campesina (CNC – National Peasant Confederation), the major peasant organization. The form of legitimacy preferred by the state was that the organizations became affiliate members of the ruling PRI, but other organizations were also allowed to exist, as long as their loyalty to the state was not in doubt 92

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(Bartra 1985; Samstad 2002; Mackinlay and Otero 2004). Third, state corporatism clearly involved an authoritarian and top-down relationship between the state and mass organizations, and yet it also involved some form of reciprocity by which its constituents received something in exchange for their loyalty to the state (González Casanova 1983; Hellman 1994; Cornelius 2000). By 1982 the economic basis for state corporatism had been eroded considerably, however, which coincided with the indebtedness crisis set off that year by Mexico’s defaulting on the payment of its foreign debt. Since the 1930s, Mexico had engaged in a major agrarian reform by which half of its agricultural, forestry, and livestock-grazing land was placed in the hands of ejidos or agrarian communities, the two forms of land tenure created by Article 27 of the 1917 Constitution, one of the principal legal achievements of the revolution. It could be argued that the agrarian reform was the main pay-off to the peasantry for its participation in the revolution and its eventual loyalty to the PRI-state. Shortly after the 1982 debt crisis, though, the state launched a process of economic liberalization that shook the very foundations of state corporatism and inward-looking development that had been sought for the previous five decades (Bartra 1992, 2003c; Hernández Navarro 1992, 1994; Otero 1999). Economic liberalization—or neoliberalism, as it is popularly known—was triggered partly as a way to address the indebtedness crisis, but it was also ardently advocated by the most organized fractions of Mexico’s capitalist class (Valdés Ugalde 1996) and the technocrats who controlled the state (Centeno 1994). With the collapse of the economic foundations for state corporatism, the question emerged as to whether the peasantry and other subordinate groups and classes would become politically formed or constituted. Could these groups form a vigorous part of civil society to contest the authoritarian state and push for their demands while retaining their independence from the state and their autonomy from political parties? The purpose of this chapter is to describe and analyze how the peasantry in Mexico has contested neoliberal globalism and its attendant policies. By neoliberal globalism we mean the ideology, as discussed in great detail in McBride’s chapter in this book, behind the economic liberalization policies geared toward opening Mexico’s economy to international trade and investment, the privatization of formerly state-run firms, the elimination of most state subsidies, the downsizing of many social policies, and so on. While these policies began in the mid-1980s, they were consolidated with Mexico’s joining of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which came into force

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at the start of 1994. Therefore, our analysis focuses on the 1982–2008 period, a time of great tumult for what Cadena-Roa in the next chapter in this book describes as Mexico’s fluid social movement sector. It begins at the time when the Mexican state had reached a climatic point in its corporatist relations with most social classes and groups in society, and covers the electoral democratic transition that started in 2000, when an opposition candidate from the right-of-center Partido Acción Nacional (PAN – National Action Party) won the presidential elections. This transition was interrupted in 2006 by the highly inequitable presidential election, in which the PAN prevented the left-of-centre candidate from the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD – Party of the Democratic Revolution) from winning (Otero 2008). Furthermore, the PAN itself has attempted to rebuild or appropriate the organizations of subordinate groups to remake state corporatism (Mackinlay and Otero 2004; Singelmann 2004). The first section discusses how several peasant organizations have sought their independence from the state and autonomy from political parties, in an attempt to dismantle the PRI-state corporatism and to struggle for both their economic and political interests in the realm of civil society. The second section discusses the death and resurrection of agrarian organizations that struggled for self-management and the democratic control of the productive process. The third section discusses the emergence of a broad peasant mobilization – Movimiento ‘¡El Campo no Aguanta Más!’ (MCAM – ‘The Countryside Can Take no More’). This movement was launched eight years after the start of NAFTA, demanding a renegotiation of its agricultural chapter. Finally, the conclusion raises the question as to whether the trajectory of peasant mobilization leads to a great class convergence movement, one that includes indigenous and mestizo peasants. If this convergence were to take place, then we could speak of the political-cultural formation of the peasantry as a class.

Autonomous peasant organizations negotiate with the state The end of 1988 marked the highest point of civic insurgency that threatened to eject the PRI from Los Pinos (the national presidential house, equivalent to the US White House). Ten peasant and Indian organizations signed the Convenio de Acción Unitaria (CAU – Unitary Action Agreement) which articulated agrarian demands for land, for reviving agricultural production in the countryside, and the cultural

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and territorial demands of Indian peoples (Flores Felix 1992, 1995, 1998; García, Leyva and Burgete 1998). Their agreement was signed in the context of a ‘First National Agrarian Encounter’. Held on 27–28 November, it represented a truly historical encounter for it encompassed firstgeneration neo-Zapatista organizations like the Coordinadora Nacional ‘Plan de Ayala’ (CNPA – ‘Plan de Ayala’ National Coordinator), organizations for economic struggle like the Unión Nacional de Organizaciones Regionales Campesinas (UNORCA – National Union of Autonomous Regional Peasant Organizations), and ethnic convergence groupings like Congreso Nacional de Pueblos Indígenas (CNPI – National Indian Peoples Council). The struggles for independence, for autonomy, and for self-determination were interwoven. This mobilization was short-lived. Forty days later, on 6 January 1989, the new President Carlos Salinas inaugurated his illegitimate government (fraught with widespread claims of electoral fraud) by making a call to constitute the Congreso Agrario Permanente (CAP – Permanent Agrarian Congress). The call was made on the 70th anniversary of revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata’s death, as if to put the last nail in his coffin. The corporatist organizations were quick to join this call, including the CNC, the Central Campesina Independiente (CCI – Independent Peasant Central), the Consejo Agrarista Mexicano (CAM – Mexican Agrarianist Council) and the Unión General de Obreros y Campesinos de México ‘Jacinto López (UGOCM-JL – Jacinto López General Union of Workers and Peasants), all of them affiliate members of the ruling PRI. Surprisingly, however, most of the affiliates of the independent CAU also signed on to the new CAP. Only three organizations abstained from joining and saved face: CNPA, the Frente Democrático Campesino de Chihuahua (FDCCH – Chihuahua Democratic Peasant Front), and CNPI. CAP became the space for interlocution among organized peasants and the federal executive power. The ignominious backdrop to this massive cooptation of peasant organizations was the Pacto de Ocampo, signed at the initiative of President Luis Echeverría (1970–1976) in 1976, and the short-lived National Peasant Alliance created by President Miguel de la Madrid (1982–1988) in 1983. With the formation of CAP by presidential decree the Mexican government was once again imposing organizational forms on society. This led to the breakdown of the incipient articulation of independent, non-official agrarian political tendencies because CAU was dispersed after being deserted by the majority of member organizations shortly after its birth.

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Although Salinas took power in the midst of electoral fraud, illegitimacy, and discredit, once in power his voice became that of the ‘boss’, of irresistible command, assuming that any state favors depended on obedience. In this case, the acquiescence of virtually the entire peasant leadership to instructions from Los Pinos had the gravest consequences: at that specific juncture, it signified that they condoned the recent electoral fraud and turned their back on the defeated candidate, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, whose campaign had been supported by many of the peasant organizations. Strategically, this move became the first step in the cooperation between the agrarian leadership and the government, geared toward a rural turn of great proportions: a ‘reform of the agrarian reform’ which would culminate with the legislative changes enacted on Article 27 of the Constitution in 1992 and the implementation of NAFTA in 1994. Opposition to the Salinista project was headed by the National Peasant Resistance Movement, Monarca, constituted by 12 non-corporatist organizations that signed the Plan of Anenecuilco on 28 December 1991 (Monarca 1991, 1992). This plan defended social ownership of the land, now threatened by the imminent constitutional changes to the Agrarian Legislation, but it also rejected the ‘neoliberal policy which intends, after leading us to ruin, to make us compete (in a disadvantageous situation) with the Free Trade Agreement’ (Paré 1991). During the first months of 1992, this coalition changed its name, which in Spanish sounded like royalty – Monarch – to a more appropriate one: Consejo de Organización Agrarias (COA – Agrarian Organizations Coalition). The COA led several protest actions which culminated with a national mobilization on 10 April 1991. While insurgent peasants showed their opposition on streets and roads, the counter-reform advanced inexorably in the buzzing rooms of Los Pinos. Top-level negotiations were being held with the leadership of CNC and independent organizations like UNORCA, trying to reduce the most regressive aspects of the constitutional legal initiative and to correct the insufficiency of agricultural state policies: since the mid-1980s, most subsidies, rural credit, and rural-development state agencies had disappeared (UNORCA 1992). Salinas was extremely interested in bringing the peasant leadership on board in his project. He knew that all that is bought with money is ultimately cheap, so he accepted their demands as long as the essence of his counter-reform was not compromised. Thus, on 14 November 1991, the presidency published its ‘Ten Items for Freedom and Justice in the Countryside’, a promise of progressive changes in rural policy that promised a plentiful allocation

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of resources, including funds for the most restless agrarianists to acquire lands for their land-solicitor constituencies. Therefore, Salinas’ offer was an expensive but thinly veiled bribe. Under these conditions, the legal initiative to reform Article 27 of the constitution, which suppresses the right of peasants to receive any further land re-distribution and opens the door to the privatization of ejido and communal lands, was approved by legislators of the PRI and the PAN. Only the recently constituted PRD, a convergence of the socialist left and a nationalist and democratic splinter from the PRI, opposed the new Agrarian Law. Since its birth in 1989, the PRD had been linked with the progressive peasantry of Cardenista tradition, such as that in La Laguna (Otero 1999), and promoted an agrarian convergence movement organization called the Unión Campesina Democrática (UCD – Democratic Peasant Union). The UCD was supported, with some hesitation, by the Central Independiente de Obreros Agrícolas y Campesinos (CIOAC – Independent Agricultural Workers and Peasants Central), CNPA, and other independent organizations which sympathized with its political position but not with its corporatist affiliation to a political party, even an opposition party. The peasant organizations which questioned the rural counter-reform were labeled by the media as ‘intolerant and conservative’ and as linked with the PRD, itself labeled ‘the party of violence’. In contrast, the right wing was delighted: a PAN Deputy (a member of the lower chamber of Congress) was brimming with pleasure when he asserted that the Salinas Agrarian Law initiative was a cultural triumph of National Action (Canabal Cristiani 1991, 1992). Hurt by the weakening of the independents, the COA disappeared in 1993. Subsequently, the decisive debates about the countryside’s future developed between the federal executive and the increasingly tamed CAP and CNC. The greatest issue was no longer the constitutional reform – which had already been approved in early 1992 – but NAFTA, an asymmetric trade agreement which, many argue, sacrifices national production in the name of globalization, and thus resulted in the socioeconomic exclusion of millions of ‘redundant’ Mexicans (Pechlaner and Otero 2008). NAFTA threatened agriculture and its first victims were the peasants. The problem was that the opponents to signing a trade deal on these terms – parties like the PRD and peasant organizations like CNPA and CIOAC – were outside of the game, and the negotiation was taking place in the terrain of those who take globalization and trade opening for granted.

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Just as the changes to Article 27 of the constitution had been approved – with modest resistance and acquiescent acclamation from co-opted organizations – NAFTA was signed by Congress in 1992, well ahead of the US Congress, which passed it in November 1993. The technocrats headed by Salinas had not only promoted their neoliberal project successfully, but they also broke down peasant resistance and disarticulated the incipient encounter between the rural ‘independents’ (from the state) and the ‘autonomous’ (from political parties) organizations.1 This had been a promising convergence that had also coincided with the powerful ‘Cardenista’ civic insurgency that emerged after the electoral fraud of 1988. Instead of this rapprochement with the Left, the ‘autonomous’ organizations opted for forming a pact with Salinas and an alliance with the official CNC, while the ‘independents’ became isolated and were attacked in the media. Thus, in early 1992, at the time that the stubborn COA organizations held meetings in the auditorium of the combative Mexican Electricians Union, the CNC, UNORCA, the Unión General Obrera, Campesina y Popular (UGOCP – Popular Worker Peasant General Union), Asamblea Nacional de la Alianza Campesina del Noroeste (Alcano – North-Western Peasant Alliance), and others met in the Oaxtepec resort (in the state of Oaxaca) to constitute what came to be known as the ‘New Peasant Movement’ (Bartra 2003a). The reality is that the only winner in this political dance was the reformist current of the CNC led by Hugo Andrés Araujo, a founding member of UNORCA, an organization that had intended to promote its traditional tenets of autonomous self-management within the rank-andfile of corporatist, official organizations. Supported by CNC’s Sector of Economic Organizations, Araujo’s group promoted a series of national encounters of organized growers, with attendance of about 700 productive associations and the participation of UNORCA, UGOCP and Alcano. They held numerous meetings whose central theme was the ‘new alliance’ between peasants and the state. In the Oaxtepec encounter, they formally launched the call to join what they called the ‘New Peasant Movement’. By its third meeting, held in August, Araujo had reached CNC’s Executive Committee. Beyond the personal trajectories of formerly left intellectuals and peasant leaders such as Hugo Araujo and Gustavo Gordillo, who ended up collaborating with the Salinas government, we are interested in explaining the organizational trajectory of an important current in the agrarian movement (Gordillo 1988, 1990). In particular, UNORCA, which had been founded by Araujo among others, had an extensive and

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combative history in agrarian struggles. It fought for both independence from the state and autonomy from political parties. Ironically, however, it ended up in an alliance with the government of Carlos Salinas, which was not only considered illegitimate by most serious observers, but which was also the promoter of radically anti-peasant policies as evidenced by the changes in Article 27 and his support for NAFTA. The Salinas agrarian counter-reform seduced, divided, and co-opted the rural leadership not only through bribes, but, more importantly, through the illusory promise of emancipation via free trade and the mirage of entrepreneurialism that often accompanies ‘self-management’ rhetoric. The peasant leadership became convinced that, once it freed itself from state bondage, the social sector of agricultural production (that is, small and middle peasant farmers) would strengthen its economic position operating within the sphere of the free market, thus achieving sustainable welfare and social justice for their constituency. What the technocrats in power viewed as privatization, deregulation, and the cancellation of government supports, the self-managing current viewed as opportunities for small producers to emancipate themselves through competitiveness. In their struggle to fight off state tutelage, the peasants thought that the market was their ally. Gustavo Gordillo formulated this ‘self-managing current’ most lucidly in his 1988 book. For him, the reconstitution of the ejido must involve peasant control over the production process. In turn, this requires that peasants develop economic organizations geared toward blocking the leakage of economic surplus in the various markets, for instance by organizing cooperatives to purchase farm inputs, and cooperatives to sell farm products. At the same time that such economic organizations fight over economic surplus, they must fight to acquire spaces of policy decision-making in government agencies. These dual processes allow peasants to establish an articulation between political and economic democracy, at the same time that they create a space for the exercise and further development of peasant power. It remains to be seen if peasants are capable of successfully negotiating a higher share of the economic surplus, within the existing market structure and a ‘national’ state that works for ‘the enemy’ (that is, private corporations). Furthermore, it is important to ask what will happen to peasants when, deprived of the minimum conditions for productivity, they fail to produce an economic surplus to be negotiated with. While important, these questions are now mute, for what really failed in the early 1990s was not the economic emancipation or ‘self management’ model posited by Gordillo, but the political route chosen to promote

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it: establishing a bond with the government precisely at the time that government technocrats were promoting the most transparent version of neoliberal reform. Thus, the ‘New Alliance’ between peasants and the state did not go beyond capturing spaces in the rural corporatist organizations and occupying some middle-ranking government posts. Instead of achieving a peasant-style Paris Commune, or as Gordillo put it in his book’s title, an ‘assault of heaven’, we witnessed an imprudent and frustrated ‘assault of the state’. The failed bet ended up in tragedy, because peasant autonomism of the 1980s had been a broad, progressive, and innovative movement that developed remarkable rural strategies. The economic and social ‘appropriation’ formula, that some of the organizations linked to UNORCA promoted, was a milestone in the Mexican people’s struggle to free itself from the intrusive Leviathan (Otero 1999). When the self-managing ship became the state’s ally, an unsustainable and multilayered contradiction emerged: leaders whose bête noire had been the state, political parties and politics were transformed into peons of the Salinas government, allies of the PRI, and players in the CNC. This autonomist current, convinced that the bureaucracy should withdraw from the countryside, saw its main leaders join the state bureaucracy. From Maoists who were critics of presidentialism, they became the technocratic intimate friends of the president. From their ‘mass line’ (a Maoist strand in Mexico), which was supposed to take its cues from the grass roots, they ended up betting on top-level negotiations. Their ‘popular politics’ (a famous slogan of this Maoists current) came to be conducted at the rooms of power in Los Pinos. Thinking that they were joining the ‘New Peasant Movement’, these popular organizations became instead party to the last episode of agrarian clientelism in Mexico’s twentieth century. Establishing an alliance with the state to construct autonomy in the market, precisely at the time when it is eagerly seeking to get rid of the peasants, required that peasants find allies in the market in the midst of a wavering state bureaucracy. These allies were capitalist entrepreneurs. This new association of private capitalists and peasants, to be promoted by the state, was first encountered in the 1981 Ley de Fomento Agropecuario (LFA – Law of Agricultural and Livestock Associations in Participation), but found no practical application. By the 1990s, this new association was promoted by the pro-peasant Undersecretary of Planning in the Secretariat of Agriculture under the Salinas government, headed by Gustavo Gordillo. The pilot project, named ‘Vaquerías’, was an association between Promotora Agropecuaria GAMESA, a large industrial firm based in Monterrey, and ejidatarios of the state of Nuevo León

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(Garza, Elena and Gonzaga 1992). Though begun in 1990, it had already failed by 1992 despite the fact that it received government subsidies and that the state favored the experiment with all means necessary. Hence the contradiction of the autonomists: their discourse was predicated on the mirage that privatization was socialization. The association between peasants and capitalists subsidized by the state was supposed to foment the dissociation between peasants and the state. The problem was that capital privatized the subsidies that should have been geared to end subsidies and the entire model collapsed. The leadership on peasant policies entrusted to the former advisor of combative peasant organizations, Gustavo Gordillo, was replaced by the orthodox neoliberal Luis Téllez Kuenzler, the undersecretary of Planning. In fact, Gustavo Gordillo’s role in the state became, rather, explicitly that of helping advance the political control of the peasantry, while Téllez Kuenzler designed agricultural policy from a strictly technocratic perspective.2 The technocrats’ goal was not the ‘New Alliance’ between peasants and the state but exclusionary modernization; a transformation without a severe demographic rural purge that liberates the country of three to four million surplus peasant families. For this to happen, the essential thing to do was not to amputate the Constitution, but to launch a new agricultural policy geared to promoting the dismantling of the ‘non-competitive’ sectors, basically the cereal-producing sector, which encompasses most of the peasants. Prior initiatives toward this end came earlier, including the 1981 LFA and Mexico’s joining the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1986. This iniquitous market opening and the abandonment of support and regulation policies eventually led to NAFTA. For Mexico, this trade deal has involved the express renunciation of its food and labor sovereignty and anticipates the death of peasant agriculture and the inexorable rural exodus of the millennium’s end (Bartra 2004; Pechlaner and Otero 2008).

Death and resurrection of the self-managing peasant movement The reforms meant to achieve peasant autonomy in the 1992 Agrarian Law, designed by UNORCA at the end of the 1980s, were clearly progressive in that they sought to expand the economic, social, and political attributions of peasant organizations. Their Achilles heel was their chosen means to promote autonomy: an alliance with rural corporatism and the ‘modernizing’ currents of the government. This was a strategically mistaken bet, given that the neoliberal modernizers were anti-peasant,

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even if the new productive organizations became enveloped in the ‘social sector of production’, structured in ‘enterprises’. In tactical terms, it was a clumsy bet that put the peasants in the hands of systemic anticorporatism, precisely when organizational insurgency was becoming civic insurgency. In this difficult juncture, those peasant organizations, like UCD, that became organically affiliated with the civic insurgency (which in turn became a political party), were to reproduce from the opposition an anachronistic corporatism. In this form of corporatism, the peasant organization’s interests became subordinated to the political interests of the party. The majority strand of the peasant movement, framed in the New Peasant Movement, lost its credibility at a fast pace: while there was a transitory flow of state resources based on the new forms of state corporatism, it soon became clear that the doors to a successful entry of the ‘free market’ were closed for most peasants. The notion that an alliance with private capital could be a successful substitute for state support of the peasantry under neoliberal conditions was illusory. After reducing most peasants to indigence, the Salinas government offered the Programa Nacional de Solidaridad (Pronasol – National Solidarity Program), pitched as a ‘participatory’, social assistance program. In contrast to old corporatist practices, which channeled much state support to the peasantry via the peasant organizations affiliated to the ruling PRI, Pronasol channeled its funds directly to peasant groups expressly organized for this purpose. This form of direct neocorporatism, linking the president with grass-roots groups, turned the committees negotiating public funds into a new and ephemeral social constituency. This was the way in which the populist technocrats compensated for the withering of the traditional but costly and economically inefficient corporatism of the PRI (Otero 1996b; Bartra 2003a). Some of the peasants most affected by the market opening in the 1980s, and especially after 1994, were producers of maize, wheat, sorghum, soy, rice, beans, and cotton (Bartra 2004). These were crops characterized by a high level of peasant production, whose profitability was negatively affected by imports, most often from heavily subsidized competitors in the United States. One example of organizational breakdown in grains is the Jacinto López Asociación Rural de Interés Colectivo (ARIC – Collective Interest Rural Association), whose members produced wheat, soy, and maize in the irrigated valleys of Yaqui and Mayo. This ARIC, which had been an exemplar of a successful autonomous peasant organization, ran a credit union, an insurance fund, a marketing branch, a flour mill, a machinery center, and other enterprises (Gordillo 1988;

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Otero 1989, 1999). From 1993 to 1996, the formerly powerful peasant corporation progressively lost its assets to creditors until it finally went bankrupt. Only a few scattered enterprises with a few peasant groups survived the debacle. Peasant agroexporters fared no better despite their alleged ‘comparative advantages’ as assumed by the technocrats. Thus, consolidated organizations like the Ejido Coffee Growers Union of the Costa Grande of the state of Guerrero failed just as smaller producers had. The ejido had established a credit union and a marketing cooperative, had organized maize producers and managed a popular distribution center, and, in the early 1990s, had installed an agroindustrial organization to process dry coffee and other agricultural products. After their collapse, only a few peasant enterprises survived, each one on its own, along with isolated organic coffee producers (Paz Paredes 1995; Martinez Torres 2004). During the first half of the 1990s, rural organizations were in the thick of the crisis. Already overwhelmed, they still had to absorb the punishment until 1995, the year which combined the first 12 months of NAFTA and the consequences of the economic crisis detonated by the peso devaluation in December of 1994. With skyrocketing interest rates, the abysmal peso devaluation, and uncontrolled cost inflation, the government responded with a heterodox emergency plan which included price controls. This context became fertile soil for the re-emergence of the peasant movement. Initially, small producer organizations from Jalisco, Sinaloa and Guerrero and networks such as the Asociación Mexicana de Uniones de Crédito del Sector Social (AMUCSS – Mexican Associations of the Social Sector Credit) met in early 1995, alarmed by the risk that the surplus-producing peasants would not be able to plant during the impending spring–summer cycle. By April, representatives of 120 organizations from 20 states of the country had a meeting in Mexico City, in which they agreed to the following demands: a new agricultural policy that would reactivate the sector; the renegotiation of import quotas provided for in NAFTA, especially those for basic grains; subsidies for cereals, at least the equivalent of those provided by Mexico’s trade partners; market regulation; loans at affordable interest rates with realistic guarantees; and other demands. By May of 1995, peasants from all over the country marched on streets and roads, took over public offices, installed sit-ins, and symbolically spilled on the sidewalks tons of grain whose prices had collapsed. The most intensive mobilizations were held in Jalisco, Guanajuato, Nayarit, Sinaloa, Sonora, Puebla, and Morelos. They were encouraged

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not only by militants of national organizations like UNORCA, the Coalición de Organizaciones Democráticas Urbanas y Campesinas (CODUC – Urban and Peasant Democratic Organizations Coalition), CIOAC, and El Barzón, but also by regional groupings and some CNC groups. The 1995 mobilization yielded some successes, such as the interest payment suspension and an increase for regional crop prices, but nothing in the way of a change of strategy, an issue that the government would not even discuss. Several lessons were learned by the peasant mobilization of 1995. The platform defined in April, however, pointed toward a deep change in the country’s neoliberal direction. The movement became the first broad and national expression indicating that peasants no longer wanted to march toward the abyss created by wholesale economic liberalization. Furthermore, the forces promoting this movement constituted a broad and plural alliance which included both independent and corporatist organizations. They even had the support of some entrepreneurial sectors that had been affected by indiscriminate trade opening and deregulation. But the most important thing is that this movement led to a coordination at the economic-sector level of cereal-producing regional organizations. This led to the formation of the Asociación Nacional de Empresas Comercializadoras de Productores del Campo (ANEC – National Association of Countryside Marketing Enterprises), constituted in July 1995 by 100 regional organizations from 21 states of the republic. This association began to work at the end of the year, promoting direct marketing mechanisms. It also sought the transfer to peasant organizations of the infrastructure of the formerly state-run Conasupo (Almacenes Nacionales de Depósito S.A. and Bodegas Rurales Conasupo S.A.), which the government was privatizing. In other words, when the state wanted to simply dismantle or privatize state agencies, the peasant organization posited itself as an alternative to run them. By the start of the new millennium, ANEC had an organizational and marketing presence in 19 states, in which 220 local organizations and 16 regional and state networks operated. It had marketing enterprises, training services, peasant organization consulting, management and promotion, maize industrial processing, and the manufacture and sale of tortillas. At the end of 2002 and beginning of 2003, ANEC was one of the promoters of the greatest peasant mobilization in decades, MCAM. This movement broadened and deepened the spirit of the 1995 mobilization (Bartra 2003c). Coffee producers underwent an organizational process parallel to that of cereal growers, but one that had started somewhat earlier. With

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a predominantly export crop, their crisis had started in 1988, when the World Coffee Organization (WCO) suspended its economic agreements and functioning. The WCO had regulated coffee prices and fixed export quotas for decades. At the national level, in 1989, the state dismantled the Instituto Mexicano del Café (Inmecafé – Mexican Coffee Institute), which not only granted export certification and permits, but since the 1960s had also intervened decisively in financing, storage, industrialization, and marketing of this peasant crop. Thus, since the 1970s, regional organizations of coffee growers had struggled together against the failures and deviations of Inmecafé. In 1989 they founded the Coordinadora Nacional de Organizaciones Cafetaleras (CNOC – National Coordinator of Coffee Growers’ Organizations). Initially, CNOC was the meeting ground of other growers affiliated to CIOAC, UNORCA, and other organizations with a national-level presence. With about 25 organizations in six states of the republic, CNOC became the government’s inescapable interlocutor with whom a ‘soft landing’ had to be agreed for the deregulation process already underway. CNOC promoted the creation of a marketing company, a trademark of roasted coffee, and, in 1994, a dollar-denominated loan that became a big blow with the December peso devaluation. Alianza Café, a new government program, was not really a development plan. It did manage, nonetheless, to get the corporatist regional organizations into the patron-client networks of state subsidies, while those that were independently constituted took advantage of the ephemeral price bonanza in the mid-1990s to consolidate their export strategies. By the end of the 1990s, however, world coffee prices dropped again and local and state organizations that had been barely scraping by took it upon themselves to reactivate CNOC. This organization had the necessary national presence to struggle for a true state policy on coffee. This time coffee growers affiliated to CIOAC, and even those in the corporatist CNC affiliated to its Unión Nacional de Productores del Café (UNPC – National Coffee Producers’ Union), joined in. Along with medium- and large-size growers they constituted the Coffee Growers’ Organizations National Forum in 1997 to represent the interests of primary producers before industrial buyers. Finally, in March of 2000, peasant coffee growers engaged in a national mobilization that took about 2500 producers (mostly from Oaxaca, Chiapas, and Puebla) to Mexico City. With the favorable political opportunity of imminent presidential elections at stake, they managed to agree on an emergency coffee program with the government.

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Thus, CNOC coffee growers reproduced the course followed by cereal farmers, finally organized in ANEC. Their mobilizations sought alliances with official, corporatist organizations and with capitalist farmers, in the understanding that the effects of anti-agrarian policy did not make affiliation or size distinctions. At the end of 2002, CNOC was among the organizations promoting MCAM, the great national convergence of peasant and farmer groups. The trend to constitute national-level organizations on the basis of their specific crops was not only present for cereal and coffee growers. Forestry communities also created the Red Mexicana de Organizaciones Campesinas Forestales (Red Mocaf – Mexican Network of Peasant Forestry Organizations), in 1994. With the same logic, another nationallevel coalition around loan services was AMUCSS, established in 1992. The organic nature of the peasant crisis became clearly expressed in the fact that of the 32 Credit Unions that initially constituted this organization, only 18 were in operation and most of those were practically bankrupt by 1995. The networks organized according to their specialization in a productive or service area were, in most cases, UNORCA splinters. They were regional organizations that came together at the national level along their specific sector interests. Like UNORCA, the specialized networks adopted the organizational form of ‘coordinators’, a model that was first promoted by CNPA (CNPA 1982, 2003). This was a front organization which emerged at the end of the 1970s as the mobilization linkage among dozens of regional organizations that struggled for land and operated with a collegiate directorate. The CNPA respected the autonomy of affiliate organizations and promoted horizontal exchanges among their grass roots, which marked a radical distinction from the vertical, hierarchic, and centralized paradigm of trade organizations introduced by the post-revolutionary state. These corporatist organizations were geared to facilitating the political control of their constituencies and their operation as transmission belts of governmental directives (Mackinlay and Otero 2004). In fact, the only active independent peasant organization that carries the name of ‘Central’ is one of the oldest: CIOAC, founded in 1975 as such. In contrast to multi-sector coordinating organizations, which became multidimensional in establishing diverse regional networks and had a more or less integral perspective, sectoral-convergence organizations around a given product or function were specialized and this facilitated a greater technical development. Theoretically, national-level organizations that converged on the defense of producers of certain crops or

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providers of certain services might promote a greater plurality. This fact represented another contrast with multifunctional coordinators, which united their members by ideology and project. Generally, however, national-level, sector-based organizations united those that were ideologically similar, so that representation of a sector involved the confluence of diverse groupings. Such is the case of the Coffee Forum, for example, constituted by CNOC, but also by CIOAC and UNPC among others. Just as the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN – Zapatista National Liberation Army) and the Congreso Nacional Indígena (CNI – National Indigenous Congress) are at the forefront of Indianist struggle (Bartra 2003b; Bartra and Otero 2005), the main organizational emblem of the Mestizo rural movement of the 1990s was El Barzón (this organization’s name comes from a widely known popular song that alludes to unpayable debts). This was a reactive, multiclass, and plural convergence unleashed by rich farmers and testifying to the gravity of the rural crisis and the extent of how exclusionary it became: even welloff farmers could not cope in the neoliberal context (Mestries 1997; González 2004). In August 1993, El Barzón took over Guadalajara’s main square with 110 tractors from the south and the coastal regions of the state of Jalisco. The ‘Guadalajara takeover’ by well-off farmers lasted 52 long days. They were proud and hard-working entrepreneurs that a few years back could almost touch the sky and were now de-capitalized and heavily indebted. Their demands included increased support for the countryside, a halt to agricultural imports and debt renegotiation. Some of them were CNC members; others were affiliated to the National Confederation of Small Rural Property Owners and others to the National Livestock Grazers Confederation. Some belonged to the PRI, others to the PAN, the PRD or even the Mexican Democratic Party of religious and right-wing origins. The El Barzón State Federation of Agricultural Producers was constituted in September 1993 and Jalisco farmers were not the only ones who joined. Similar initiatives emerged in the states of Chihuahua, Sonora, Aguascalientes, Zacatecas, and Guanajuato. By November, a National Confederation was formed which, as a result of the rupture between the Jalisco and Zacatecas factions in August of 1994, resulted in another grouping with representation from 14 states: The National Union of Agricultural, Commercial and Industrial Producers and Service Providers, ‘El Barzón’. El Barzón brought together northern and western Mestizos and ranchers who had been hit hard by indiscriminate trade opening and the

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financial crisis. They came out to supplement a declining peasant mobilization almost at the same time that southeastern indigenous communities in Chiapas made the dramatic announcement of their presence with an armed insurrection. On 6 December 1994, El Barzón marched from Queretaro to Mexico City demanding a debt-moratorium law; the rebel tractors entered the capital for the first time. In 1996 the agrarian section of El Barzón held a congress with 5000 delegates from 25 of 32 states of the republic. It brought together maize growers from Mexico State and Guerrero, bean growers from Zacatecas, sorghum growers from central Mexico, avocado producers from Michoacán, pineapple producers from Oaxaca, citrus producers from Veracruz, and many others. Large entrepreneurs and medium-sized ranchers and peasants gathered, all of them financial victims of the dramatic changes in Banrural, the government’s rural development bank, at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s. Through spectacular actions, El Barzón achieved, among other things, the suspension of farm seizures by the banks, devolution of their goods, and subsidized electrical energy. But its demands were soon expanded to include food sovereignty and the declaration of an agricultural and livestock emergency. Promoting a National Front for the Defense of the Countryside, it launched joint mobilizations with CIOAC, CNPA, UCD, UGOCP, the Unión Nacional de Trabajadores Agrícolas (UNTA – Agricultural Workers National Union), CODUC and in 2002 El Barzón became one of the first organizations to join MCAM’s mobilizations.

Rising from the ashes: MCAM, or the countryside can take no more! movement One hundred thousand voices sung in unison ‘The countryside can take no more!’ in Mexico City’s historical center. Most of them were peasants who once again put the rural movement on the front pages on 31 January 2003. This was not the first march. In early December of 2002 over 3000 small farmers marched for several days to public offices, to the Lower Chamber of Congress and the US Embassy in Mexico City. By mid-December El Barzón horse riders forcefully entered the legislative palace of San Lázaro. Their demands were summed up in six proposals. The central demand was a moratorium on NAFTA’s agricultural provisions; the rural movement also demanded more fiscal resources and better public policies, security, food innocuousness and quality, and the recognition of the rights and culture of indigenous peoples. This platform was sustained by 12 dissimilar organizations that had been allied since November 2002: CIOAC, CNPA, FDCCH, UNORCA, CNOC, Red

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Mocaf, AMUCSS, ANEC, CODUC, Oaxaca State Coordinator of Coffee Producers, CEPCO, the Community Forestry Union of National Organizations, UNOFOC, and the Frente Nacional de Defensa del Campo Mexicano (FNDCM – National Mexican Countryside Defense Front). In the short term, the movement responded to three issues: First, according to NAFTA, on 1 January 2003 the remaining agricultural tariffs would be eliminated for all agricultural and livestock products except for maize, beans, sugar, and powdered milk. Second, the new US Farm Bill of 2002 increased subsidies for US farmers by about 80 percent. Finally, President Vicente Fox’s proposed budget for 2003 reduced the share for rural Mexico by 7 percent in real terms. By December 2002 the lower chamber of Congress granted an additional 13 billion pesos in resources for the countryside, but did nothing about NAFTA. By January, then, mobilization was renewed by the symbolic takeover of the International Bridge of Ciudad Juárez, connecting Mexico with El Paso, Texas. Demonstrations were held in several states and the movement’s leadership launched a hunger strike in Mexico City. By then peasant organizations like El Barzón and UNTA had joined the struggle, while even the corporatist CAP flirted with the 12 allied groups. In parallel, agreements were being reached with working class forces like the Unión Nacional de Trabajadores (UNT – National Workers’ Union) and public support at large was being called upon in diverse forums. After sustained mobilization for three months, a National Agreement for the Countryside was finally reached with the government on 27 April 2003. The agreement publicly recognized the rural crisis and the need for a new state policy. Specifically, it recognized the need to exclude white corn and beans from NAFTA and, while this was being negotiated with the trade partners, to unilaterally control imports. It established the urgency of a multiyear law for agricultural planning to promote food self-sufficiency, as well as deep institutional and normative reforms of state agencies and programs. For the short term, the agreement assigned an additional three million pesos to the countryside (a mere US$273 thousand) and a commission was constituted to monitor the implementation of the agreement which was to operate for the following five months. Was this the beginning of a historical turn for the countryside? That depends on the movement’s capacity to monitor the few agreements and continue the struggle for the many unaccomplished demands. The most outstanding aspect of MCAM, however, is that it represented nothing less than the political-cultural constitution of the Mexican peasantry as a class. If we define class not merely as a structural position in production relations but as a process by which men and women

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articulate a common identity as the result of common experiences, then the 2002–2003 winter mobilization in Mexico was a great step toward building a peasant-class identity and its political constitution. This was precisely the feat achieved by the organizations that made up the MCAM: to gather groups with agrarianist roots, such as CIOAC, and others with a productively oriented tradition, such as UNORCA; to assemble under the same umbrella the always poor that militate in CNPA and the new poor lined up in El Barzón; to combine the knowledge of commercial cereal growers of ANEC with the financial acumen of AMUCSS, with the forestry and environmental insight of Red Mocaf, and with CNOC’s expertise in organic crops and fair-trade markets. With such a critical mass it was not hard to carry to this convergence even with the official CAP members, or even to cohabit with the rheumatic brontosaur that is the CNC. It was not even too complicated to integrate a common platform, the Peasant Plan for the Twenty-First Century, and to work as a bloc in the multilateral negotiation with the government. This was a class convergence, with a class program, and a class negotiation. These achievements were reached not because the organizations were intransigent but because they were comprehensive; not because they were fierce but because they were inclusive. As well, the achievements were reached because they were deep, radical, and went to the bottom of things. At this bottom is the inhospitable and predatory model adopted by the neoliberal technocrats in the 1980s. What unites Mexican peasants today, the very condition of the possibility for their convergence, is the economic, social, and political exclusion shared by all workers of rural origin. Therefore, the winter mobilization constituted the slow but blunt peasant response to the agrocide started 15 years earlier. MCAM is the heir and prolongation of broad convergence organizations such as CAU, Monarca, and COA, which aborted at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s thanks to the clientelistic artfulness of Carlos Salinas. While MCAM’s struggle was clearly focused on national-level politics, it also paid attention to global resistance. Thus, it displayed outstanding participation in the protest against the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Cancún in 2003, demanding that food be taken out of the WTO’s reach. UNORCA was a major organizer of this protest, as the Mexican arm of the world network Vía Campesina. The question remains whether MCAM has managed to encompass a substantial majority of the peasantry in its midst, and whether its focus on negotiating with the state has been successful.

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Conclusions: Has the peasantry achieved its political-cultural formation? As we have argued elsewhere (Bartra and Otero 2005), the missing piece of the peasant puzzle in MCAM has been the Indian-movement organizations. To be sure, indigenous producers’ organizations were clearly linked to MCAM, as they have always been to any broad-based rural struggle. But, again, these were the economic-corporate organizations of direct producers. The national-level organizations that have struggled specifically for the rights and culture of indigenous peoples as such, namely the EZLN and CNI, were absent from this struggle. It could be that they were still digesting their legislative setback of 2001, when the Mexican Congress passed considerably watered-down indigenous legislation that did not satisfy their core demands around indigenous autonomy (Harvey 2002; Otero and Jugenitz 2003; Otero 2004a). An alternative and more plausible explanation is that the national-level indigenous organizations have a longer-term perspective than MCAM, on one hand, and, on the other, that indigenous organizations focus their struggle on different parts of the state. Let us explain these differences, as they will allow us to answer the question of whether the Mexican peasantry has achieved political-cultural formation as a class. From our foregoing discussion, it should be clear that a central component of peasant struggles generally regards the preservation of their independence from the state and their autonomy from political parties. Independence from the state is critical for organizations to sustain their struggles with a focus on peasant interests, rather than becoming co-opted by the state. In the latter outcome, while the organization may still be able to receive some concessions from the state, the main dynamics in the peasant–state relationship become peasant subordination and political loyalty to the state. Co-optation, then, amounts to a bourgeois-hegemonic political outcome. An organization that remains independent, by contrast, can both extract favorable state policies and retain organizational independence. This is a critical component for any group, community, or class to become constituted as a politicalcultural actor. In turn, such a political-cultural actor can develop the strength and mobilization to promote popular-democratic policies to be implemented by the state (Otero 1999, 2004a). Organizational autonomy from political parties has also been a central concern in Mexico since the 1970s, given that most parties tended to subordinate the struggles of each and all of the mass organizations affiliated or identified with them to the overall political goals of the

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party. Depending on each party’s degree of internal democracy (if any), its overall political goals may have been determined primarily by its leaders but rarely by its rank and file, including the members of peasant organizations. Furthermore, the leaders of mass organizations have traditionally been co-opted by political parties, by accepting party or government positions. This dynamic has deprived their organizations and grass-roots constituencies of adequate representation vis-à-vis the state and other institutions, which sets them up for organizational co-optation. The co-optation dynamic has been so prominent in Mexican politics that even the MCAM, that seemed so vigorous, ended up fragmented by 2004, only two years after its emergence. One of the key explanations for this fragmentation is that various leaders of the constituting regional organizations ended up giving in to small state concessions, as they felt they had to ‘deliver’ concrete gains to their constituencies (Celis Callejas 2005). But such short-term, economic-corporate gains have two main kinds of results: on one hand, the long-term demobilization of the group that becomes co-opted; on the other, the fragmentation of a nationallevel organization that could potentially encompass the entire peasant class. The fact that national-level indigenous organizations have a longerterm perspective than MCAM is highlighted by the fact that their struggle also has a different kind of focus. Apart from the economiccorporate struggles of local and regional indigenous organizations, which have indeed been present in national peasant mobilization, those with a national coverage have focused most prominently on issues of autonomy and indigenous rights and culture (Díaz-Polanco 1992, 1997; Díaz-Polanco and López Rivas 1994; Díaz Polanco and Sánchez 2003; Bartra and Otero 2005). Furthermore, while this struggle must be won in the institutions of political society, or the state in strict sense, this does not have to be achieved directly or by becoming co-opted. In fact, since the 1994 EZLN uprising, the focus of indigenous mobilization has been civil society: they attempt to consolidate civil society so that those who rule ‘govern by obeying’ (mandar obedeciendo). Considering that the EZLN has received the support of most indigenous peoples in Mexico, most recently for its Sixth Declaration from the Lacandón Jungle (CCRI-EZLN 2005) and for ‘the other campaign’, we can assume that they also agree with the main locus of its struggle, civil society. The EZLN has said repeatedly that it is not struggling for state power. Rather, it focuses on strengthening civil society to counteract the overbearing power of the state. As Alain Touraine has put it, the future

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challenge for the EZLN is immense: to reject the possibility both of local isolation and of dilution into a great political party, while trying to turn the indigenous movement into a force for the renovation of Mexican democracy (cited in Martinez and Mergier 2001: 34). By focusing on ‘the other campaign’, which consists of consolidating a broad-based social movement of subordinate groups and classes, the Zapatistas are trying to ensure that any politician or political party that gains office will become accountable to society. In fact, the ‘other campaign’ is not only about building a coalition of the peasantry as a class, but a coalition that brings together all of the exploited and oppressed people in Mexico. The question remains of what kind of bridges will be necessary to build between this kind of perspective and that of the majority of popular organizations, used to focusing on political society and the politics of patronage and clientelism. How can the indigenous movement’s focus on civil society be articulated to those that are concerned with and hopeful for getting better politicians elected to office? Judging by what happened in the 2006 electoral conjuncture, one can say that the indigenous movement failed to establish such articulation. By choosing to stay on the sidelines of the political process, while the social left focused on civil society and the types of coalitionbuilding detailed in Massicotte’s chapter, the political left was weakened and incapable of resisting the fraudulent electoral process. The PAN remained entrenched in power while hardening its neoliberal positions. On 31 January 2008, the peasant movement still managed to gather about 200,000 demonstrators in Mexico City, in protest against NAFTA’s 14th-year provision to liberalize the last remaining commodities: maize, beans, sugar, and powdered milk. Whether this mobilization was the last gasp of a dying peasant movement, many of whose members have migrated North, or the beginning of a new awakening remains to be seen.

6 Contentious Politics in Mexico: Democratization and Mobilizations after NAFTA Jorge Cadena-Roa

The contemporary social movement sector in Mexico is developing itself in conditions of sharp subsystem differentiation between market, state, and society that translate into increased economic rationality, electoral democracy, and the emergence of a politics of citizenship. The introduction of market-oriented policies in Mexico started in the mid-1980s. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), along with other major reforms and international agreements, institutionalized and locked-in market-oriented policies. In this chapter the question is, has the economic transition (from import substitution to exports; from protectionism to free trade; from a state-led to a market-oriented economy) been a source of grievances for the population at large? How has the population responded to these changes in state–economy and state–society relations? To understand popular contention after NAFTA was signed, we briefly review how state–society relations have changed, and then analyze in more detail four recent social movements (El Barzón, the Zapatista uprising, the Atenco movement, and the student strike at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México [UNAM – National Autonomous University of Mexico]), to illustrate and analyze the new opportunities and challenges that today face the Mexican social movement sector. Mexico’s economic integration with the US economy and the implementation of market-oriented policies did not start with the negotiation or implementation of NAFTA. It was well underway in the mid-1980s when Mexico entered the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) (1986), after a period of unilateral liberalization of its international trade. 114

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The opening of the Mexican economy, along with reforms such as the Central Bank’s autonomy from the Executive branch (1993), which gave the Bank the constitutional mandate of inflation control, institutionalized market-oriented policies. The outcome was the removal of relevant areas of policy-making from discretionary decision-making, thus assuring the business community of policy continuity despite party alternation in the executive branch of the government. Following the implementation of NAFTA, Mexico signed a partnership agreement with the European Union (1997) that established a Free Trade Area. These market-oriented policies offered to the Mexican development strategy a decisive break with the past, marking the end of a populist, nationalist, protectionist, and state-led development. When the NAFTA project came to light and the United States, Canada, and Mexico started negotiations, there was concern in Mexico regarding the negative impact the trilateral agreement have on issues such as labor, the environment, migration, human rights, and autonomy in the production of staple foods such as corn, beans, and milk (Carlsen, Wise and Salazar 2003). These concerns were based on the economic, social, and institutional asymmetries between Mexico, on the one hand, and Canada and the United States on the other. Moreover, the ability to protect Mexican interests was thought to be compromised by Mexico’s endemic corruption, conducive to the bribing of police, judges, lawmakers, and officers at all levels. On the other side, Mexico brought to the table lower wages, plenty of natural resources (such as oil and gas), less strict (or unenforced) environmental laws, and tax breaks. The chapter in this book by McBride analyzes in detail NAFTA’s impact on members’ economies. As expected, the review is mixed, as there have been winners and losers in the process (Chambers and Smith 2002). Well before NAFTA was even conceived, Mexico was in the process of transition from authoritarianism to democracy. In fact, a political reform was passed in 1977 that started a slow and erratic process toward the opening of the party system, the establishment of competitive elections, and the opening of the legislative branch to the opposition (Labastida and López 2004). The transition to democracy in Mexico resulted from a long and complex process of contestation between elites and within elites, popular movements, and political parties. The manipulation of electoral processes was confronted by coalitions of movements and parties demanding the enforcement of the rules of institutional politics by noninstitutional means. In the process, different groups built alternative and independent networks of trust (social

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organizations and political parties) that urged the implementation of legal-institutional reforms to protect citizens’ rights. The transition to democracy required the formation of an institutional framework to support a truly competitive multiparty system with free and fair elections; an institutional framework to protect citizens’ rights to freedom from arbitrary action by government agents; and limitations to government unresponsiveness and unaccountability. This process produced a search for autonomy that rejected the government’s disposition to accommodate challengers’ demands in exchange for subordination or at least partial support for the state party – the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI – Instituional Revolutionary Party). The emergence of uncooptable leaders, groups, and networks expressed itself through demands for organizational autonomy and independence from the state and the PRI (Cadena-Roa 2003). Democratization came to fruition once the PRI acknowledged the loss of the 2000 presidential election and stepped down peacefully from the federal executive branch – after a world record of 71 uninterrupted years of government. Economic transition, and state withdrawal from market regulation and distribution of consumption subsidies, has caused hardship to wageearners since the mid-1980s (Lustig 1994). On top of that, NAFTA has posed major challenges to several economic sectors, among them, the subsistence production of corn and staple foods, which provides the livelihood of millions of poor peasants. Nonetheless, economic grievances did not translate into protests for material demands. There is enough evidence to make the case that social movements in Mexico came to demand civil and political rights with the same (or even higher) intensity as social rights – even in the face of economic hardship. Using qualitative methods, Tamayo (1999) found out that during the period he refers to as the ‘transition from populism to neo-liberalism’ (approximately from 1968 to 1988), there were important changes in elites’ and social movements’ demands. Regarding the latter, once the neo-liberal policies were introduced, the demands for civil and political rights were considered as important as social rights. Using quantitative methods, Wada (2004) confirms Tamayo’s findings. With the introduction of neoliberalism, ‘Mexicans came to realize that their everyday needs and redistributive demands would not be satisfied without dealing with undemocratic political system’ (Wada 2004: 241). Thus, social movements, which had prioritized social rights over other rights, came to emphasize political rights in a context of economic transformation:

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undemocratic arrangements were the reason why they were unable to realize their material or political goals. Cadena-Roa (1988) also found that, from 1984 on, protest activities against price hikes and austerity policies lost their impulse, while protest activities related to electoral contests increased dramatically. Thus, even in the face of major economic restructuring, there have not been social movements challenging the state, toppling elected heads of state, and producing major political crises, as we have witnessed in several Latin American countries in the last decades. Even in the face of economic grievances there have been democratic achievements and institutional changes that have met social movements’ demands. Thus, well before NAFTA was signed, important changes were underway in the economic, social, and political relations that had dominated Mexico for decades. There have been adaptive strategies from all actors involved in contentious politics that have changed them – as it could be expected by a number of reasons. Routine and nonroutine politics are extremes of a continuum rather than unrelated poles (Goldstone 1998); thus, changes in routine politics are expected to change nonroutine politics. Democratization requires that some groups push for it in a way that overcomes resistance from those who oppose it; once achieved, democracy reshapes popular contention (McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly 2001). If we think of social movements as politics by other means – the means used when routine, legal, and electoral channels are ineffective (McAdam, McCarthy and Zald 1988) – then social movements change once electoral, legal, and routine channels become more effective. In the last decades, social movements have demanded, through noninstitutional means, the enforcement of the rules of institutional politics. As a corollary, popular contention pushed for democratization and democratization has paid dividends. Changes in the social movement sector cannot be understood by only observing changes in its internal dynamics. Thus, in order to understand what has happened with the social movement sector in Mexico it is necessary to analyze some relevant changes in the movements’ political environment, and the interactions between the political environment and the movements. Movement actions affect regimes and countermovements, which, in turn, affect movements. To some extent, iteration is not merely the repetition of past behavior, but involves innovation and learning. Thus, interactions involve innovation – sometimes in unpredictable ways. Such changes may cause mutations in movements, in the environment, or in both, that may be described as a co-evolution process (Oliver and Myers 2003). Thus,

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to understand the ebb and flow of the social movement sector, we need to consider the changes in the environment. In particular, we need to analyze how changes in institutional politics have affected contentious politics. First, Mexico’s democratization means increased influence on decision-making and improved social representation. In Mexico, the closure of legal channels used to pursue popular demands pushed leaders out of legal (but not tolerated) protests into illegal ones. Authorities operating in a competitive political system have been more receptive to social demands. The system of checks and balances has started to work, and so does public opinion. There has been more transparency, public scrutiny, and demands for accountability than ever before. These changes have restrained the use of repression and the criminalization of dissent, keeping protests in legal and tolerated channels. There have been significant changes in the relations between civil society, the political system, and state institutions that allow demands to increasingly be processed through institutional means and less through contentious politics. This process is far from uniform or without exceptions. In fact, it is uneven across the nation and sometimes the institutional channels have been insufficient. Second, as authoritarianism and corporatism have receded, associational autonomy is now respected. Thus, social movement organizations (SMOs) with nonnegotiable autonomy that were routinely neglected, intervened, or harassed, now can carry out their activities more freely and build networks with other SMOs. Clientelistic patronage has been considerably reduced, and democratically elected officials increasingly accept citizens’ right to pursue their goals autonomously. Transition from clientelism to citizenship has been gradual and uneven. It has involved the coexistence of entrenched redoubts of authoritarianism, broad swaths of modernized semiclientelism, and enclaves of pluralist tolerance (Fox 1994). Despite the strengthening of civil society and increased electoral competition, some SMOs remain in patron-client networks closely linked to the PRI (Holzner 2004). One of the means on which corporatism relied (the exclusion clause that allowed the union bosses to fire dissidents) was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court on 17 April 2001. Corporatism and patronage have lost its grip on clients due to the lack of resources to cover its costs, and to the increased public awareness regarding their rights: people may accept handouts but still vote their conscience. Third, the presidential election of 2000 was credible and the losers conceded. President Fox took office with undisputed democratic

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legitimacy. Having clean and credible electoral processes has decreased the number and duration of the electoral conflicts, although in some recent elections conflicts arose, especially when the difference between winners and losers was slim and there was evidence of machine politics. Nonetheless, the Electoral Courts made the final decisions and protests dissipated. There is a paradox: we have a democratic regime in which the political parties cheat and break the law. Just as transitions are gradual processes, the same happens with the willingness of the political actors to honor the outcomes of democracy (Arrieta 2004). The decision not to use tactics that have paid off until recently is not immediate. That is why some parties have been reluctant to abide by the law. It seems that in most cases the rule of law has prevailed over political negotiations, but there is still dissatisfaction and concern about the quality of Mexican democracy. Fourth, the social fabric is stronger than ever before. Also, it is more autonomous and independent from the dominant corporatist social fabric. In the year 2000 there were around 11,000 civil organizations (Calvillo and Favela 2004) working on a myriad of issues and forming thematic networks (Reygadas 2004). Their importance increased to the point that several local governments opened permanent channels of communication with them and passed laws promoting their activities. These changes tend to strengthen the social networks, creating legal channels and providing incentives for participation. Many NGOs and NGO networks receive little media attention, but they definitively have social and political salience. Fifth, the authorities’ social control responses have avoided the criminalization of social conflicts. It has been documented that the use of repression when political opportunities are opened (as when regimes change) may trigger cycles of protest (Tarrow 1998). Social conflicts have been generally dealt with and solved before they turn into protests that are difficult to handle. An example of this prudent attitude was that toward the protests related to Mexico City’s new airport. Sixth, political parties have changed, though this is not readily apparent since they have kept the same names and emblems. Political parties have distanced themselves from ideological references, turning into catch-all (Kirchheimer 1980), or professional-electoral parties (Panebianco 1990). Political parties attempt to achieve state power and retain it; they rely on stable bureaucracies which depend on public financing – the amount they receive is correlated to their electoral support. Now we have an autonomous and representative multiparty system that competes in a leveled playing field for the

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popular vote, which forces them to consider voters’ perceptions and preferences. Seventh, there has been a political decentralization and diversification of the channels opened to social dissent. There are new actors and new points of entry to public concerns and influence on decision-making. A case in point is the Congress. President Fox, in his Inauguration Address, said that ‘the President proposes and Congress decides’. Ever since, there has been some protest activity directed to the Chamber of Deputies inasmuch as it decides on the allocation of resources and the passing of bills. Even the Zapatista commanders went to Congress to ensure that their voices were heard regarding the indigenous bill. The opposition parties in the Chamber of Deputies blocked the passage of several bills and constitutional reforms that arguably would have caused adverse social responses, such as taxes on food and medicine and private investment in the oil and energy sectors. The Judiciary is also more autonomous and willing to exert their constitutional mandate. The courts and the Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos (CNDH – National Human Rights Commission) are in better shape to protect citizens’ rights from government abuse. Increasingly, SMOs resort to conventional repertoires of protest, combining them now with legal action through the courts. Finally, there are new opportunities for international cooperation among different groups that confront similar challenges. As discussed elsewhere in this book, Mexican organizations are linked with international organizations more intensely than ever before (Massicotte 2004). There has been increased international scrutiny regarding human rights abuses in Mexico. The Acteal massacre and the imprisonment of environmental activists Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera were known shortly after taking place and were immediately condemned. The availability of international advocacy networks has been instrumental to transforming internal abuses into international queries and embarrassment for the Mexican authorities, forcing them to change their policies.

Social movements in recent years All of the above have made social movements less frequent and less radical. In order to illustrate the interactions between the social movement sector and its environment, this section reviews four cases: El Barzón, la Zapatista uprising, the Atenco movement, and the student strike at the UNAM.

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El Barzón As discussed in the chapter in this book by Otero and Bartra, El Barzón emerged in August 1993 as a regional movement in Jalisco. It was organized by medium- and large-scale farmers who had benefited from earlier protectionist policies, but who now, because of the liberalization of agricultural markets and the end of production and consumer subsidies, faced a plunge in sales and profits. To face the situation, loans were obtained to make investments that would allow them to improve their position in the market. Their indebtedness, on top of falling sales, put some of the most modern Mexican farmers on the brink of bankruptcy. These farmers were part of the corporatist structure of the authoritarian regime that exchanged benefits for political subordination. The corporatist arrangements implied that many farmers would not repay to the development banks large amounts of the loans they received. The banks, in turn, were not very persistent in pursuing repayment, because agricultural credit was considered a subsidy (Carton 2001: 45). As with other corporatist organizations, farmers realized that their political influence diminished as their manipulation by the government increased. The last concessions the farmers received from this relationship was the ending of land distribution and the 1992 Constitutional Amendment that applied market relations to communal property. In this way, the economic transition resulted in the deterioration of corporativism and encouraged its substitution with government–citizen relations. This process occurred parallel to the strengthening of the party system and the electoral arena. The year 1994 was particularly difficult for Mexico. On 21 August, general elections for the presidency of the Republic, Congress, and governors of several states would be held, opening political opportunities for a number of institutional and informal actors who wanted to have their voice heard and to influence the outcome. On 1 January, when NAFTA was implemented, an uprising was carried out by indigenous people in Chiapas. On 23 March PRI’s presidential candidate, a favorite to win the election, was assassinated. On 28 September the General Secretary of the PRI was assassinated. To end the year, three weeks after the inauguration of the Zedillo administration, a severe monetary crisis threatened the recently privatized banking system with bankruptcy. It is difficult to exaggerate the severity of the situation, where in the year of transferring powers, political violence was synchronized with economic instability. The December 1994 peso devaluation expanded El Barzón’s constituency, from a few thousand regionally concentrated farmers, to include some 500,000 debtors nation-wide, including not only farmers

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but also urban entrepreneurs and common consumers who had borrowed with the expectation of fairly stable interest rates. The sudden devaluation of the peso (in just a few days, it lost 60 percent of its value against the dollar) caused the increase of floating interest rates (which reached annual interest rates of 90 percent and more). In this situation, hundreds of thousands of debtors could not pay down their loans, increasing the banks’ past-due loan portfolio. The situation was so dire that the Mexican government obtained a US$50 billion rescue package put together by the IMF, the World Bank, and the United States. Treasury to avoid greater instability in the financial global markets. The Mexican economy contracted. Value-added tax was raised from 10 percent to 15 percent. Salaries were capped by official accords signed by peak associations of labor and business. El Barzón combined an ample repertoire of protests with problemsolving negotiations; it provided professional legal services to defend its members, and promoted legal reforms against usury and repossession of what were defined as ‘family assets’. El Barzón not only tried to influence the executive branch, the central bank, and private banks, but also requested the mediation of political parties, Congress, Supreme Court, the Catholic church, the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN – Zapatista National Liberation Army), and business organizations; designed methods of civil resistance for short-term protection against lender repossession of properties whose owners were in default; created alliances with other social organizations and tried to create a broad front for opposition to the economic model; and built international liaisons with Mexican migrants in California. El Barzón constituted itself as a civic movement defending citizen’s rights against government arbitrariness and market instability. El Barzón was created to counter the threats of sudden unpayable debts and repossessions of family assets. It was not ideological or dependent on political parties. This allowed El Barzón to forge coalitions with groups on the left and on the right, without engendering deep loyalty and regard on either side. The way it combined contentious and institutional politics to reach precise objectives brought it closer to the political parties. This provoked a split in the organization. One group, El Barzón–Unión, allowed its members to participate in electoral politics as individuals, not in behalf of the organization. Another group, El Barzón–Confederación, preferred that its members stayed away from the political parties. As many debtors joined El Barzón out of their need for asset protection and collective representation, the constituency of the organization was rolling, not cumulative. The movement decline started

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when members restructured their own debt successfully and returned to their farms or business. On the other hand, thousands of legal injunctions issued from 1995 to 1998, based on the claim that charging interest on interest was unconstitutional, were dismissed once the Supreme Court ruled that compound interest was legal. Under these conditions, obtaining power through public office became appealing, but broke the unity of the movement. El Barzón–Unión opted to move closer to the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD – Party of the Democratic Revolution), which ran 20 El Barzón leaders as candidate in the 1997 mid-term elections. Three of these were voted into Congress, where they pushed for Committee investigations of graft and fraud in the banking and government sectors and formed a coalition to oppose the conversion of bad debt acquired by the government into public debt. Nonetheless, at the end of 1998, legislators converted US$60 billion in bad loans, which were covered by the government’s bank insurance fund, into public debt (Carton 2001; Williams 2001). Within three years of the 1994 crisis, many opposition party members were elected to local and national office. Most notably, the PRD won the first election for Mexico City government in 1997 and the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN – National Action Party) won the presidency of the republic in 2000.

The Zapatista uprising In 1994, the year began with NAFTA’s implementation and the peasant revolt in the highlands of Chiapas headed by the EZLN. The Zapatista uprising attracted immediate national and international attention and support; the movement exposed the inequality, oppression, and exploitation of the Mayan peasants of the region. The uprising was opposed by military mobilization and caused a crisis within the governing elites: the Secretary of Interior and the Governor of the Chiapas took leaves of absence. The government offered a unilateral cease of fire, which was accepted on 12 January 1994 by the EZLN. This put an end to the military confrontation and began the negotiation process under conditions of ‘armed peace’. The Zapatista uprising also brought to light the fact that the party system was not sufficiently representative and that the electoral system was not trusted. Thus, the Zapatistas challenged not only the state, but also the political parties. The Salinas government – whose election was questioned by all opposition parties – promoted electoral reforms in 1990 and 1993. Both reforms were approved by a PRI and PAN majority; the PRD did not

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approve them, alleging that they fell short of guaranteeing fair elections. With the uprising in Chiapas, it became crucial that electoral results were accepted by all political parties, and above all, by the main left-wing party, the PRD. The Zapatista armed challenge catalyzed the organization of fair elections. On 18 January, in an unprecedented meeting, leaders of the three main political parties (PRI, PAN, and PRD) discussed the conditions under which the general election would be held. The president of the PRD, Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, clearly expressed the dilemma the country faced: if violence was not the way to correct injustice, then elections should be fair and yield transparent and credible results that ‘guarantee the unquestionable legitimacy of the Republic’s institutions’ and prevent ‘a cycle of illegitimacy and discord’ (Alcocer 1994: 7–8). He further insisted, ‘If the armed way is not advisable, then it has to be clear to the citizens that there is an absolutely expeditious way to change and alternate power: the way of suffrage’ (Alcocer 1994: 17). A few days after this meeting, on 27 January, the Pact for Peace, Democracy and Justice was signed by all political parties and their candidates to the presidency of the republic. The agreement considered that the most important problems the country faced were to reestablish peace and justice and to ‘have an impartial election, in 1994, acceptable to all citizens and political forces in Mexico’. If this latter objective was achieved, democracy would ‘close the road to all forms of violence’ (Voz y Voto 1994). A new electoral reform (the third) was passed by the Salinas government, barely three months before the general election. On 11 March 1995, Congress passed the Law of Concord and Pacification and created the Commission of Concord and Pacification (COCOPA), made up of legislators from all the parliamentary fractions. Representatives of the federal government and the EZLN initiated negotiations that culminated in the Agreements on Indigenous Rights and Culture of San Andrés Larráinzar (6 February 1996). The COCOPA translated these agreements into a bill that President Zedillo refused to send to Congress. This was interpreted as a refusal by the government to honor its word; consequently the EZLN refused to continue the peace talks. That was the situation when Vicente Fox was running for President and promised to solve the Zapatista conflict in 15 minutes. Once he took office, President Fox sent the COCOPA Bill to Congress (5 December 2000). The Rally for Indigenous Dignity, headed by several guerrilla commanders, left the conflict area on 24 February 2001 with the

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intention of making their case before Congress. The rally covered 13 states, holding public meetings in all of them (Pérez 2005). The Zapatistas addressed Congress on 28 March. Nevertheless, the Senate passed a Constitutional Amendment that differed from the COCOPA Bill on important issues such as communal autonomy. Thereafter, only 19 state legislatures voted for the amendment. Additionally, 325 constitutional challenges to the approval procedures were filed by states and municipalities. The law in reference was published 14 August 2001. Since it differed from what was agreed upon between the EZLN and the government, the former refused to reopen peace talks. A final peace agreement has not been reached. Despite this, the EZLN practically disappeared from the government’s agenda following the climax of the Rally for Indigenous Dignity. On the other hand, the EZLN announced, in August 2003, the formation of five Caracoles (literally ‘Snails’) – autonomous local government units – that would bring together 27 Zapatista municipalities. Although these forms of local self-government are not supported by law, they have been tolerated.

San Salvador Atenco versus the airport It was well known in early 2001 that the Fox administration was considering two sites for the construction of a new international airport in Mexico City: Tizayuca, Hidalgo, and Texcoco, State of Mexico. Only the technical and economical aspects of the project were considered; its social and political dimensions were disregarded. The Fox administration did not even considered that the ejidatarios could be opposed the expropriation of their land in exchange for a ridiculously small payment; even worse, it was taken for granted that they would welcome the project as a prize – the airport construction was announced as the most important project of the sexenio. The Fox administration announced that the new airport would be built in Texcoco, and decreed the expropriation of 5391 hectares in 13 ejidos (SEGOB 2001). The ejidatarios were not pleased with the decision and opposed the expropriation through both contentious and institutional means (Hernández Santiago 2004). The most visible and publicized methods were the contentious ones: blockades of federal highways, rallies of ejidatarios carrying sticks and machetes, occupation and closure of public buildings, detention of officials and private contractors, and barricades in the towns’ main arteries. The institutional means were less visible but not less effective. The ejidatarios benefited from the partisan differences among the three heads of government

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involved in the dispute (the PAN in the federal government, the PRI in the State of Mexico, and the PRD in Mexico City, who sided with the ejidatarios), and filed lawsuits demanding the suspension of the expropriation decree. International ecological groups visited the expropriated ejidos and declared that the airport project violated the Environmental Cooperation Agreement, which was part of NAFTA. Representatives of the United Nations Human Rights Commission also visited the ejidos and expressed concern about the violation of human rights. The Agrarian Reform Commission of the Chamber of Deputies declared legitimate the ejidatarios’ demands and exhorted President Fox to negotiate. However, authorities in the State of Mexico had a strong hand and repressive attitude. The State Prosecutor requested judicial orders for the arrest of several ejidatarios accused of illegal detention, injuries, and blockades to public buildings. A clash between the ejidatarios and the police took place on 11 July 2002, with nearly 30 ejidatarios were injured, 19 disappeared, and 3 policemen were wounded. During the protests against repression, the ejidatarios blocked a highway, burned three police cars, and held 13 governmental employees, threatening to burn them alive if the government did not meet their claims. Yet, the state government detained 14 ejidatarios on counts of robbery, riot, and blockades of highways, announcing that there would be no negotiations with the protestors. The ejidatarios refused to continue talks with the state government, and requested direct talks with the federal government. Ultimately, the conflict and violence had risen to such a level that people feared repression was around the corner. Instead, however, there was an ‘exchange of prisoners’: the ejidatarios released the civil employees in exchange for the withdrawal of police forces, the medical attention of the wounded, the cancellation of the apprehension orders, and the formation of a commission of deputies and senators, and public dialogue. On 14 July the Fox administration announced that it would directly handle the conflict, pushing aside the Mexico State’s authorities. It was also announced that the airport would be built only if the ejidatarios agreed with it. In a last attempt to move ahead with the project, the government raised its offer of compensation for the expropriation from 7.20 to 50.00 pesos per square meter. The ejidatarios held firm on their refusal to accept compensation. Finally, on 1 August, the Fox administration cancelled the airport project. The combination of popular mobilization, powerful allies, partisan divisions, competition between governments and the use of the courts seem to be behind the ejidatarios victory.

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The student strike at the UNAM The 1999–2000 student strike in the UNAM is a good counter-example to the tendencies observed in the three social movements reviewed above. Its analysis provides a contrasting case that allows us to assess some of the characteristics social movements have acquired in the last decade. After almost 13 years of calm on the campus, the UNAM authorities tried to increase tuition rates. The annual tuition for a bachelor’s degree had been 200 pesos since 1948 (the equivalent of 44.4 working days at the minimum wage for 1948) (Covarrubias 2000). Nonetheless, decades of inflation in the country reduced this fee to 20 cents by 1999 (the daily minimum wage was 31.91 pesos in 1999). The university authorities, based on the principles of co-responsibility and distributive justice, and considering that most public universities of the country charged fees, tried to bring the tuition to an amount equivalent to that of 1948, in terms of the current minimum wage. The update came with a commitment: no one would be denied access to the UNAM because of economic reasons. Those students with a family income lower than four minimum wages would not pay tuition, and neither would students already registered. The new tuition rates would only apply to future freshmen. The tuition increase roused a student movement against it, just as it had every time the authorities tried to do so in the past. The movement’s origin does not explain its trajectory or its radical ideology, which finally isolated it. To understand this movement, which closed the UNAM from 20 April 1999 to 6 February 2000, and blocked the activities of 269,000 students, 29,000 academics, and 27,000 administrative staff (UNAM 1999) in the largest and most prestigious Latin American university, we should consider two things which turned to be consequential. First, the UNAM’s radical student groups believed that the tuition increase was part of the neoliberal policies that had battered the country since the mid-1980s, that it violated the constitutional principle of free public education, and that it was the first step toward privatization. At that moment, neoliberal policies had not been contained or reversed anywhere by organized workers, farmers, or middle classes. Second, the democratic reforms in Mexico were conducive to the formation and strengthening of the PRD, the main leftist party in the country, with significant consequences in the nation’s capital and at UNAM. Numerous groups of the 1986–1987 student movement joined Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas’s presidential campaign of 1988, participated in the creation of the PRD in 1989 and in the 1994 elections, and, finally, joined the

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municipal administration when Cárdenas won the first election for head of government in the Mexico City in 1997. Thus, during this period, groups of leftist students moved from contentious politics into institutional politics and participated in party, electoral, and governmental politics. Even though this outcome accompanied the democratization process, it had the unforeseen consequence of siphoning moderate groups out of UNAM without reducing the presence of radical, non-democratic groups, which had always been on the campus but never had significant influence on student movement decisions. Thus, groups antagonistic to the PRD operated in UNAM without any countervailing resistance. To occupy the terrain abandoned by the democratic left, the radical groups adopted a discourse hostile to the PRD and university authorites. On top of that, the university’s administration miscalculated the consequences of raising tuition and took a long time to start talks with the students, which gave time and arguments to the radical groups, who managed to expel moderates from leadership positions, and later on, from any participation at all. Moderates were banned from the assemblies and formed groups of ‘strikers in exile’. Another consequence of the strengthening of the PRD was that, since it had assumed the government of Mexico City (1997), it became a decisive political actor on matters affecting the metropolitan area of the capital. By action or inaction, in an open or undercover way, the local government could diminish or increase the costs and risks of collective action and decisively influence matters that could generate or reinforce its muscle in national politics. Against all odds, the PRD (which also rejected the tuition increase) confronted the student leadership and the university authorities. Under these conditions, the Consejo General de Huelga (CGH – General Strike Council), the coordinating body of the student movement, was radicalized and isolated to the point that they did not recognize their triumph when, on 7 June 1997, UNAM authorities decided that tuition would be voluntary. Despite the authorities’ reversal, the CGH continued the strike and occupied university buildings until the police intervened. How can we understand the trajectory of the student movement? The answer can be found not in its social composition but in its political composition and ideology (Millán 2000). The main characteristic of the CGH was its radicalism, which was apparent in its communications (Soberón 2000). The CGH increasingly adopted authoritarian and exclusionary measures that tended to isolate the movement to the point that

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it only recognized allies in the organizations with identical ideological leanings. The CGH posed as a democratic organization protecting social rights (free public education), but in reality the student body was not making any decisions. A few radical groups made the decisions in parallel meetings, which were presented to the assemblies for ratification (Chávez 2005). In sharp contrast with the social movements discussed above, the CGH behaved as an vanguard that knew better than anyone else what the students wanted and what the people needed. The democratic processes of open deliberation and majority vote were manipulated to cover its authoritarianism. Consequently, the movement did not seek alliances with other organizations and only accepted unconditional support; the movement did not avail itself of the courts to make its case and distanced itself from all political parties, not only the PRD, and the government of Mexico City; the movement did not take advantage of groups that supported in some way the idea that public education should be free. In the end, the police recovered the buildings without striker’s resistance. Clearly, the CGH reflected the country’s uneven process of democratization. Niches of authoritarianism and ideology still remain, in this case in the form of a radical-left incapable of living along with other political ideologies in a plurality. These radical groups do not acknowledge any democratic progress in Mexico because, for them, democracy is a form of society where inequality does not exist (as supposedly happens in socialism and communism), not a political regime. This radical left holds tight to sacred dogmas against any contradictory evidence and continues to be trapped by the vision of the authoritarian regime that no longer exists. Those who question its dogma do so because they are on the payroll of the class enemy, which immediately turns them into traitors, an even more hated and despised enemy than the class enemy itself.

Discussion The practices and trajectories of the movements just analyzed highlight how social movements are collective actors oriented to solving specific problems aggrieving their members. El Barzón was created to solve economic problems caused by the opening of trade, the termination of subsidies to farmers and financial instability, and problems of representation due to the loss of influence of corporative organizations in decision-making. As economic difficulties were shared by an increasing number of people, El Barzón crossed the lines of the farming sector

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and turned into a pluralistic consumer movement. The EZLN emerged with a two-fold agenda: a local one related to the grievances faced by the indigenous population of the Chiapas, and a national one related to the violation of political rights of all Mexicans. Both items on their agenda had an immediate national resonance, showing that the party system was insufficiently representative and the electoral system was not credible, which, combined, had protected an irresponsible and corrupt political elite in power since 1929. The Atenco movement resisted the expropriation of their land because it would throw them from their homes and jobs to an uncertain future. Finally, the CGH resisted the increase in UNAM’s fees, which they considered a neoliberal affront to public education and a reversal of existing social rights. The political-ideological composition of these movements is diverse as well. Many Barzón members had participated in the corporative structures of the agricultural sector, maintained political connections, and knew how to use them for their own benefit. Protest was new for most of them. The EZLN emerged as an armed movement that, in contrast to so many Latin American guerrillas, came to peace talks with government representatives in just a few days. Atenco’s claims were not made in the name of an ideology. The movement did not want that modernization to reach them; its members wanted to keep their residence and livelihood unchanged. The CGH is an exception: it became an inflexible ideological movement, unwilling to negotiate or accept mediation from other groups which opposed the increase of fees but were willing to negotiate. The first three movements considered here (Barzón, EZLN, Atenco) were innovative in their use of contentious resources; they designed activities to attract media attention and influence public opinion through colorful demonstrations, masks, and machetes, to mention a few. These resources resulted in free access to the media, contributed to the dissemination of their claims, and won the support of civil society groups that considered their demands fair, even while objecting to their uncivil and violent actions. The CGH’s motivation was to defend free public education, and it concentrated on contentious resources, not of persuasion but of force and blackmail: the possession of the university campus, the condemnation of neoliberalisim and privatization, and the stigmatization of those who disagreed with them. Identifying the consequences of social movements is not an easy task. Nonetheless, it should be noted that all of these movements contributed to solving the problems that had encouraged them to form, though not on their prefered terms – it is very hard for one group to get exactly what

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it wants in a plurality. Had these movements not acted, more debtors would have gone bankrupt and lost their family assets than actually did; the indigenous problem still would be absent from the national agenda; the international airport in Mexico City would be already functioning; and UNAM’s students would be paying higher fees. Some of these social movements had also secondary consequences. Thus, El Barzón launched some of its leaders into institutional politics, increasing the PRD’s political assets. The EZLN questioned the Salinista project of modernization, deepened the internal crisis of this group, gave momentum to the betterment of political, social, civil, and community rights of the indigenous groups, and inspired movements seeking an alternative globalization. Atenco and the CGH did not have any similar secondary consequences though: once the problem that prompted their formation them was solved, the movements dispersed. El Barzón, the EZLN, and Atenco successfully combined institutional resources with contentious ones. Their demands were known and processed without losing associational autonomy, and they, on the contrary, maintained strong ties with their constituencies. Nonetheless, the process described here is not uniform: the CGH is a counter example on every item, and not the only one available. There are several groups with diverse claims that remain marginal to institutional politics. Notwithstanding, the predominant tendencies seem to be illustrated by the trajectory of the Barzón, the EZLN, and Atenco, and not by the CGH.

Acknowledgment Thanks to Elia Cadena for the English translation.

7 Coalition Politics: A Political Analysis of the Strategies, Discourses and Impact of the Mexican Action Network on Free Trade (RMALC) Marie-Josée Massicotte

This chapter illustrates some of the challenges and opportunities for contentious politics revealed through the experience of the Red Mexicana de Acción Frente al Libre Comercio (thereafter the RMALC, the Red or the coalition), or in English, the Mexican Action Network on Free Trade. The RMALC has been involved in cross-border coalitionbuilding to resist the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) since its creation in 1991. Based on a discourse analysis of primary documentation from the RMALC, as well as extensive field research and interviews with key participants and supporters, the chapter reviews the efforts of the Mexican coalition to diffuse alternative analyses and proposals for a different model of integration and development. In doing so, it examines the power of collective action, as well as the political significance of, and tensions within, the discourses and practices of the coalition. Through an exploration of the issues of power relations, democratic practices, and the interaction between state and civil society, this chapter investigates the strategies, priorities, and accomplishments of the RMALC, as well as the challenges it faces. I argue that the RMALC contributed by raising questions and by informing and enlarging the debates about economic integration, trade, and development in Mexico and across the western hemisphere. However, its outreach and impact remain limited because of material, institutional, and ideological 132

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obstacles, combined with the coalition’s prioritization of the production of critical analyses, monitoring of free trade agreements, and state lobbying. These priorities resulted in a lower emphasis on movement building. In many cases, the support of grass-roots organizations with the RMALC is impressive but they face difficulties that limit their ability to participate in the coalition on a regular basis. The RMALC was created in response to the governmental initiative of North American integration. It also built on the experience of and exchanges between Canadian movements and coalitions that had been opposing the neoliberal model of integration on the continent, beginning in the mid-1980s in response to the negotiations of the Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement. Canadian coalitions played the role of a catalyst by building linkages and inviting various Mexican organizations to create their own national coalition to resist NAFTA (see Brunelle and Dugas in this volume, Ayres 1998; Massicotte 2004). The nature of NAFTA called for greater cooperation across popular sectors and across state borders. The RMALC is a good example of coalition politics and networking across popular sectors and borders engaging in ‘citizens’ diplomacy’, which involves lobbying governments and interstate institutions to contest and potentially shape public policies (Heredia 1996; Reygadas 1998). The Red brings together so-called new social movements and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), like women’s, environmental, urban-popular, and human rights organizations with more traditional ones, such as labor and peasant organizations. It also includes research and education groups (RMALC 2002a), and a small number (10–15) of committed intellectual-activists, politicians, and political advisors intimately involved as individuals. This group of individuals formed the leadership of the Red, and the intellectual-activists were regularly involved in analysis and strategic planning. The concept of intellectualactivists refers to intellectuals who support or work with socio-political movements or networks, without necessarily being regularly active in, and organically linked to, a mass movement. It also emphasizes that individuals can be activists and intellectuals at the same time.1

Key strategies and objectives of the Mexican coalition The main goals of the RMALC integration in North America. not enough public debate on since the average citizen knew

were to resist the dominant model of For the Mexican coalition, there was this deep-reaching economic strategy very little about trade issues and state

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officials preferred to negotiate in secret. The Mexican state’s endorsement of greater North American integration clashed with its cultural tradition of promoting a strong ‘national’ economy, state intervention, and sovereignty. The RMALC founders and most left-leaning intellectuals were suspicious of the project, viewing NAFTA as another example of US imperialism. This anti-imperialist discourse shaped the identity and discourse of the RMALC as the defense of Mexico’s sovereignty became a key cultural symbol used to rally popular forces against US proposals for regional integration. The RMALC founders also criticized neoliberal reforms for failing to improve the well-being of most Mexicans. They wanted to get a clear sense of how, and in whose interests, NAFTA was being negotiated. In this context, a small group of Mexican intellectuals and activists founded the RMALC as an advocacy network to produce critical socioeconomic analysis that could be used for effective state lobbying, and hopefully shape the content of NAFTA and Mexico’s development policies (RMALC 1991: 70–71). The early participants also wanted to create a ‘plural, flexible and democratic’ citizens’ space linking up a variety of civil society groups across Mexico to voice their concerns about free trade, and to inform and diffuse alternative analyses on economic integration (RMALC 1991: 83, 2002a). The leadership oriented their initial efforts largely toward influencing state negotiators. However, as a new, unknown, and independent coalition, the RMALC faced many difficulties. Historically, Mexican political institutions controlled the channels of interaction between the state and civil society actors, which were largely limited to the leadership of PRI-affiliated organizations. The strength and pervasiveness of the PRI corporatist system posed obstacles for coalition-building. It kept in ‘completely separated spaces’ labor, urban-popular, and peasant organizations (interviewee #20). This system has begun to be challenged in parallel with the adoption of neoliberal policies – including cuts in public spending, privatization, and liberalization – and the decreasing legitimacy of the PRI party-state. The PRI’s rhetorical discourse on Mexico’s revolutionary ideals, which called for national autonomy and land redistribution, lost much of its credibility in the context of neoliberal reforms and NAFTA. Moreover, Mexican state bureaucrats traditionally considered ‘international’ and macroeconomic issues to be the preserve of the federal government and its ‘experts’. These issues were outside of the domain of the interests of ‘domestic forces’, and ordinary citizens were denied the right to be consulted. Mexican trade negotiators considered the RMALC

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to be uninformed and unable to grasp the complexities of NAFTA that they viewed as instrumental for Mexico’s economic development to reach ‘first world’ status (interviewees #11, 15, 18). In fact, the PRI state spent more than US$100 million per year on professional lobbyists sent to Washington, plus a massive publicity campaign in Mexico to ‘sell’ NAFTA, but almost no money to inform its own citizens about the content of the negotiated texts (RMALC 1991: 71–72; Ortiz, in RMALC 1992: 101–102). In this adversarial context, in-depth knowledge and analyses of the negotiated texts became the main priority and strategy of the RMALC. The leaders saw as fundamental the production of critical, detailed analyses so that they themselves would be considered ‘experts’, and thereby gain the legitimacy that they believed necessary to shape (inter)state decision-making processes. The diffusion of critical information to popular sectors soon complemented this strategy in order to foster mobilization and call for transparency and public debate, as well as a socially and environmentally responsible model of integration.2 These complementary, yet sometimes difficult to reconcile, strategies were necessary to counter institutional, material, and ideological obstacles that limited the coalition’s access to expensive television and mass media spaces, largely controlled by pro-NAFTA friends of the PRI regime. The choice of the name ‘RMALC’ also reflects the purpose of the coalition. In fact, the founders sought to induce their own meaning and image of the coalition’s objectives. They called it the Red Mexicana de Acción frente al Libre Comercio, rather than contra. In English, many authors mistranslate the name as the ‘Mexican Action Network against Free Trade’ rather than ‘on Free Trade’. Mexico’s state officials and the RMALC opponents also used the word ‘contra’ to discredit the coalition, which they claim is a backward organization rejecting the benefits of globalization. Hence, the name of the coalition was a strategic choice by the participants so as to be considered by their government and the public as relevant interlocutors in the debate on trade. They wanted to show their willingness to engage in the design of a just and sustainable model of integration and development. Most of its leaders also argue that it is necessary to propose viable options to convince other social forces that democratization and social change are possible. Finally, responding to the Canadian invitation to cooperate, the RMALC adopted a multi-scale strategy right from the start. Because of the urgency felt by activists in the period leading to NAFTA ratification, North American networks of movements were built and strengthened in order to collectively analyze the negotiation meetings among their

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respective governments (RMALC 1991: 85). These meetings provided the original incentive that pushed the RMALC to develop transnational networks and to prioritize the production and diffusion of viable alternative proposals and state lobbying as its main strategies (RMALC 1996: 6). They were pragmatic choices, based on the political context in which Mexican movements evolved: the lack of information and openness from the PRI corporatist state, and the Canadians’ first-hand experience in analyzing, resisting, and living under a trade agreement with the United States. Transnational networking strategies were seen as an effective means to address localized concerns and objectives, as many activists from different sectors and countries felt the need to show a common front of resistance and to increase their respective resources, legitimacy, and social representation (interviewees #1, 2, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16).

Main methods of diffusion: Analytical publications and popular education Considering the correlation of forces in Mexico and around the world, a radical turn away from neoliberal policies was unlikely in the absence of strong popular pressure. The critical analysis of the negotiation, implementation, and impact of NAFTA as well as the RMALC production of alternative proposals and state lobbying are the basis on which an ideological battle could be fought in North America. To foster change, it was necessary to counter the dominant propaganda that neoliberalism was the best and only possibility for development. Yet it was also important to organize public fora on trade and corporate globalization to strengthen the opposition to NAFTA. The RMALC succeeded in diffusing alternative information and values, and in nurturing coalition-building to resist neoliberal policies. As a leader of the Brazilian Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST – Landless Workers Movement) highlighted (interviewee #21), the RMALC and its allies of the Hemispheric Social Alliance (HSA)3 should be credited with being among the first to raise questions and develop critical analyses about the impact of the neoliberal model of integration. As mentioned, the production of critical analyses and alternative proposals has been the priority of the RMALC diffusion strategy. Since its creation in 1991, the coalition published or co-edited over 23 books and forum proceedings, on top of numerous popular education materials and its bulletin. The latter, entitled Alternativas, was published between 1991 and 2000 (50 issues in total, with about 500 copies of each, see Massicotte 2004). Since March 2006, Alternativas has been

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produced again but electronically. Only three months after its foundation, in June 1991, the Red published its first analysis, nothing that because there had been ‘little official diffusion’ of information on NAFTA, the coalition felt it necessary to produce critical analysis and documentation ‘to collaborate modestly to the debate’ and help social organizations in their training activities (RMALC 1991: 1). Their publications use cultural symbols supported by economic data to deepen people’s understanding of corporate globalization and integration. These are crucial tools for affiliated grass-roots organizations that have indeed adopted – and frequently adapted – elements of the RMALC’s analysis to support specific needs in their communities and organizations, as well as during national and international events or campaigns (interviewees #6, 8, 10, 12, 17). A member of the Red’s research team noted, We have succeeded in creating invisible links with many organizations . . . For instance, after the San Andrés Accords, when the dialogue was broken, the EZLN invited us to discuss our proposals and they agreed with some of them. The RMALC is a very peculiar organization, made up of a few very dedicated people at the core, but linked to many groups and people, like the Movimiento Ciudadano por la Democracia (MCD), human rights organizations, El Barzón . . . In the domain of economic policy, their referent is the RMALC. They take up our proposals as their own . . . (Interviewee #2) Through such cross-fertilization people are introduced to alternative knowledge that confronts the dominant model of development. When grass-roots education NGOs, like the Centro de Investigaciones Económicas y Políticas de Acción Comunitaria (CIEPAC – Center for Economic and Political Research for Community Action), use the Red’s analysis with community groups in Chiapas, those groups may not know what the RMALC is and they will probably never participate in its activities. Yet, if they endorse parts of the Red’s analysis and engage in struggles to displace neoliberal policies, they contribute to challenge the dominant common sense, which can foster further change. The campesino organization Central Independiente de Obreros Agrícolas y Campesinos (CIOAC – Independent Agricultural Workers and Peasants Central) also notes that the macroeconomic analyses of the RMALC, and its national and international relations, are ‘precious’ for mass organizations (interviewees #3, 14, 16) to broaden their perspective on complex issues like NAFTA and the global economy.

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Nonetheless, many of the Red’s documents are written by academic researchers, scrutinizing the NAFTA text and presenting arguments to convince trade negotiators of the rigor and validity of their criticisms and to counter dominant views about NAFTA and neoliberal policies. State lobbying expands the possibility for getting media coverage, which in turn increases the chances that various political parties will discuss the RMALC’s analyses and influence public opinion. Yet, other media are crucial to reach out to grass-roots movements and ordinary people. This is where the RMALC bulletin, Alternativas, its electronic distribution lists, the website (created in 1995), and popular education initiatives are crucial to widen its geographical and sectoral outreach, and to promote democratization, to become ‘more efficient with their daily work of information, analysis and education’ (RMALC 1994: 4). The bulletin was developed as a popular education tool to translate their analyses into plain language oriented toward specific audiences. It promoted an alternative model of integration and development, as well as greater democracy, transparency, and citizens’ participation as the means by which to achieve these transformations (interviewee #7). Such communication tools are especially useful considering that the RMALC only has a physical presence in Mexico City. The electronic mailing lists help to inform affiliated organizations and supporters throughout the country about the RMALC activities and analyses, and to call for their support on different issues and struggles. In total, the main electronic list has about 850 subscribers in Mexico City, and 400 in the rest of the states. However, a much smaller circle of about 15 people who form the coordinating committee regularly participate in the daily functioning and decision-making of the Red.4 The RMALC also manages three thematic lists (for example, noalca, the anti-Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) list) and posts on numerous other lists like that of the HSA. In this way, they can reach a still limited but much larger audience as the activist culture of the Internet means that most receivers will forward messages to allies and interested people. The RMALC also have distribution lists with about 200 contacts from local, regional, national, and international media (RMALC, email exchange, 18 August 2004). Nonetheless, various activists and allies interviewed deplored the lack of popular education materials and booklets that can be used by grass-roots organizations to train their members and organize their own workshops, using what is most relevant for their constituencies. He sustained that it is crucial to make explicit the links between (inter)state institutions, neoliberal reforms, and their impact on people’s daily lives. This supporter of the RMALC argued that this was

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particularly expected from the coalition because it has the ‘know-how and expertise’ to allow broader participation and to reconnect global processes with localized struggles to foster social change (interviewee #20). When grass-roots organizations are busy seeking to meet immediate needs, they do not have the resources to translate the Red’s analyses into accessible language. Organizations without full-time staff and with unorganized people do not have such capacity. This speaks to the need for articulating analysis and practice, as well as local and global processes, to make them relevant for grass-roots activists and ordinary citizens in specific places who can foster change through their everyday practices. One of the most successful popular education initiatives to foster participation in which the RMALC took an active part with seven other Mexican movements was the Referendum de la Libertad (Freedom Referendum) organized in 1995 in Mexico, when the quasi-hegemony of the PRI had been eroded further. This popular consultation was organized just after the Peso Crisis of 1994, when citizens from all sectors of society, including government officials, denounced the failure of neoliberal policies and called for democracy and accountability. The Referendum was successful in opening spaces for mutual learning and the diffusion of alternative macro-economic analyses. The four-month-long campaign preceding the Referendum was the most important period to defy the dominant common sense and reach out to the population. The research team presented their alternative proposals for Mexico’s economic development in interactive workshops in which hundreds of citizens, grass-roots organizations, NGOs, and union members participated by debating the causes of the Peso Crisis and its impact on Mexican communities. This initiative led to a consensus of around 12 measures to establish the basis of a more just and durable model of development (interviewee #5) that were submitted to a national citizens’ referendum, from 15 September to 20 November 1995 (Alonso and Saiz 1997: 36). The success of this campaign was the participatory process and debates it started. A popular educator of the Red noted, The Referendum . . . with about half a million participants . . . helped to demystify some of the government’s arguments . . . We also work on convincing people that the budget needs to be democratized and transparent, to include citizens’ participation. . . . We talked about the data, but they know, they remember that the prices of tortillas and flour were much lower in 1993 . . . This wasn’t simply

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a campaign to collect signatures. Through unions’ assemblies, it gave us the opportunity to expose and explain our proposal. . . . And they subscribed to it. We had workshops in schools, ecclesiastic grassroots communities (CEBs), ejido assemblies, popular neighbourhoods . . . This was an important victory . . . because they participated and will remember that there are alternatives, that other economic policies, more favourable to the people, are possible. (Interviewee #2) The Referendum allowed participants to share experiences about the impact of NAFTA on unions, and the cost and origins of the Mexican public debt, for instance. The wealth of information that the coalition communicated during the campaign increased its legitimacy within the popular sectors. It positioned the RMALC as the principal referent on economic issues for numerous organizations (interviewee #5). This initiative challenged the idea that there is no alternative to neoliberalism and the rapid integration of Mexico into the globalizing world economy. To displace dominant discourses, a diversity of materials was used to target different audiences and explain the economic proposals: a video, 30,000 copies of a popular education leaflet, and 50,000 copies of a journal (RMALC 1996: 68). The organizers also discussed their proposals in the mass media (radio and press). Yet it was only after four years of activities, in a period of financial and political legitimacy crises, and in partnership with seven other Mexican organizations that the RMALC was able to carry out such an extensive campaign, directly debating some of its alternative proposals with a large number of peoples. In the end, the proposals of the Referendum were endorsed by 428,345 citizens from across the country (RMALC 1996: 80) who were exposed to critical economic analyses. The RMALC and its North American partners were also among the early organizers of citizens’ events, parallel to intergovernmental summits which contributed to disseminate alternative discourses on trade and economic issues. The first one attracted about 300 North American delegates in Zacatecas in October 1991 around NAFTA negotiations. More recent and much broader protests and alternative summits with thousands of participants happened in September 2003 in Cancun and in Miami, in November 2003, parallel to the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the FTAA meetings respectively, where the RMALC and the HSA played a coordinating role. These innovative meeting places for socio-political groups from different regions gave rise to lively debates, new contacts, and networking among activists defying dominant political institutions and priorities. In the early 1990s, when

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free trade negotiations were kept secret, such parallel events contributed to diffusing alternative analyses in the media, a critical aspect of popular education that nurtured resistance movements and cross-border coalition-building. As the RMALC notes, ‘We became the shadow of the negotiators’ (RMALC 1996: 31, author’s translation). Through parallel civil society summits, forums, and mass protests – which are now common strategies among resistance forces – the RMALC has reached out to a larger public. They helped to deepen democracy in Mexico. More often than not, their actions were oriented toward putting pressure on the state and policy-making processes. Indeed, at the end of parallel events, the RMALC and its allies usually produced ‘transnational civil society’ declarations and proposals for integration, often directly submitting them to NAFTA negotiating teams and the media. For instance, they called for the promotion of the environment, labor, women’s, and indigenous rights, as well as better living and working conditions for citizens and migrants in every country ratifying free trade agreements. These discursive and lobbying strategies show the constant interaction between state and civil society. Of course, the diffusion process linked to parallel citizens’ summits is largely limited to its participants, and those able to access alternative or mainstream media covering these events. Nonetheless, in the Mexican context, these new participatory spaces and access to the media and government by independent organizations were significant victories (RMALC 1996: 31, 37). Lobbying the state represents another instrument of popular education, diffusion, and mobilization, especially around NAFTA negotiations and the parallel accords on labor and the environment, ‘to make them as much of a buffer as possible against NAFTA’s negative social effects’ (Luján 2002: 218). It was only after the RMALC gained a significant presence in the national and international media that Mexican trade negotiators agreed to meet with some of the coalition’s leaders (RMALC 1996: 40). The Red built transnational linkages to increase its leverage, shape public policies, and expand citizen rights that were resisted by the Mexican state. Due to the ‘boomerang effect’, the Mexican trade negotiating team agreed to meet with the RMALC leaders only after the latter had met with Canadian and US politicians and began to build alliances with civil society organizations from these countries, thus increasing international pressure on the Mexican government (Keck and Sikkink 1998). Despite the limited concrete impacts of the RMALC in shaping Mexican trade policies, its leaders justified their lobbying strategy by arguing that NAFTA negotiations and the parallel accords offered crucial spaces for social organizing,

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‘to move our agenda educationally, politically, and organizationally’ (RMALC 1996: 26). The coalition chose to use these instruments to inform North American public opinion about environmental and labor violations, and to denounce the problematic situation of Mexican, Canadian, and US workers (Hathaway 2000: 233). This was an effective strategy to prove the institutional inefficiency of the parallel accords. It justified their call for the renegotiation or replacement of NAFTA (RMALC 1996: 28). Moreover, these struggles involved grass-roots activists directly, as workers, ecologists, or members of a neighborhood organization living around a maquiladora toxic dump. Such efforts also contributed to building solidarity movements, locally and transnationally. Since its foundation, then, the RMALC has succeeded in diffusing alternative analyses of NAFTA. Moreover, it does not refuse but requires contact with, and intervention by, political parties, elected representatives, and the Mexican state. While criticizing the government macroeconomic policies, its members simultaneously pushed for the adoption of alternatives to the neoliberal agenda that would benefit a majority of Mexicans. Although a radicalization of activism has created more antagonistic relationships with problematic state institutions, the RMALC leaders and numerous activists continue to ask for inclusion of popular demands and greater citizens’ participation in the state. This coalition politics is emerging from social practices. Over time, the coalition hopes that its work will foster new policies and governance structures that prioritize the well-being of the whole society rather than the private sector’s interests (Heredia and Purcell 1994). However, since the same group of people in charge of research and lobbying, and forming the executive commission of the RMALC, is also responsible for information diffusion and social organizing, its approach to popular education remains limited. There are too few human resources to work on both fronts, which equally demand much time and energy. Therefore, it often falls on the shoulders of affiliated organizations to commit their own time and resources for outreach activities. In practice, it means that many citizens and localized organizations with scarce resources do not have the possibility of prioritizing what they often see as the ‘luxury’ of analytical and educational work. A very effective tool for popular education and outreach available to RMALC since June 2006 is its participation in the one-hour program ‘Open Space’ on Radio Ciudadana (660 AM, available on RMALC website), every two weeks.

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Limits and difficulties of democratic grass-roots participation Competing priorities: Expert analyses vs movement building Since the creation of the RMALC, dilemmas persist between the need to produce expert analyses and movement building to oppose existing free trade agreements. Among the leadership, some feel that the coalition’s role is not to organize people in a strong grass-roots movement – which can and should be done by grass-roots organizations themselves – but to produce informed critical analyses on trade and globalization primarily for lobbying purposes (interviewees #2, 17). Others believe that analysis and mobilization are two complementary strategies that should be advanced simultaneously. In practice, the RMALC operates as a sort of think tank with a specialized team of researchers analyzing macroeconomic policies, monitoring the impact of free trade, lobbying governments, and diffusing alternative proposals for development. From this perspective, coalition politics is a complement to social organizing, as a small number of ‘experts’ provide resources to, and advance the interests of, popular sectors through knowledge production, consciousness raising, and lobbying strategies (interviewee #22). However, from a Gramscian perspective and from the viewpoint of numerous grass-roots activists, to be relevant, this type of ‘expert’ analyses and alternative proposals need to emerge from the daily experiences of the masses, and be endorsed by an alliance of subaltern forces capable of collectively challenging the dominant economic and political order. As an intellectual-activist of the Red noted, analyses and concrete proposals were necessary to inform and mobilize people around an alternative model of development and integration. But to have any chance of implementing some of these alternatives, a solid movement also had to be activated (interviewee #5; workshop discussions, fieldwork notes, Mexico City, June 1999). Time and time again, when evaluating the RMALC’s accomplishments and challenges, its members reiterated the ‘urgency’ for increasing the membership and participation, especially from popular sectors (RMALC 1991: 72; General Assembly 2000, fieldwork notes). Regular participants repeatedly called for enraizamiento in popular and regional organizations outside of Mexico City.5 This concept refers to the ‘rooting’ and articulation of the RMALC proposals for an alternative model of development with the daily practices and cultures of grass-roots movements inside and beyond the coalition (RMALC 1996: 50, 73–74; Reygadas 1998: 387; interviewees #1, 5, 20). However, the Red’s leadership noted the

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persistent difficulty in seeking to make explicit the connections between specific social experiences and global processes, such as the impact of trade rules and financial flows across state borders on small corn producers (RMALC 1997: 3; Luján 2002: 225). An intellectual-activist noted that the first reason why the RMALC and other organizations do not reach the grass roots enough and include a wide diversity of forces is ‘our deficient political culture. We did not learn to work with diversity’ (interviewee #22). While the RMALC brought together unions, campesinos, women, religious groups, and some academics, these innovations are limited by . . . the values and customs of an authoritarian regime that is used not to include and listen but to order. . . . Unfortunately, the leadership group reproduces itself . . . the same people are travelling [and developing analyses] which paralyze renovation, the emergence of new ideas. There is no training . . . At first, it was good to have a collective leadership, but if it is always the same group that prolonged themselves in time, there is again the risk of caudillismo and lack of pluralism and diversity. (Interviewee #22) These are among the main criticisms that were addressed to the RMALC leaders. Over time, most of them came to recognize the importance of combining analysis and state lobbying with mobilization, especially since the upsurge of mass protest against corporate/neoliberal globalization. After the Monterrey World Conference on Financing for Development in March 2002, the RMALC stated that lobbying ‘does not change the roots of the existing economic, political, and social model’ and will only have a tactical value if it is backed by ‘mobilization and it responds to the demands and necessities of social organizations’ (author’s translation, RMALC 2002b). This statement reflects internal changes in the coalition due to its growing interaction with other resistance movements, especially within the HSA and the World Social Forum. The HSA was particularly active in the campaign against the proposed FTAA, which was derailed after the Mar del Plata Summit in 2005. On the one hand, the RMALC had to justify its continued insistence on lobbying the state vis-à-vis more confrontational strategies and forces. On the other hand, its leadership was radicalized by other sociopolitical forces, and was increasingly skeptical about the potential of lobbying the state. After the Monterrey Conference, the RMALC thus also had to justify its more confrontational position toward state institutions

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vis-à-vis other Mexican groups that sought to secure a place in official events. The leadership of the Red tends to assume that their commitment to research and analysis and the use of their analyses by Mexican organizations are sufficient to ensure the RMALC’s legitimacy. Affiliated members and allies are not regularly invited to make pronouncements on the coalition’s alternative proposals and strategies of action, or even to elect new delegates to the rotating committee that coordinates the activities of the Red as it was first planned. On the contrary, most decisions, analyses, and planning were concentrated among the core leadership. In the coalition, inclusiveness and ‘democratic’ decisionmaking based on consensus often means that anyone can attend the meetings, but decisions are usually consensual among the core leadership that can regularly attend the meetings.6 This is particularly the case considering that general assemblies are infrequent and too short to allow participatory decision-making. Despite the best intentions and some efforts, power relations subsist within and among movements, based on internal functioning, participants’ assumptions about democracy, and concrete difficulties that will now be discussed. A key problem not only with large-scale organizations and coalitions like the RMALC, but also with unions and country-wide movements, is the lack of attention to popular education and capacity-building among grass-roots activists, especially in Mexico where organizations often rely on charismatic leaders. In the RMALC, the lack of training activities and popular education to ensure that different people at the base acquire the skills and know-how to sustain and revitalize movements over time is partly explained by its limited human resources. It is also due to the fact that its leadership generally counts on affiliated organizations to diffuse and adapt the RMALC analysis to address the needs and hopes of their members and surrounding communities. They are often seen as best suited to organize specific protests and activities, including popular education materials and workshops questioning the dominant system and fostering the implementation of the Red’s alternatives (RMALC 1996: 19; interviewees #2, 17). There is also a sense that having the same delegates coming to the RMALC’s meetings, rather than any grass-roots activists, is more ‘efficient’ for decision-making purposes, while remaining representative of diverse groups. Here, efficiency is not associated with capacity building and mutual learning as key resources to strengthen movements and promote change, but with flexibility and the rapidity with which the coalition can react and take decision and action. If the same delegates always attend coalition’s meetings, it is assumed

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that they are familiar with key issues and each participant’s positions. It thus requires less time to reach agreement.7 These assumptions reveal an implicit understanding of democratic practices which often create tensions between the base and leadership, and between NGOs and grassroots organizations. They also undermine the possibilities for significant participation of grass-roots activists in coalition politics. The RMALC founders explicitly sought to avoid a hierarchical form of organization that could paralyze the coalition. They wanted to create ‘an open space for discussion and debate’, among a great number of activists from different sectors. Yet, its organizational functioning ended up limiting the possibility for greater grass-roots participation, cross-fertilization, and innovation. For instance, the RMALC only has a physical presence in the capital city of Mexico, where all its regular meetings and most of its events and discussion forums take place. The Red made specific efforts to build alliances and maintain links with ‘national’ movements and networks, which generally have their headquarters in Mexico City (interviewee #23). This is where there are the most impressive concentrations of population, NGOs, and popular organizations. It is also the best location from which to access information, attract media attention, and lobby federal agencies and government officials. Because the RMALC focuses on macroeconomic, federal, and global politics, it seems most relevant to locate its activities in the capital city and be connected with country-wide movements and transnational allies than to support local movements. However, many activists living outside of the metropolis have highlighted the numerous obstacles that they face, like the lack of regular channels of communication between the RMALC office and its regional partners. Some delegates asked the RMALC leadership for regular reports on strategic planning and key decisions, which were done through a weekly electronic mailing list, but for less than two years. Although this was seen as essential for those in less central regions to better identify with the coalition’s work and to participate more closely in its activities, this demand was quickly abandoned. Moreover, in Mexico communication technology is not widely accessible. Especially in poor rural areas, only a few grass-roots groups have access to a computer or a telephone line.8 Moreover, a greater number of women, poor, and indigenous peoples have difficulties in accessing formal education and some do not speak Spanish. These are formidable barriers to deeper democracy and participation. Even inside coalitions promoting socio-economic justice, organizations do not have equal opportunity to raise their issues by taking part in regular decision-making and

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strategic planning processes. For localized movements with specific needs and limited resources, geographical distance does limit regular participation, especially in a coalition like the RMALC that seeks to cover a whole country and participate in transnational networks and lobbying activities. In the daily life of social movements and coalitions, time is often the most precious resource, and coherent, detailed analyses require longterm commitment that not many activists can afford. These realities produce tensions within movements emerging from the differential value and resources attributed to various activities such as movement building and expert analysis. Power relations often emerge between regular/full time and occasional participants, as well as between those involved in producing analysis and elaborating strategies, and those mobilizing and organizing popular events. Socialization processes tend to reward more those who have access to formal education and who commit to a ‘specialized’ activity, like economists. Hence, people who share their time and responsibilities between, for example, parenthood, paid work, and voluntary activism may be seen as not having a ‘sufficient commitment’, or sufficient time to succeed in all these areas. This is based on the dominant culture of competing and limited times, rather than enriching, complementary times and spheres of activities that can deepen people’s values and understanding of social relations of production and reproduction. A striking example of the obstacles to grass-roots participation is the very location of the RMALC office in northern Mexico City. It can take an hour or more to travel from one side of the city to the other by public transportation. Only those activists who live close by or have lots of time can physically attend weekly meetings. Moreover, because the meetings are always held the same day, during normal working hours, only a few intellectual-activists and delegates are able to attend. Changes to these organizing rules are often resisted by members who can more easily commit to regular weekly meetings as part of their work schedule. Yet it excludes most other activists who work full-time and who could more easily meet during evenings or weekends. These are some of the tensions between base and leadership of movements, as well as between unions and NGOs on one side, and grass-roots organizations on the other. The former usually have staff researchers and organizers with more flexible schedules. To facilitate greater grass-roots participation and deeper democracy, the RMALC would need to accommodate different time frames and working conditions.9 Although the RMALC leaders recognize the importance of popular participation and wider regional outreach, these objectives were

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subordinated to their monitoring and analysis activities. For instance, at the same time that the 1997 General Assembly called for greater grass-roots participation, they widened their analytical agenda to monitor trade and financial negotiations and the impact of interstate institutions such as NAFTA, the FTAA, the Mexico-European Union accord, as well as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and the United Nations Commission on Trade and Development. Its agenda keeps expanding with new integration projects of the Mexican government like the Plan Puebla-Panamá and the increasing centrality of the WTO to resistance forces. In turn, these choices limit the time and resources dedicated to mobilization and capacity building (RMALC 1997: 3). Despite these difficulties and the limited impact of RMALC work on state policies and trade agreements however, the coalition played a significant role in informing people and boosting activism, as in the case of the growing resistance and mass protests by Mexican farmers. Indeed, the movement El campo no aguanta más (‘The countryside cannot bear it anymore’) was created in late 2002 by 12 national and regional farmer organizations, two of them affiliated with the RMALC, to address the crisis experienced by agricultural families during the last two decades. It called for a renegotiation of NAFTA’s agricultural chapter in response to the new phase of tariff reductions on Canadian and US agricultural imports (see Chapter 5, this book; Bartra 2002). The diffusion of analyses and growing rural organizing against the impact of neoliberal reforms led to the largest farmer mobilization in Mexico since the years of Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–1940), with nearly 100,000 participants in Mexico City on 31 January 2003. This example of coalition politics evolved at the margin of formal political institutions. Nonetheless, these rural organizations are market forces seeking to participate in and transform the existing economic system. It is often after trying legal channels of negotiation with the state that rural movements have adopted a variety of strategies and tactics to ‘save the countryside and Mexico’.10 Even the PRI-affiliated Confederación Nacional Campesina has for the first time joined a protest organized by independent movements to denounce the impact of NAFTA on the countryside. Some organizations are more radical than others and there are significant differences among them. Nonetheless, Mexican rural organizations are converging for the first time in decades to protest what is widely recognized as problematic trade policies. In January 2008 again, they converge with allies from urban popular and labor organizations around the slogan ‘sin maíz no hay país’ (Without corn there is no country), which coincide with the full opening of Mexico’s border to foreign exporters of basic grains. These are

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very significant changes for contentious politics. Within the Mexican context, the RMALC and its allies did play a crucial role in promoting citizen participation and of opening spaces for critical analyses on macroeconomic issues.

Conclusion This chapter analyzed the principal strategies of the RMALC for fostering social change, highlighting the central role of intellectual-activists and their production of alternative proposals. Because most of the work of the RMALC is conducted by a small group of social leaders and intellectual-activists, the monitoring of trade negotiations and critical analyses ended up absorbing most of their energies. Nonetheless, despite numerous material, ideological, and institutional obstacles, this chapter showed how the RMALC battled to diffuse its proposals for development and integration, and to make more explicit the links between local and global socioeconomic processes. While it did not directly shape the content of NAFTA or Mexican macroeconomic policies, the RMALC raised skepticism around the dominant common sense and stimulated critical debates about the worthiness of free trade and the neoliberal turn for the peoples of the Americas. Today, numerous citizens and civil society organizations are challenging or openly rejecting the dominant model of integration. This is a very different situation than that of the beginning of the 1990s when the RMALC and its North American allies started to monitor the NAFTA negotiations and to diffuse alternative analyses. Through their lobbying strategy, we also saw that the state remains a key site of struggles and interactions with civil society forces, although the latter have expanded their space of actions both within and beyond the state level. The chapter also highlighted the dilemmas of coalition politics among a variety of social actors, addressing some of the obstacles to democratic participation. Material limitations and dominant assumptions about democratic practices and coalition-building, as well as the variety of socio-political priorities and experiences of movements combine to explain some of the difficulties for the RMALC in reaching democratic decisions and increasing grass-roots activism. The organizational, cultural, and socioeconomic differences among leadership and social base, and among NGOs and mass movements, did shape the functioning and identity of the Mexican coalition. Although they share a similar worldview of the problems linked to a neoliberal model of development and the need for greater democracy and social justice, the specificities of each

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affiliated organization often led to quite distinct political and economic priorities and strategies. While the RMALC prioritizes the development of solidarity networks and convergence around common analyses across state borders, it sometimes did so to the detriment of movement building in Mexico. These choices alienated some grass-roots activists. They felt that, like other international NGOs, the RMALC placed too much emphasis on transnational solidarity and lobbying, instead of strengthening localized struggles and responding to the needs of popular movements. These criticisms need to be addressed by movements and networks seeking to reverse the existing correlation of forces. As we saw, the RMALC recognized its lack of rootedness across the country. The tensions between localized movements and those focusing on lobbying the state and transnational activities can be addressed by rethinking the way we traditionally understood the work of resistance movements. Social organizing at different scales (local, national, and international) and in various sectors does not necessarily imply ‘competition’ for membership and resources. Likewise, the use of a particular strategy or tactic in a certain context (lobbying, civil disobedience, global protest, analysis) does not discount using others in different situations. In fact, when examining the discourses and practices of specific movements, one quickly notes how multiple strategies are often used, sometimes simultaneously. Moreover, crossborder influences shape ‘local’, ‘national’, and ‘global’ movements alike. Activists primarily involved in transnational networks are socialized and politicized in particular place(s) and culture(s), in patriarchal families, faith-based organizations, and/or left-wing parties for instance, which continue to shape their values, priorities, and practices in global spaces. One may need to leave aside market values of competition, efficiency (in terms of speed and lower cost), and profitability to evaluate the work of sociopolitical networks across borders and sectors that seek ways to counter these values. As sites of exchanges and cooperation, networks enrich the experiences and knowledge of the participants. Cross-fertilization also gives dynamism and promotes new initiatives within and among movements. The more activists can learn through transnational and cross-sectoral encounters, the more they can creatively contribute to their home-based organizations by bringing new ideas and establishing new contacts with trusted allies and supporters.11 Even though coalition politics do not easily lead to a common political agenda or a unified movement among global justice activists, these

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processes are powerful meeting points. As long as they remain imaginative processes, adapting themselves to respond to the hopes of the participants, they will boost and sustain social initiatives in various regions. This is the main challenge that the RMALC and many other similar networks are facing.

List of Interviewees INTERVIEWS WERE HELD BETWEEN 1998 AND 2005, AND MOSTLY IN MEXICO CITY. Interviewee #1: labor activist and social leader, Mexico City, June 1998 and 1 March 2000 Interviewee #2: intellectual-activist, NGO participant, Mexico City, 28 March and 11 May 2000 Interviewee #3: social activist in a grass-roots organization living in Mexico City, Mexico City, 15 March and 4 August 2000 Interviewee #4: NGO leader, intellectual-activist, Mexico City, 4 April and 23 May 2000 Interviewee #5: intellectual-activist, researcher, NGO participant, Mexico City, summer 1999 and 3 April 2000 Interviewee #6: NGO staff and intellectual-activist, Mexico City, 7 April 2000 Interviewee #7: researcher and writer, member of a Mexican NGO, Mexico City, 27 April 2000 Interviewee #8: leader of a business association, Mexico City, 4 July 2000 Interviewee #9: writer, researcher, and social leader, Mexico City, 14 July 2000 Interviewee #10: intellectual-activist and social leader of a grass-roots organization, Mexico City, 10 May and 8 June 2000 Interviewee #11: academic and researcher involved in a review of NAFTA’s impact, Mexico City, 16 May 2000 Interviewee #12: academic researcher and political leader, Mexico City, 10 May 2000 Interviewee #13: NGO staff, activist, and social leader working in Mexico City, Mexico City, 18 May 2000 Interviewee #14: intellectual-activist and researcher, Mexico City, 5 August 2000 Interviewee #15: ex-Mexican trade minister, Mexico City, 7 August 2000

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Interviewee #16: social leader, organizer, and researcher in a grassroots organization, also involved in transnational networking, Mexico City, 4 August 2000 Interviewee #17: social leader and labor researcher working with a Mexico-based NGO, key leader of RMALC and the HSA, Mexico City, 12 July 1999 and 30 May 2000 Interviewee #18: two government officials specializing on trade issues, Mexico City, 8 August 2000 Interviewee #19: Mexican social leader and NGO staff, telephone interview, 9 July 2004 Interviewee #20: intellectual activist and social leader, Mexico City, 20 July 2000 Interviewee #21: Brazilian social leader involved in transnational networking, Sao Paulo, May 2005 Interviewee #22: NGO staff and intellectual-activist, Mexico City, 4 May 2000 Interviewee #23: Mexican social leader and activist, Québec City, 17 April 2001

Acknowledgment This chapter is based on field research completed for doctoral degree (see Massicotte 2004). The author would like to thank the editors for useful comments and to acknowledge research funding from the Social Sciences and the Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Fonds québécois de recherche sur la société et la culture and the Mexican government.

Part III Contesting Regional Governance

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8 The Globalized Complexities of Transborder Governance in North America∗ Stephen Clarkson and Antonio Torres-Ruiz

Our central concern in this chapter is to understand national integration in order to reflect on its implications for democratic participation in the continent’s governance. While no multi-state region can any longer be understood outside its global context, North America is unique in this regard: as the United States of America’s home base, the northern continent of the Western Hemisphere is the platform from which the world’s only superpower engages with the rest of the planet. Consequently, any attempt to analyze North America’s governance has to be placed within the broader context of globalization and its effects on government autonomy (see Cohen 2001). Additionally, given North America’s second most striking characteristic as a region – its combination of a heavy set of economic rules in the form of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and a flimsy set of mechanisms with which to manage it – the analysis of its transborder workings has to reach far beyond any formal institutions to encompass nongovernmental actors in civil society and the marketplace. Before we proceed to analyze the region’s transborder political economy, we need first to specify how we conceptualize both globalization and governance.

Setting the stage: Governance in a globalized context We start by distinguishing globalization, the processes of universal, multifaceted interconnectivity, from globalism, the ideology of neo-classical economic prescriptions known as the ‘Washington Consensus’.1 Defining globalism as a political agenda, which as Stephen McBride argues has been a politically dominant project in North America, helps us recognize 155

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the undercurrent of ideological commitment to market sovereignty that infuses the discourse generated by such leading international financial institutions as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the US Treasury, the World Trade Organization (WTO), and other powerful global actors, most particularly transnational corporations (TNCs) (see Howse and Nicolaidis 2003). Although the international arena is a heterogeneous constellation of interwoven political, cultural, and economic interests, we take it as established that the globalist agenda – which the economic and political élites of major countries use to maintain their dominance in the international system2 – has steered the phenomenon of globalization for the past quarter century. Similarly at the regional level, globalism has been strongly and successfully advocated by what Julián Castro-Rea in this book refers to as the transnational right. By globalization, we refer to the accelerating cultural, economic, political, social, and technological interconnectedness that characterizes the world today. Along with Held and colleagues, we do not see globalization as a ‘singular condition, a linear process or a final end-point of social change’ (Held et al. 1997; see also Held et al. 1999), and agree with Anthony Giddens that globalization is characterized by ‘the intensification of world-wide social relations’ (1990: 64) and by the unstoppable spread across national frontiers of communication technologies which affect trade, capital, and information networks. Although almost all economies are linked with other economies throughout the world, we do not assume that globalization represents an end-state toward which all economies must ineluctably converge. Understood as multidimensional and multifaceted, and differentiated from globalism, this way of defining globalization facilitates the incorporation of various nonstate actors operating at a global scale in our analysis of transborder governance at the continental level.

Using a new label only for a new wine Even more indeterminate than the phenomenon of globalization is the idea of ‘governance’, which has insinuated itself so smoothly into academic, popular, and professional discourse in the past two decades that it has come to be applied to almost every aspect of societal life.3 We propose to distinguish the notion of governance – a relatively new label – from that of government in order to study the various manifestations of transborder politics in North America, some of which evolved well before free trade and could be conceived as the continental site of

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incipient globalization, others that developed in the shadow of NAFTA, and those that were prompted by the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001.4 Government Not so many years ago, political science did perfectly well with the notion of government, which denoted the institutions and processes of legitimately sanctioned (that is, constitutionally established and/or internationally recognized) public policy-making, regulation, adjudication, and enforcement. Understood in this traditional way, government was the prerogative, responsibility, and monopoly of the nation-state’s institutions and its sub-federal and municipal components. Typically, its functions and processes included the activity of legislatures and executives, of bureaucracies financed by government revenues, of courts, and of the enforcement mechanisms assigned to the state’s police and armed forces. This is not to say that politics outside the narrow confines of government was ignored. Political parties were studied as the prime democratic link between the citizenry (which could manifest its political will at election time) and its government (which could be redirected following a change in the ruling party). No one was naïve enough to assume that the connection between government and society was cut off the moment an election’s results were announced. Considerable research was devoted to those interest groups, which championed the positions of business in the market place lobbying to influence government policies, and to those citizens’ groups, which campaigned for legislation to ameliorate various societal causes such as the plight of pensioners, natives, or the handicapped.5 Governance This text diverges from much current writing pertaining to the international domain, which tends simply to replace the notion of government with that of governance. For instance, discourse on the European Union (EU) often refers to all continental-level politics as governance, despite the fact that some of the EU’s institutions and processes exhibit such authoritative characteristics of government as the binding directives made by the European Commission or the judgments issued by the European Court of Justice, which have direct effect in the legal systems of the member states. In 1997, to take another instance, the World Bank issued a report proclaiming the importance of ‘governance’ for

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eliminating poverty in the Third World.6 Having spent almost two decades twisting the arms of developing countries to cut back their state apparatus, it was implicitly recognizing the damage it had caused. The World Bank’s new elixir of governance turned out to be a label for the old wine of good, old-fashioned government: democratic practices, transparency, and accountability. Similarly, in Canada the notion of governance has been used as one that could equally well apply to the old concept of government: ‘The institutions, processes, and traditions by which power is exercised and directions are set for society’ (Borins et al. 2000: 25). The Law Commission of Canada explicitly views governance as a normative issue of quality – transparency, legitimacy, and accountability – and so considers governance to be an integral and coexisting aspect of the more mechanical workings of government. Since our aim is to understand what is ‘North America’ beyond the internal operations of the continent’s three nation states, we are asking whether transborder realities – social movements; economic exchanges of goods, services, and capital; political agreements to regulate these interactions – constitute a significant reality or, as put by CastroRea, a single unit of analysis. To understand transborder politics in North America, we need to unpack the nuances of how policies are made and how politics are conducted in issues that play out both inside and outside formally constituted legislatures, executives, bureaucracies, courts, and the armed forces. Adopting a linguistically conservative position, we propose keeping both the baby (government) and the bath water (governance) in which it sits while distinguishing between them in terms of causal effectiveness. We call governance those activities of extra-parliamentary parties and interest groups that take place on the boundary of formally constituted government. The boundary will necessarily be difficult to define. Extra-parliamentary activities such as business lobbying and citizen group pressures would be considered governance. Parliamentary debates and hearings involving the successfully elected representatives would be part of government. Across national boundaries, new forms of political decision-making are emerging as TNCs and civil society organizations (CSOs) negotiate directly with governments (see Friedman 2005). This new transborder governance manifested itself dramatically with the WTO’s intellectual property rights regime’s impact over the pricing and production of pharmaceuticals to treat AIDS in low- and middle-income Countries. In this case, Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) negotiated with both governments

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and the pharmaceutical TNCs to bring down the price of drugs for HIV/AIDS patients in the South (Buse, Fustukian and Lee 2002: 713). Much government aid – whether financed directly by individual states or collectively by government-funded international organizations – is actually delivered in the field by such CSOs as the International Red Cross would also count as governance. Of course, the bulk of public policy-making is still the preserve of the various national, sub-federal, or municipal levels of government. Governance affects this traditional government activity when TNCs and CSOs, domestic and foreign, impinge on the state’s decision-making. In sum, government can be seen when power is exercised with binding effect. We take governance to be the exercise of power and influence outside or on the boundary of government structures, through interactions among various political, social, and economic actors. Governance is our concern when the traditional government institutions – legislatures, bureaucracies, or executives – are not exercising power exclusively but are engaged in partnerships with networks and coalitions, with agencies, TNCs, and CSOs. To the extent that a company or its business association or a CSO interacts with a municipal, provincial, or federal government official, it is engaging in what we will call governance, or what has been defined in this book as contentious politics.7 In embracing this distinction between government and governance, we also recognize that the boundaries between the two concepts are contestable and variable. Analysts will disagree in their definitions of what reality fits within which category. As political circumstances change, some phenomena may shift from one category to another over time. A specific government activity becomes governance every time a public sector entity gets privatized. Alternatively, what may once have been governance may become government, as was the case when the Hudson’s Bay Company, which ruled a vast territory across British North America, lost these political functions to the newly constituted Dominion of Canada in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, the European Community has been erecting a system of institutions, which began as governance and progressively approached government in their heft. In sum, we identify government by (1) its structures’ and actors’ formal legitimacy, which comes externally from a state’s recognition by the international community and internally from its legally legitimate constitution and (2) by the directly authoritative and inherently coercive force of its decisions, regulations, and norms. The structures and actors that we consider governance also contribute to the generation of a

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government’s norms, rules, goals, and processes of decision-making, but the scope of domestic governance is generally narrower and rarely territorially fixed. Both can involve very specific issues or a whole system. In general, government has more permanence and stability, while governance may be more transient: what is here today may be gone tomorrow.

From government to governance: Toward trade and investment liberalization Further conceptual indeterminacy arises from the shadow cast across the Atlantic Ocean by the deeply institutionalized EU. Measured against this standard, the triad of Mexico, the United States, and Canada bore no resemblance to a regional community during the same decades after World War II during which the EU was evolving. North of the Rio Grande, a strong argument could already be made that Canada and the United States had become an asymmetrical partnership operating by the norms of a virtual constitution (Clarkson 1988: 23–43). A major leap forward in consolidating this already largely integrated dyad occurred on 1 January 1989, when the Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA) came into force. What Ronald Reagan at the time astutely called ‘the economic constitution of North America’ contained the principles, rules, rights, and institutions designed to establish a mode of regulation for a transcontinental economy whose TNCs the new CUSFTA empowered to operate across the Canada–United States border free of many of the Canadian government regulations which had previously constrained them. The implementation in 1994 of the NAFTA abruptly extended North America’s territorial reach to Guatemala’s northern frontier, incorporating Mexico within a toughened mode of continental regulation and endowing the new regional construct with its own socio-economic and political identity. North America became a recognized production area for transnational companies such as General Motors, for which Mexico, which became part of its Anglophone North American production operations, had previously been part of its Hispanic Latin America marketing region. Although the continental political economy known as NAFTA appeared to be more than the sum of its three states, most of the politically significant institutions on this vast territory continued to operate within its three countries’ national boundaries. Nevertheless, their frontiers were far from impermeable. Indeed the people, goods, services,

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energy, information, and natural resources which are constantly moving across the Canada–United States and Mexico–United States frontiers, and to a lesser degree between Mexico and Canada, create a multitude of transboundary relations – social, economic, and political – whose characteristics we discuss under the rubric of governance.

From governance to government: Toward a security state As discussed by other contributors to this book, following its psychopolitical shock on 11 September 2001, the US government made national security within its self-appointed worldwide defense mandate trump its previous mission of global economic liberalization (see Daalder 2003). In the aftermath of the catastrophe in New York and Washington, the United States defined continental defense to include Mexico and the Caribbean as well as Canada. Having once applied a different approach to its northern border with Canada (open, easy, undefended, informal, and designed to increase economic flows) from its approach to its southern border with Mexico (militarized, walled off, and aimed to decrease migration flows), Washington moved toward applying a common, anti-terrorist approach to both its territorial frontiers. This paradigm shift meant that pressure from Washington on its two neighbors to lower their barriers to US investment and expand the domain of transborder governance morphed into pressure on them to raise their barriers to terrorists by reasserting the power of the Mexican and Canadian governments over their borders. What had been a hegemonic exercise to generate a new continental economic regime became an imperial, government-to-government effort to coerce the periphery into supplying security services to buttress US homeland defense (see Nederveen Pieterse 2004). Analyzing North America in the wake of the last two decades’ political transformations at the regional and global levels thus presents major conceptual challenges. With no strong institutions, or characterized by what Jeffrey Ayres and Laura Macdonald call ‘shallow governance’ (2006), North America’s formal structures can only bear part of the research weight. Since much of the transborder reality is driven by the independent actions of other economic, cultural, or social actors, these non-governmental players need to be included in our remit. Nevertheless, relations among the three states remain of central importance in research on the sui generis regional entity known as North America.

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Government and governance in a globalized North America These reflections on globalization and governance are central to our explanation in this chapter of how the trinational entity called North America is governed. Leaving aside the traditional functioning of the three federal governments of Mexico, the United States, and Canada, along with their dozens of sub-federal provincial and state governments and their thousands of municipal components, we explore the extent to which integrative economic forces, continental institution building, and recent developments in security policy have generated some transboundary political substance. Conscious of their global context, we are also interested in distinguishing to what extent these transborder relations represent a distinctly continental phenomenon from what are merely manifestations at the regional level of globalization’s processes. For over a century, a top political priority in both Canada and Mexico has been to deal government-to-government with their once belligerent, still dominant, and at times overwhelming neighbor. Over the decades, each bilateral relationship with the United States established rules and norms that produced regularized methods of addressing new issues and resolving conflicts. Multifaceted as these bilateral relationships were, some components such as Canada–US military integration, matched Stephen Krasner’s definition of a regime as ‘sets of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge in a given area of international relations’ (Krasner 1983: 2). This early intergovernmentalism was predominantly based on a hub-and-spoke relationship between the United States and its two peripheries, which each dealt with Washington independently of the other. Virtually nothing ‘governed’ the entire trinational space – other than those TNCs that were already treating North America as a single production, distribution, and marketing subsystem. Given the peripheries’ very different histories and social roots, Mexico–US issues were addressed by the US capital in a completely different manner from Canada–United States matters. In their relations with each other after World War II, Ottawa and Mexico City shared few interests apart from a common defiance of the US embargo of revolutionary Cuba and a strong disagreement with the Ronald Reagan administration’s support for the Contras in Central America. Thereafter, both neighbors to the United States connected to the process of globalization – Canada enthusiastically, Mexico reluctantly – as they experienced the effects of a US-driven globalist agenda.

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These three dyadic relations were putatively combined into a single entity when the United States, Canada, and Mexico implemented NAFTA as an ‘economic constitution’ to accelerate the integration of the three economies into one continental marketplace. Leaving aside the continuing debate about whether NAFTA’s economic goals for investment, trade, wage, and productivity levels have been achieved, we are interested in the implications for transborder governance of the increased levels of continental economic integration that have resulted from the higher rate of cross-border TNC expansion through mergers, acquisitions, new investment, and greater trade flows (due in large part to intra-firm transactions). With such norms as ‘national treatment’ trumping domestic legislation, with its set of rights for transborder investors, and with its embryonic institutions and judicial processes, NAFTA can also be considered North America’s political constitution, whose legitimacy is anchored in its three democratically constituted members having negotiated an agreement which each then implemented according to its own constitutional practices. Although it created little in the way of continent-wide government structures, NAFTA established some very important norms and rules that function principally to restrict Canada and Mexico’s policy autonomy and in practice have eliminated policies disliked by the United States. Institutionally, NAFTA provided for little more than periodic meetings of the three countries’ trade ministers, referred to as the NAFTA Trade Commission, and specified certain procedures for dispute settlement with varying judicial clout. It established a few dozen committees and working groups which have turned out to be largely ineffectual and also put in place two governance structures: the commissions for the environment and labor matters (Clarkson et al. 2005). Our interest in economic integration includes whether NAFTA has generated a political integration with sufficient government or governance to make talk of a North American community plausible, and whether the huge power discrepancy between the United States and its neighbors has increased or diminished, causing the two peripheries to lose or gain autonomy, respectively. Growing asymmetry would suggest a process of our creed in which the United States has extended its reach over its two peripheries. As for the significant differences between Canada and Mexico’s relationships with the United States, we are also alert to whether the imbalance between the two bilateral relationships has declined or increased under NAFTA’s aegis. Recognizing that the member-governments of NAFTA operate on a range of at least five planes from the local, provincial, and federal,

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through to the continental and global level, we focus on the fourth to ask what kind of continental government or governance exists in North America. There would be continental government if any legitimate binational or trinational institutions can make decisions that have direct effect in the member states. If there are binational or trinational actors that can take actions influencing the behavior of the member states, we may be able to talk of transborder governance in North America. NAFTA does have elements of continental government, if only in trace amounts. Its Chapter 11 assigns judicial sovereignty to international tribunals in one very specific situation: where investors from one NAFTA country launch a suit against another NAFTA government for measures that they deem ‘tantamount’ to having expropriated their assets. Member states are legally bound to obey these tribunals’ rulings, which can invalidate democratically sanctioned statutes passed by their formally sovereign legislatures. Trinational North American governance could also be intergovernmental if the three countries made decisions working cooperatively. For instance, the North American Energy Working Group (NAEWG) was established by the NAFTA heads of government following the Quebec City Summit of the Americas in April 2001 as a committee of governmental officials implementing a modest mandate: to generate reliable common data for analyzing energy problems across the trinational space. Different parties may give different values to such ‘continentalism from above’. Canadian and US participants see NAFTA’s Financial Services Committee as a congenial forum for networking, whereas Mexican officials view it as vital for getting information on regulatory changes in the other jurisdictions. Even if a working group has more importance for one party than for another, NAFTA’s committees have been generally insignificant when it comes to continental policy-making. NAFTA’s judicial processes for settling disputes between the member states have disappointed those who were hoping that the United States would be placed on a level judicial playing field alongside its two neighbors before the goddess of justice. Chapter 20’s dispute settlement provides for establishing binational panels to examine complaints by one party against another in its fulfillment of NAFTA’s commitments. These panels produce recommendations that are forwarded to the North American Free Trade Commission – in practice the federal governments’ three trade secretaries, who decide what to do with the ruling.

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Since Chapter 20 processes only generate recommendations, they can be considered a modest form of continental judicial governance. Negotiators of North American integration claimed that the binational panel system set up in Chapter 19 to review domestic trade remedy determinations provided a binding form of continental justice. When a panel has been formed to review a US complaint about a Canadian or Mexican anti-dumping (AD) or countervailing duty (CVD), the Canadian and Mexican governments have complied with the panel’s finding. In our terms, this authoritative disciplining of a national government can be seen as continental government. However, the record of compliance is different in the case of the United States, which has not always shown itself willing to comply when the US International Trade Commission’s determinations have been remanded. The many rounds of the softwood lumber dispute clearly showed that NAFTA’s Chapter 19 was no match for US politicians’ and lobbyists’ insistence on their government’s sovereignty prevailing over its international obligations. This suggests that what may be continental government for the periphery is merely transborder governance for the United States. While NAFTA does not have a continental legal system parallel to the European Court of Justice, the many panels set up under Chapter 19, the few set up under Chapter 20, and the several controversial Chapter 11 arbitrations are creating an epistemic community of continental legal practitioners. Comprised of a mix of retired judges, lawyers, and trade academics, this small professional club is generating a consciousness and an expertise that may be making North American trade law a core sociological reality in the quiet evolution of North American economic governance. The many studies that research the impact of globalization or regionalization on national autonomy generally operationalize the state as the dependent variable – the object of external forces. For our analytical purposes, the extent to which the new continental realities have affected each state’s policy-making or governing capacity is of tangential, not of central, interest. We are more interested in identifying the creation of new judicial space in NAFTA’s investor-state dispute settlement processes than in the three member states’ equivalent loss of legal sovereignty. Yet evidence of constraints imposed on domestic policy-making may ipso facto show us something about continental governance. Hence our interest in aspects of domestic agenda setting, such as the struggle over whether to require genetically modified (GM) foods to be labeled for consumers, which reveals how business-driven continental governance operates in the biotech industry. Continental business governance can

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also be seen by the three countries’ entrenchment – under pressure from the petroleum sector – of perverse energy subsidies, which favor burning ozone-depleting fuel, stimulate the mining and environmentally catastrophic refining of Alberta’s tar sands, and discriminate against cleaner alternative energy. One of NAFTA’s unintended consequences is to have institutionalized a connection between the two peripheries. Operating within a common legal framework may make Ottawa and Mexico City compete on some issues for access to US decision-making circles, but it also induces co-operation between the two peripheral governments on other issues when dealing with Washington. For its part, Washington is harmonizing some approaches to the once starkly different bilateral relationships and thereby reducing their imbalance. Informal communication among public officials who are in constant communication with their counterparts in the two other governments may be a potent instrument for quietly harmonizing regulatory standards and practices. As a type of continental governance, this invisible process typically moves the periphery to adopt American practices. If the Canadian or Mexican officials know their brief better than do their US counterparts – a frequent occurrence with recently installed US officials following a new president’s arrival in the White House – the ensuing convergence may be on lines more favorable to the periphery. Such was the case following the terrorist attacks in September 2001 when Canadian officials were able to brief their anxious but less experienced US interlocutors about Ottawa’s long-standing proposals for improving the speed and safety of cross border traffic. ‘Made in Canada’ does not necessarily mean ‘good for Canada’: if competitiveness and efficiency constitute the prime consideration on the officials’ minds, issues of national autonomy may be ignored in order to promote market freedom on a continental scale. Plainly, it is very difficult for anyone – and especially academic researchers – to observe, document, weigh, and analyze the hundreds of hourly communications taking place among officials over the Internet or the telephone lines. Even more difficult than informal transactions are any deliberately secret exercises of power. When agents of a US anti-narcotic campaign violate Mexican law by kidnapping a suspect and whisking him off to stand trial in Texas, transborder government of a darker, more imperial type is occurring (McKinley 2005). When a Mexican drug cartel has a US border-patrol agent assassinated, the news media alert the public that an even darker form of government by gangs has taken on transborder dimensions.

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The management of border regions North American transborder governance can be identified when processes take place independently of the three federal governments in a zone of decision-making and consultation that transcends one or both of the international boundaries. From the nineteenth century on, concerns about the exploitation of North America’s transboundary water resources gave rise to several treaties and corresponding binational institutions established to manage the flow, level, and, later, the quality of water in the lakes and rivers bisected by the Canadian–US and Mexican–US borders. While the International Joint Commission (IJC), set up in 1909 thanks to the Boundary Water Treaty of that year, is well known, the actual management – often mismanagement – of water matters on both borders is carried out by hundreds of collaborative arrangements involving agencies, business corporations, scientists, and environmentalist groups concerned about their local or regional eco-systems. North America’s water governance is a vast, complex, and multilayered regime of national and international institutions, legal frameworks, and social and economic values which, according to circumstances, converge and diverge in an irregular and unpredictable fashion (Buie 2005). Given the high levels of social and economic integration in the zones along the Canada–US and Mexico–US borders, the management of water resources presents a highly complex dynamic between different levels of government and public participation in political processes, which are not necessarily evolving in the direction of transport or integration. Under the George Bush administration’s general hostility to international law, the US government has been resisting recognition of the IJC’s mandate for supervision over such major problems as the diversion of Devil’s Lake into the Red River watershed and the withdrawal of Great Lakes water through Illinois. Continentalism from below NAFTA’s autonomous environmental and labor commissions straddle the continent’s two national borders. Set up to mitigate the adverse effects that economic liberalization was expected to have on environmental and labor conditions, they are examples, however modest, of a form of governance that emerges from what some call continentalism from below. We regard this as a form of transborder governance, given the fact that some of their staffing is supranational, and their recommendations are considered by the NAFTA states.

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The North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (NACEC) has generated some innovative collaboration between scientific, business, and citizens’ groups and issued some news-making reports, but its achievements seem mainly to lie in stimulating civilsociety environmentalism in Mexico. For its part, NAFTA’s Commission for Labor Cooperation (CLC) has proven so disappointing in enforcing labor rights that its main achievements appear negative: the frustration that labor unions from the three countries have experienced in trying to use CLC’s processes to defend their rights has generated some genuine trinational solidarity among them when they have organized industrial action against certain TNCs with operations in the three countries. These two institutions generate governance when they are expressed in concerted action by the launch of a complaint against a NAFTA government for not enforcing an environmental or labor law, but the phenomenon can only be allotted minor importance, given the two institutions’ tightly circumscribed authority. At this level of sociopolitical reality, NAFTA seems to have fostered little sustained continentalism from below – that is, self-conscious transnational solidarity and continuing co-operation among civil society organizations. In the case of native peoples for whom NAFTA has no rules that seem of direct relevance and offers no institutional toehold, no continental solidarity of any kind has developed. By contrast, the CEC and CLC have fostered a minor degree of trilateral interconnection among environmentalists and labor unions, or the kind of contentious politics described in the previous chapters.

Continentalism in the marketplace With NAFTA’s explicit aim to enhance continental economic integration, we should find evidence of governance in what can be called ‘market continentalism’. Yet beyond the powerful intervention of corporate actors in lobbying during the negotiation of the free-trade agreements (Lachapelle 2005), a few sectors of the market provide evidence of governance with a continent-wide substance. In spite of the fact that, as a traditional heavy industry, steel provides the backbone of the old manufacturing economy, it did not do well under NAFTA, which failed to eliminate the protectionist safeguard, anti-dumping, and countervailing-duty measures with which US steel makers had long been impeding Canadian steel exports. When, in their frustration, the Canadian firms invested heavily in the United States,

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they did not retain their own identity and lobby as Canadian firms for their national sector’s interests. Instead, they became more active as US members of such industry associations, as the American Iron and Steel Institute did. As players in the US economy, they proceeded to lobby – along with the US steelworkers’ union, which had fortuitously been run by Canadian presidents – to exempt Canada (and also Mexico) from the Bush administration’s 2002 safeguard duties imposed on foreign steel imports. This suggests that in the steel sector, there is significant new market governance in which Canadian, and more recently Mexican, firms have been forced partially to Americanize themselves within the US economy, rather than create a continent-wide industry containing nationally competitive elements. Symptomatic of this evolution is the creation of an instrument of trinational governance, the North American Steel Trade Committee (NASTC), which involved the three governments with industry associations in order to develop common North American policy positions at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and in the abortive negotiations for a Free Trade Area of the Americas. The struggle about whether GM food should be labeled in each country pitted the industry (agribusiness which has developed GM seeds or livestock), farmers (who grew and marketed this genetically engineered produce), the food-processing companies (which salt cheaper inputs), and the governments (which have supported these applications of science to the agricultural economy) against the medical and consumers’ organizations that were calling for citizens to have full information about the food on store shelves. Elements of US-controlled transborder governance could be detected when TNCs like Monsanto intervened in the Canadian debate or when, under pressure from Monsanto, similar to the US and Canadian governments, the Fox government removed a bill in the Mexican congress that would have required the labeling of GM food.

Continental business governance under global rules Corporate government – how firms govern themselves – is generally considered their private responsibility, assuming that they follow the government’s laws and their own business associations’ guidelines. The collapse of gigantic Enron and WorldCom caused such devastation to their ruined employees and stockholders that private corporate government became a public issue, causing the US government to intervene and change the rules for business government. Because of

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North America’s extremely high levels of capital-market integration, when the US Congress or the Securities and Exchange Commission rewrite the law or business codes, the Canadian and Mexican markets find themselves under pressure to mirror Uncle Sam’s domestically oriented laws in their own codes. Although this appears to be an issue of continental governance, in fact all capitalist countries’ stock markets are under similar pressures to conform to US standards, pointing to a case of the regional manifestation of a global phenomenon generated by North America’s leader. With regards to the new information economy and intellectual property rights (IPRs), the question of patents for branded drugs has been driven not just by US-based but also by European pharmaceutical TNCs, which have been battling against legislation protecting the generic drug companies in every country in order to obtain longer periods of monopoly protection so Big Pharma can exploit its brands. In this process, the then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, without waiting for the trade negotiations to redefine IPRs, adjusted Canada’s laws, which had favored the production of cheaper drugs by the generic firms, in order to comply with US demands. Subsequently, the United States and the EU had their positions favoring longer patent protection for branded drugs accepted for both NAFTA and the WTO. This forced Mexico to follow suit and adopt the new global rules as well. Recently, and acting again at the global level in favor of the pharmaceutical industry, the United States single-handedly blocked an agreement to provide medicines for the world’s poorest nations (Becker 2003). Yet the effective actions of such CSOs as MSF have allowed the global fight for affordable medication to shift the moral discourse in favor of the ‘pirates’, with drug companies losing some of their ground. NAFTA was negotiated just when General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs’ Uruguay Round was reaching its successful conclusion. The creation of the WTO in 1995 raised many analytical complications for students of North American governance. Even if the IPRs in NAFTA’s Chapter 17 are virtually identical to those in the WTO’s Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement, the fact that Washington used the WTO’s dispute settlement body rather than NAFTA’s as its legal venue for pressing Canada to make more concessions to US branded drug companies suggests that weak continental judicial governance has been trumped by the stronger traditional government established at the global level. The implementation of TRIPS and NAFTA regulations on IPRs imposes an enormous cost, not only in developing the appropriate laws, but

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also in the creation and implementation of methods for enforcing the laws and punishing the violators. What the language of IPRs masks is the global political economy of highly concentrated copyright and patent ownership where corporate monopolies, not people, are the beneficiaries (Halbert 2005: 8).8 Globally and continentally, the United States aggressively asserts an intellectual property discourse that must be accepted as a condition for trade. For their part, the EU’s pharmaceutical firms have also used the WTO’s dispute settlement process to force Canada and Mexico to provide longer protection than they had been willing to concede. So in this case, global government has displaced continental government, as TNCs have used both regimes to get the peripheral governments in North America to conform to their globalist demands. Banking offers a more confused picture because North America is not a natural zone for transnational banking. Some Canadian banks have operated for decades throughout the hemisphere, and to a lesser extent globally, while all of them already had branches in the US market well before trade liberalization. For their part, US banks had also set up shop in Canada long before free trade. With a much less robust set of banks, which were nationalized in 1982 following one of the country’s periodic currency crises, Mexico has found itself at the receiving end of transnationalized banking. NAFTA had required it to open specified portions of its re-privatized banks to foreign ownership, but, in the shock of the 1995 Peso Crisis, the IMF, World Bank, and the US Treasury – the champions of globalism – used their bailout to force it to go all the way. After a flurry of foreign banks merging and associating themselves with domestic partners, Mexicans found that all but one of their banks had fallen under foreign ownership. Although some harmonization of the three banking sectors’ regulations has occurred within North America, this is not due to any continental governance created by NAFTA, but rather to the three central banks’ participation in the global governance centered in the monthly meetings at the Bank of International Settlements in Basel and, in turn, applying these multilaterally negotiated norms at home.

With the war on terror, government trumps governance Washington’s move to a security paradigm was dramatized for North America on 11 September by its immediate blockade of its two land borders. This unilateral action demonstrated that, once Washington declared its national security to be at stake, the US government would

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simply reassert its control over the policy space it had previously vacated. The subsequent demands that Canada and Mexico do what Washington considered necessary to make their exports safe for the United States showed how much North American governance was driven by the US government. In the post–September 11 handling of US domestic security, traditional binational relations prevailed, giving first Ottawa and then Mexico City a strong role in working out detailed agreements with Washington to tighten their policies. These intergovernmental negotiations were supplemented by unusually active business-coalition involvement in the design of new security systems, a new intensity of governance impinging on the traditional governmentto-government bilateralism. The radical shift in Washington provoked by the terrorist disaster of 2001 instantly recast the relationship between governance and government in North America. The economic integration fostered by NAFTA had been reducing the government-made economic barriers along the United States’ two territorial borders in order to allow the marketplace freer rein to enhance human and economic flows across the continent. Throughout the late 1990s, the growth in cross-border trade had generated increased attention to border governance issues, as business coalitions, which were concerned about the efficiency of their continent-wide production systems, lobbied their governments to invest in the transportation infrastructure and security technology needed to create a near-borderless continent. After September 11, however, we see the reversion to an old pattern in which domestic considerations in the United States take priority over multilateral trade. In other words, politics trumps international trade as part of a renewed hegemonic compromise, or as illustrated in Nederveen Pieterse analysis, ‘the fine print of US aid (for instance $15 billion for HIV victims in Africa) is that receiving countries exempt American nationals from the International Criminal Court, accept GM food, and co-operate in the war on terrorism’ (Nederveen Pieterse 2004: 59). Initially, as each periphery dealt with Uncle Sam on its own, little trilateral governance was evident. An equivalent absence of Canadian– Mexican dialogue characterized the first phase of each country’s response to the Pentagon’s re-organization of its command structure for North America. The Jean Chrétien government did not resolve how to respond to the United States’ pressure to support its Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) program whose technological integrity was suspect and whose strategic rationale violated Canada’s well-established stance against the weaponization of space. Under Prime Minister Paul Martin,

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partisan political calculations led to Canada’s refusal to endorse the BMD. In responding to Northern Command, Ottawa in effect had to decide how far it would follow the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) model of actually integrating its air forces while retaining nominal autonomy. All this was standard-issue intergovernmental relations, with the governance aspects of the US military– industrial complex and its Canadian subsidiaries kept well away from public view. As discussed before by Castro-Rea in this book, Mexicans had not felt the same solidarity with New Yorkers as had Canadians, and, consequently, Mexico declined to offer even symbolic support for the US war against the Taliban. However less anxious to please Uncle Sam Mexico may have been compared to Ottawa, Mexico City subsequently realized it needed to satisfy Washington and would do whatever was needed to create a continental security zone, if not a US-dominated global order. Most security discourse in Canada presumed that, since the country remained sovereign, its military commitments did not jeopardize its foreign-policy decisions. Canada’s responses to the US war on terror both support and invalidate this position. It is true that the Chrétien government made its own decision to send 750 troops to Afghanistan. Since the first Canadian troops were actually integrated under US command in Afghanistan, the gesture seems to have been motivated primarily by the Chrétien government’s desire to ingratiate itself with Washington. The events of 2003 showed that there were limits to Ottawa’s deference. The Bush administration’s determination to attack Iraq caused Ottawa enormous heartache. Canada was divided, but given their close and in some cases branch–plant relationship to the United States, the military–industrial interests lobbied for an extension of the Afghan-type collaboration which was already in place at sea with Canadian naval units operating within the US fleet in the Persian Gulf. As discussed also by Castro-Rea, at that time the Canadian government developed an oppositional axis with Mexico and Chile at the United Nations in order to block the impending US invasion. With Mexican opinion against a pre-emptive US war even higher than it was in Quebec, Vicente Fox appreciated the diplomatic effort that Canada had made to find some war-postponing compromise acceptable at the United Nations’ Security Council. Jean Chrétien’s flash visit to Mexico City, where he huddled with Fox and phoned President Ricardo Lagos of Chile, established a temporary axis of those in the

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Western Hemisphere unwilling to endorse a US unilateralism deemed both invalid in its rationale and dangerous in its consequences. Clearly, North America was far from developing what the EU calls a common foreign and security policy. Foreign policy making remained the preserve of governments, which in a crisis considered vital by all parties involved, exhibited striking autonomy. In this case, transnational governance pressures were negligible. Overall, whatever NAFTA’s role in furthering continental harmonization may have been, the three governments of North America clearly failed to generate a coherent common position on the issue of greatest importance to the George W. Bush administration. For its part, the March 2005 Waco meeting of Prime Minister Paul Martin, and Presidents Vicente Fox and George W. Bush, which served to launch the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP), could be seen as the strengthening of the security dimension of continental government. Moreover, the victories of Stephen Harper in January 2006 as Prime Minister of a Conservative minority government and that of Felipe Calderón in the July 2006 Mexican presidential elections contributed to the increasing influence of the transnational right alliance. The strength of this alliance and its impact on continental governance, however, has started to show its limitations. On the one hand, the end of the second Bush administration and the results of the November US presidential elections posed big questions about its future. On the other, the bilateral efforts to strengthen Mexico–United States security cooperation, especially on combating organized crime and drug-trafficking represented by the March 2007 Merida initiative, suffered a major blow during the recent 47th interparliamentary meeting held in Monterrey, Mexico.9 Parliamentarians of both countries agreed on the need to revise the terms and conditions of such an initiative as presented by their respective executives. Among other explanations for this development, it has been argued that Calderón’s government underestimated the increasing weight of the Mexican Congress, failing once again to consider the voices of other interlocutors in its negotiations with the US administration.10 Similarly, Bush’s lack of consultation with Congress became evident in the discussions conducted by parliamentarians. The initiative cannot be declared dead given the centrality of the terrorist threat for the United States and the threat to Mexico’s stability represented by drugtrafficking and the increasing related violence. These circumstances make it clear that some form of mutual support is necessary. The question is whether future efforts in this area will take some form

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of continental government or governance, and with what degree of transparency.

Conclusion Our goal has been to achieve greater clarity about the potential for democratic participation – whether contentious or not – in the continent’s governance. For each of our probes, the distinction between government and governance allows us to look at the role and influence of various domestic, continental, and global stakeholders in the process of public policy-making in North America, contributing to understand a deceptively obvious but deeply enigmatic entity, North America under NAFTA and after 11 September 2001. The exercise has allowed us to reach four conclusions: (1) Where classical intergovernmental relations predominate, as in issues of border security and defense, the avenues open for democratic participation remain focused on the three federal governments’ politics. (2) In those economic sectors where transborder governance is more global than continental, the potential for democratic participation is restricted to those powerful NGOs such as MSF which can focus their resources on such global governance institutions as the WTO. (3) In economic sectors which are more continental than global, democratic politics is largely pre-empted by the role of powerful ‘stakeholders’ who are typically the representatives of the major corporate interests. (4) As for the few continental institutions established by NAFTA, political protest has shown them to be more vulnerable than their weak structures might have led one to expect. Strong objections to the investor–state dispute settlement process were not just expressed in Canada and Mexico. Opposition in the US Congress to Chapter 11 has resulted in the government insisting in new economic treaties that foreign investors are not to have rights superior to those enjoyed by American corporations. Political contention has also shown its capacity to derail post-NAFTA institution building. The SPP born in Waco Texas in March 2005 along with the North American Competitiveness Council created a year later in Cancun have been weakened as a result of continuing nationalist protests in

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the United States (from the right) and in Canada and Mexico (from the left). In sum, we can conclude, along the lines of the earlier chapters, that transborder governance in North America has largely developed outside the discourse of democratic politics, remaining for this reason all the more contentious.

9 The Legalization of Transnational Political Opportunity Structures: Mobilization of NAFTA’s Labor Citizen Petitions for Domestic Political Gain Jonathan Graubart

Despite being one of the few existing international labor rights agreements, the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC) – the North American Free Trade Agreement’s (NAFTA) labor ‘side’ agreement – has garnered little appreciation from either activists or scholars. Upon NAALC’s establishment in 1994, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organization’s (AFL-CIO) Lane Kirkland called the accord a ‘bad joke . . . a Rube Goldberg structure of committees all leading nowhere’ (Grayson 1995: 177). The dismissal of NAALC rests above all on the accord’s absence of binding authority. Although it liberally allows individuals or NGOs to file petitions of labor rights violations before specially created quasi-judicial bodies, the latter cannot compel compliance nor issue sanctions. Despite frustrations with the process, North American activists have raised over 30 petitions from 1994 through 2007. In so doing, they have contradicted the negative assessment of NAALC by effectively using citizen petitions to mobilize added political pressure on recalcitrant local agencies, federal agencies, and private companies. For example, a petition challenging the State of Washington’s treatment of migrant apple pickers prodded the state government to increase its enforcement of health and safety regulations and one of the major packing companies to accept a card-signing initiative from the Teamsters to 177

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unionize the plant. Notwithstanding, then, NAALC’s limitations, its citizen-petition mechanism presents a significant transnational political platform for challenging neoliberal-style economic integration. Accordingly, close scholarly analysis of activists’ experiences with NAALC’s citizen petitions is long overdue. Indeed, the failure, by and large, of scholarship to give serious attention to them indicates a broader analytical shortcoming. Specifically, studies neither of transnational activism nor of international law possess adequate conceptual tools for appreciating the significance of transnational quasi-judicial mechanisms. Such mechanisms involve specially created administrative bodies that review claims from nonstate actors of treaty violations by a state party. Although the administrative body interprets legal norms, it is not a court and the process takes place without the formal trappings of an adversarial proceeding. In addition, the findings usually are rendered as nonbinding recommendations, making them a form of ‘soft law’. Transnational quasi-judicial mechanisms have become an increasingly common feature in global governance and are administered by such prominent agencies as the United Nations Human Rights Committee, the World Bank Inspection Panel, and the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) Committee on Freedom of Association. To date, such mechanisms have been poorly understood due to gaps in understanding the interaction between transnational activism and less conventional forms of international law. Analysis, then, of labor activists’ experiences with NAALC’s citizen petitions enables broader understanding of an increasingly prominent but thinly understood feature of global governance. In providing such an analysis, this chapter develops a conceptual framework that posits transnational quasi-judicial mechanisms as a legalized type of transnational political opportunity structure for activists. Rather than treat them as conventional legal channels, activists use the quasi-judicial mechanisms to inject new energy into an ongoing domestic political cause, such as a collective labor organizing campaign. Their tactics involve a complementary mix of legal argumentation and political activism. In applying this conceptual framework to the NAALC setting, I advance two central themes featured in this book. First, this chapter illustrates the important, if uneven, role of NAALC’s citizen-petition mechanism as a transnational terrain for interjecting anti-neoliberal contentious politics into North America. Second, and more broadly, my analysis enables new insights into the evolving nature of global governance as it relates to international law and transnational activism.

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Background and description of NAALC’s citizen-petition process Both NAALC and the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC) came about as a result of negotiations initiated by newly elected US President Bill Clinton in 1993. At this point, the main NAFTA accord had been drafted by the heads of all three states while significant popular resistance had crystallized throughout the region (Ayres 1998; Cameron and Tomlin 2000). Elected as a relatively pro-business ‘New’ Democrat, Clinton supported NAFTA but called upon the reluctant leaders of Mexico and Canada to negotiate parallel accords on labor and the environment. Through this course of action, which culminated in the establishment of NAALC and NAAEC, Clinton was able to partially mollify some US critics of NAFTA and persuade just enough swing Democrats in the House of Representatives to approve the main NAFTA accord.1 NAALC sets forth a broad set of labor principles, including unionbased rights, health and safety protections, nondiscrimination, and protection of migrant workers. Each state is committed to uphold these principles through enforcement of its own domestic labor laws. Notably, NAALC does not create specific regional labor provisions – this would have been unacceptable to both the Mexican and the Canadian governments. Rather, it brings enforcement of domestic labor standards to regional scrutiny. NAALC’s primary institutional feature, the citizenpetition mechanism, is delegated to three separate National Administrative Offices (NAO), housed within each government’s labor department. Each hears citizen petitions on the failure of another member government to uphold its domestic labor laws. This use of separate national agencies was insisted upon by Mexico’s long-governing Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). PRI feared that an autonomous regional body with wide investigatory authority would challenge the preferential treatment it had long given a federation of allied labor unions, led by the Confederación de Trabajadores de México (CTM – Confederation of Mexican Workers) (Cameron and Tomlin 2000: 191–200). To prevent self-investigation, no NAO is allowed to review petitions filed against its own government. Each NAO consists of a politically appointed secretary and a small staff. In its reviews, the NAO commissions legal studies, receives information from any interested party, and exchanges information with the NAO of the complained-of government. The process is relatively comprehensive and accessible. It imposes no standing requirements

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and allows petitions on a broad range of issues. It ends with the NAO issuing findings and recommendations. The most favorable formal remedy an NAO can provide petitioners is to recommend that the governments conduct follow-up ministerial consultations on the problems raised by the petition. It is then up to the member governments to arrange ministerial consultations, though the NAO staff helps coordinate the ministerial consultations. The ministerial consultations have involved further studies and investigations, which include public meetings of government officials, companies, labor unions, and other interested parties.

How NAALC’s citizen-petition mechanism is a legalized transnational political opportunity structure It is understandable why activists are discontent with NAALC’s limitations. But to deny any value to it, as implied by a number of activists and scholars, is misguided (see Anderson, Cavanagh and Ranney 1996, Economic Policy Institute et al. 1997; Fox 2002). To see why, it is necessary to appreciate how a transnational legalized structure offers a valuable political opportunity structure for activists even in the absence of binding legal authority. By political opportunity structure, I refer to an institution, a forum, or a salient political controversy that facilitates successful activism by such means as attracting more attention to the activists’ cause, creating new avenues for the promotion of their cause, and opening up access to the media and influential policy makers. Typical transnational political opportunity structures are a receptive international institution, like the ILO, or a contentious international initiative, like NAFTA, which arouses interest in competing visions (Ayres 2002: 191). Activists are best equipped to take advantage of political opportunity structures when they have significant mobilization resources, such as expertise in the subject matter, financial resources, access to the media, and a network of supporters (Klandermans and Tarrow 1988: 11–12). Two valuable tactics for mobilizing transnational political opportunity structures are strategic framing and disseminating information. The former is articulating one’s cause and desired policy changes according to widely accepted international norms. The goal is to shape the debate as a normative one, rather than a contest for political power or resources, thereby placing the targeted actor on the defensive as a norm violator (Keck and Sikkink 1998: 16–22). Disseminating information is communicating one’s message to the media, supporters, receptive policy

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makers, and the broader public. Other useful tactics are recruiting and mobilizing supporters, protesting, and lobbying of policy makers. Success rarely involves complete policy reversals by the targeted actor. While activists desire concrete policy changes, they often have more modest goals as well, such as eliciting a commitment from governments to increase formal attention to activists’ underlying concerns. Examples of such agenda advancing include the establishment of a new task force and an increase in the accessibility of government agencies to citizens. Such steps boost the legitimacy of the activists’ political cause and provide a new domestic platform (Koh 1997: 2645–2658). Though the general workings of transnational political opportunity structures can be readily understood, legalized ones, like the NAALC’s transnational quasi-judicial mechanism, remain under-conceptualized. Such mechanisms derive their status from the legitimating power of law in encouraging normatively driven behavior. This power derives from legal discourse and process. The former entails a high degree of formality and precision and a focus on principled ideas. Participants justify their behavior and propose resolutions based on accepted standards of appropriate behavior (Franck 1990: 190–194; Abbott and Snidal 2002: 429). The standards are derived from the terms of the treaty, legal authorities, legal reasoning, and general principles of law. The legal process consists of the forum and procedures for mediating the legal discourse. It includes reviewing competing legal arguments, gathering evidence, conducting investigations, and issuing findings and recommendations. The effect of legal process is to highlight the underlying legal norms and validate normatively based resolutions. As a result, the legal process can effectively entrap a government to conform its behavior to accepted interpretations of appropriate behavior rather than to perceptions of self-interest (Risse and Sikkink 1999: 16–17). In the international realm, a legal process is more likely to take place in an administrative or quasi-judicial setting than in a formal court (Romano 1999: 710). In this setting, the review body plays a crucial role in validating normative behavior. In the case of NAALC, the very decision to proceed with a full review of a labor petition sends a message that the argument has merit and draws the target government into a type of normative discourse desired by the activists. A subsequent favorable finding provides activists further momentum by offering an official benchmark that can be invoked in the future to pressure the government. In sum, a transnational quasi-judicial mechanism, like the NAALC, enables activists to initiate a norm-based argument in a ready-made

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forum in which the government has promised to participate. In effect, they are legalizing a political dispute to give their cause greater status. Yet, as most activists realize, a sound legal argument is not likely to be sufficient, especially for a soft law mechanism. Left to their own devices, governments will resist giving more than nominal ground to activists. It is, thus, up to activists to convert desirable normative discourse into real political change. This requires more political activism, such as disseminating the petition and any favorable findings, mobilizing a network of supporters, and lobbying influential policy makers to accept the findings and respond accordingly. In other words, after legalizing the political dispute by raising a NAALC petition, it is then incumbent upon activists to politicize the ensuing legal process. As discussed below, activists have gotten very good at this.

The evolution of cross-border labor activism in North America Any citizen-based petition mechanism requires interest from citizens, especially activists, to attain relevance. Back in 1994, such interest may not have appeared to be forthcoming, given the widespread frustration among North American labor activists with NAALC’s limitations. In fact, the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) expressed its lack of interest at the outset in utilizing NAALC.2 With some exceptions, Canadian labour activists have remained relatively uninterested in the mechanism. Mexican and US activists, by contrast, have proved reasonably receptive. They have developed a nuanced attitude of publicly condemning NAALC’s limitations while selectively engaging the petitions to promote labor causes. To appreciate how this interest came about, it is necessary to revisit the impact of the NAFTA debate on the US and Mexican labor movements. With the encouragement of an already mobilized coalition of internationally oriented Canadian movements, the NAFTA debate dramatically transformed relations between US and Mexican labor activists (Barry, Brown and Sims 1994: 322; Ayres 1998). In contrast to the AFL-CIO leadership’s nationalist line of opposition, a coalition of reformist, grass-roots-oriented labor unions, such as the United Electrical, Radio, and Machinist Workers (UE), the Teamsters, and the United Auto Workers (UAW), adopted an internationalist strategy of opposition (Dreiling 2001). These labor unions, along with leftist policy research and advocacy groups, like the International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF), became important members of the Alliance for Responsible Trade (ART).

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In opposing NAFTA, ART featured a broader internationalist and social justice vision that reached out extensively to Mexican activists. NAFTA’s impact on Mexican labor movements was more far-reaching. For over a half century, Mexico had a distinct type of corporatist system, whereby the PRI bestowed beneficial treatment in state benefits and recognition to the CTM and other ‘official’ unions (Middlebrook 1995). Discontent with Mexico’s official labor unions had surged by the beginning of the 1990s as labor conditions deteriorated under a neoliberal restructuring of Mexico’s economy (Barry, Brown and Sims 1994). The introduction of NAFTA gave further spark to this discontent and sparked a coalition of anti-neoliberal groups to form the Red Mexicana de Acción Frente Al Libre Comercio (RMALC – Mexican Action Network on Free Trade) to oppose NAFTA and promote an alternative vision of social justice (Cook 1997: 517–21). A leading initiator of RMALC was the Frente Auténtico del Trabajo (FAT – Authentic Workers’ Front), an independent labor federation devoted to rank-and-file democracy and opposition to the system of official unions. The changes within the US and Mexican labor movements led to extensive growth in cross-border collaboration in the 1990s. Most prominently, a trinational, anti-NAFTA coalition formed. It proposed an alternative vision of regional integration that included binding labor and environmental standards and greater democratic accountability (Dreiling 2001). Although the campaign largely failed (with the exception of prodding the governments to adopt the parallel accords), it instilled a more internationalist outlook among labor activists in North America. With the anti-NAFTA campaign over, activists looked for new avenues of cross-border collaboration. For Mexican and US movements seeking to continue a common anti-neoliberal front, NAALC’s citizenpetition mechanism offered a concrete vehicle despite its limitations.

Legalizing transnational activism: Mobilizing NAALC for domestic political reform Reformist and internationalist movements, such as UE, FAT, the ILRF, and the Asociación Nacional de Abogados Democráticos (ANAD – National Association of Democratic Attorneys), took the lead in engaging NAALC’s citizen-petition mechanism. Five of the first six petitions raised from 1994 through 1996 were filed before the US NAO and attacked Mexico’s discriminatory system of industrial relations. The sixth was raised before Mexico’s NAO and addressed the weakness of US enforcement of laws prohibiting companies from relocating in

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response to a union-organizing campaign. All of the petitions involved considerable cross-border collaboration in researching the laws, gathering witnesses and documentary evidence, framing the petition, and disseminating the petition to the media and elsewhere (Graubart 2008). Although none of the early petitions secured union organizing victories or restored the jobs of illegally dismissed workers, they collectively persuaded a broader community of labor activists that, if used strategically and with care, the process had value. While recognizing that the petition process was a poor instrument for producing immediate changes in the behavior of the targeted government or private company, observers saw that it could provide a valuable political boost to ongoing labor struggles. Most notable was the 1994 Sony petition that challenged the Mexican government’s role in facilitating the suppression of an independent labor organizing campaign at a Sony subsidiary (Graubart 2008). Helped by a favorable finding from the US NAO, petitioners were able to shine an unwelcome spotlight on Mexico’s biased system of registering labor unions. Moreover, the follow-up ministerial consultations that ensued from the NAO finding gave independent Mexican labor activists a rare public and international forum to highlight the biased labor board system in Mexico and pressure government officials to justify state behavior.3 In 1997, North American labor advocates stepped up their engagement of the citizen-petition mechanism. New groups took part, including the AFL-CIO and, to a lesser extent, the CLC. There was also wide trinational strategizing, marked by two large AFL-CIO-sponsored conferences in Mexico and in the United States. As a result, activists initiated a series of legally sophisticated petitions accompanied by extensive political mobilization. While repression of independent labor movements in Mexico remained the chief focus of the petitions, the targets extended to other areas, especially the treatment of migrant workers in the United States. Most of these petitions enjoyed some success in terms of advancing an ongoing domestic campaign, typically a union-organizing drive. A few even produced notable concrete results, such as the petition mentioned at the beginning of this chapter regarding migrant apple pickers in the State of Washington. Much more common were mixed outcomes: concrete results were modest but there was marked growth in the attention given by the government to the underlying cause. Such petitions should not be downplayed, because they best illustrate the limitations and most likely benefits, for activists, of incorporating a NAALC petition as part of a broader political campaign.

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I now turn to a case study of an especially prominent and representative petition filed in 1997, Echlin. It and a similarly ambitious petition filed a few months previously, Han Young, reflect the most sustained effort by a wide coalition of labor movements and human rights groups to confront a preeminent labor concern in North America and a dominant theme of NAALC petitions: systematic repression of independent Mexican labor movements. Echlin well illustrates the dynamics involved in utilizing a nonbinding, quasi-judicial mechanism for domestic gain. It also merits close analysis because it manifests a mix of high hopes, considerable accomplishments, and great frustration experienced by activists dealing with the citizen-petition process. Moreover, the postscript history offers a cautionary tale of how a deteriorating political climate diminishes the political value of quasi-judicial, nonbinding mechanisms. Deciding to file Echlin Prior to the petition, there had been a fiercely contested organizing drive by a FAT affiliate at Itapsa, a Mexican auto-parts subsidiary of the US-based Echlin company (later acquired by Dana). This unionorganizing campaign marked the first project of the Echlin Workers’ Alliance, a trinational coalition dedicated to supporting organizing drives at non-union Echlin plants in North America. Members included the UE, the Teamsters, the United Steel Workers, the Canadian Auto Workers, and the FAT. The Alliance filed the NAALC petition on 15 December 1997 before the US NAO. Coordinating the complaint was Robin Alexander, the UE’s Director of International Affairs. Although she had been frustrated with the NAO’s handling of a 1994 petition she had coordinated, she was impressed by subsequent reviews and believed that the US NAO had become more receptive and better informed about Mexico’s treatment of independent labor unions.4 The Alliance filed the petition to interject outside scrutiny of union-suppression activities. Legal framing of the petition NAALC’s mechanism offered petitioners an opportunity to bypass the often inhospitable and inaccessible administrative and legal domestic channels in Mexico and secure a more equal exchange in an outside forum free of PRI influence. Before the US NAO, they could engage the government in a legal discourse that focused on appeals and codified norms of behavior, rather than justifications based on power or selfinterest. Benefiting from analysis of prior petitions, the Alliance put

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together a well-crafted argument. It articulated dramatic factual narratives of labor abuses, including the intimidation and discharging of FAT supporters, manipulation of union elections by biased labor boards, rampant exposure of workers to asbestos and other harmful chemicals, malfunctioning equipment, and structurally inadequate governmental inspections. The petition connected the plant-level violations to a broader pattern of unlawful collusion in Mexico between company management, official union affiliates, and government officials: Through these abuses, which were perpetrated by a US corporate subsidiary in conjunction with Mexico’s largest governmentsanctioned labor union, the independent union campaign was crushed. . . . Rather than act to prevent the abuses or deny them legal effect, Mexican authorities participated in some of the challenged conduct. (US NAO Public Submission 9703 1998: 2) The petition provided thorough factual documentation and detailed legal analyses of Mexican obligations under statutory law, constitutional law, and international treaty commitments. It also cited prior US NAO findings of discrimination against independent labor movements. Finally, the Alliance proposed a long-term plan of structural reform for the NAO to recommend, including a neutral labor board, secret-ballot union elections, a public registration of unions, the elimination of worker-exclusion clauses, and an effective health and safety enforcement system. The factual and legal arguments were further developed at the public hearing convened by the US NAO. There, workers recounted abuses suffered at the plant and physical intimidation experienced at the laborboard sponsored union-certification election. Mexican labor attorneys testified to how Mexico’s labor boards were biased against independent unions and violated statutory law. The attorneys argued that true compliance with Mexican labor laws required giving workers the right to demand a secret ballot election to determine union certification. A Mexican toxicologist reviewed the country’s inadequate enforcement of health and safety regulations. Politicizing the legal action The Alliance amplified its legal advocacy with a vigorous political strategy. Beginning with case selection, petitioners targeted flagrant worker abuses by a US subsidiary in Mexico, which put the local plant, the US headquarters, and both governments on the defensive. Similarly,

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petitioners judged the overall political context of the time to be opportune because the Clinton administration was seeking Congressional ‘fast track’ approval for negotiating subsequent trade agreements.5 As NAALC was viewed as the model for incorporating labor concerns in future trade agreements, the Administration needed to persuade some prolabor union House members of NAALC’s practical value. Accordingly, the Alliance calculated that a Clinton-led NAO would be well disposed to the petition. After filing Echlin, the Alliance engaged in networking, disseminating information, symbolic politics, and protesting. Networking entailed recruiting an impressive coalition of co-petitioners, including the AFLCIO, the CLC, and a recently formed federation of independent Mexican labor unions, the Unión Nacional de Trabajadores (UNT – National Union of Workers), and a trinational collection of human rights groups, advocacy groups, and faith-based supporters. Pragmatically, the networking enabled much greater dissemination of the dispute and of the favorable NAO report to the media, public officials, and supporters (Nava 1997; Dillon 1998a). It also increased the voices pressuring public officials to take action. Symbolically, the networking helped frame the broader public value of the petition. Petitioners reinforced this public message at the hearings by packing the room with workers and union activists from multiple countries. The Alliance produced further pressure through solidarity visits by labor delegations to the disputed plants and picketing outside of Echlin headquarters in Connecticut.6

Response of the US NAO: Overwhelming legal validation This sophisticated legal and political advocacy impressed the NAO. The NAO first helped by agreeing to conduct a full review and holding a public hearing. This signaled that the Alliance’s allegations merited serious attention and drew the Mexican government into an unwelcome legal dialogue concerning the latter’s commitment to upholding fundamental labor rights and health and safety standards. The NAO’s final report was overwhelmingly supportive. In addition to finding multiple violations at the Itapsa plant, it found that the ‘testimony and other evidence [on the collusion between CTM and the labor board] is consistent, convincing, and disturbing’ and that ‘the exclusion clause may constitute a serious threat against the rights of workers and the principle of freedom of association’ (US Department of Labor 1998: 37, 45). The report concluded by calling for ministerial consultations on virtually all issues requested.

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Results: Modest at the plant level but significant to the cause of independent labor In response, the Mexican government accused the US NAO of acting contrary to the cooperative purpose of NAALC by questioning Mexico’s system of industrial relations and intervening in its internal politics (Dillon 1998b). It threatened to stop cooperating with the NAALC process, yet it was effectively forced to continue, given the momentum gained from petitioners’ political advocacy and the US NAO’s legal support. After all, the NAO had based its decision on a formalized process of analyzing evidence. It connected its findings to a combination of documented evidence, legal analysis of Mexican law, and accumulated expertise. In turn, activists promoted the NAO findings to the media and to government officials as an authoritative, neutral benchmark for evaluating Mexico’s treatment of independent labor movements. Thus, on 18 May 2000, the Mexican government signed on to a joint ministerial declaration, addressing Echlin and Han Young, in support of secret-ballot union elections and public registration of collective bargaining contracts (US Department of Labor and the Mexican Secretariat of Labor and Social Welfare 2000). The Declaration further committed the governments to hold trilateral public meetings on promoting the principles of freedom of association and collective bargaining, ensuring impartial labor boards, and improving health and safety enforcement. Mexican independent labor activists give Echlin and the ministerial declaration much credit for boosting their cause. Alfonso Bouzas, a leading Mexican scholar and advocate of democratic labor reform credits the declaration, and activists’ promotion of it, as shifting the terms of the debate on how to reform Mexico’s labor system.7 Previously, the internal discussion in Mexico was focused on instituting neoliberal-oriented labor flexibilization, meaning more contract workers and less job security. With the declaration in hand, democratic labor reformers secured a commitment from the government to include freedom of association and public registration of collective bargaining contracts into the policy agenda of labor reform. Activists also leveraged the Declaration to persuade presidential candidate, Vicente Fox, of the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) to sign onto a statement of ‘20 Compromisos’ produced by labor activists promoting democratic labor reforms.8 Arturo Alcalde, the preeminent labor attorney and advocate for democratic labor reform, who has both participated in citizen petitions and been a strong critic of their limitations, argues that Echlin, Han Young, and the ministerial declaration gave crucial momentum to the campaign for secret union ballots.

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The concrete results at the plant level, by contrast, were less impressive. To be sure, notable health and safety improvements were made at the Itapsa plant, although the causes are disputed because the plant had been acquired by another US-based company, Dana.9 There is reason to believe that the improvements were prodded in part by the petition process, given Dana’s subsequent concern for NAALC’s shaming potential. The company vigorously defended its own behavior at a follow-up review conducted by the Canadian NAO. However petitioners’ chief concern, the labor organizing drive, ultimately collapsed.10

Assessment of overall record of NAALC’s citizen petitions Looking only at concrete results, it is tempting to call Echlin a failure and proof of NAALC’s impotence, as some observers have done (Bacon 2000). After all, considerable resources were expended, yet the independent unionization drive failed. Such a conclusion, however, fails to appreciate properly the nature of transnational, nonbinding quasijudicial mechanisms. By design, such fora are unlikely to be effective in producing immediate, concrete changes in behavior. The best measure of their effectiveness lies in whether they are able to boost ongoing political campaigns. By this measure, Echlin passed the test, albeit with the disappointing follow-up developments discussed below. Consistent with the conceptual framework set forth, Echlin illustrates the mutually important roles of sustained political activism and legal validation in gaining political value from a nonbinding quasi-judicial mechanism. If petitioners had not received strong NAO validation, the shame value of the process would have greatly diminished and there would have been no authoritative benchmark by which to elicit new commitments from the Mexican government. By the same token, failure to have aggressively promoted the petition and its underlying allegations to supporters, the press, and policy makers would have given the NAO finding much less status and made it easier for the Mexican government to ignore it. Similarly, it was activists’ wide dissemination of the NAO report and ministerial declaration that prodded the government to commit to a new dialogue on labor reform with independent labor activists. The Echlin experience is reasonably representative of activists’ overall record with the citizen-petition mechanism. As part of a larger study, I performed process tracing of all activist-initiated petitions filed before 2003 and followed developments through the end of 2006. I found that the NAALC petition process has been a moderately

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positive transnational political opportunity structure with potentially far-reaching implications in reforming Mexican industrial relations (Graubart 2008). Enabling this success was the assembly of legally and politically sophisticated petitions by activists, and the resulting support from both US and Mexican NAOs.11 The overall record partially obscures, however, an upsurge of discontent in recent years, even among once supportive participants (Compa 2003). A primary cause of this reaction is the negative follow-up developments after Echlin, combined with the failure of several ambitious post-2000 petitions to make much political headway. These developments merit close analysis both to assess the importance of shifting political contexts and to caution against a hasty dismissal of the process.

Reversals and disillusionment after 2000 Setting the tone for the post-2000 period of disillusionment was the first public meeting arranged in response to the joint ministerial declaration for Han Young and Echlin. Held in Tijuana in June of 2000, it ended disastrously when local independent union organizers at Han Young were physically beaten by members of the audience as they protested the forum’s failure to address their experiences. The assailants belonged to an official labor federation, the Confederación Revolucionario de Obreros y Campesinos (Revolutionary Confederation of Workers and Peasants), that had switched its allegiance from PRI to PAN, following the latter’s victory in state elections (Bacon 2000). A second public meeting, held in March 2003, also provoked great frustration. Mexico’s secretary of labor changed the location from Mexico City to Monterrey one day before the meeting.12 Labor activists Arturo Alcalde and Alfonso Bouzas managed to attend, along with a delegation of workers, but the Mexican government tightly controlled participation and refused to allow Alcalde or Bouzas to make statements. Finally, through the intervention of the Canadian and US participants, Bouzas was allowed to make a statement. Nevertheless, Alcalde dismissed the meeting as ‘una burla’ (a mockery).13 The fates of two subsequent high-profile petitions furthered this overall disillusionment. In Auto Trim, filed in 2000, petitioners enlisted the input of labor movements and activists from all three countries that were in alliance with insurgent workers to challenge poor health and safety conditions at two plants.14 Despite strong NAO support and impressive follow-up political mobilization, little was accomplished beyond cosmetic changes enacted before an NAO inspection.15

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Petitioners’ proposals that specific health and safety topics be addressed in ministerial consultations, and that input from Auto Trim workers be incorporated, were ignored. In fact, petitioners were left uninformed of the consultations.16 The AFL-CIO filed Duro Bag in 2001, in conjunction with Arturo Alcalde and FAT activists, who were leading an independent organizing drive at a Mexican subsidiary of the US-based company.17 In follow up to the Han Young-Echlin ministerial declaration in support of secret ballot union elections, the petition faulted the state authorities for rejecting a request from union organizers for a secret ballot. To the regret of petitioners, the US NAO declined to review this petition, seemingly reversing its previous position. These reversals reflect major domestic political shifts in the United States and Mexico as a result of presidential elections of 2000. In 2001, George W. Bush replaced Bill Clinton as president. Given his political investment in NAALC, Clinton offered considerable support for the petition process. His NAO freely criticized Mexico’s system of industrial relations despite the irritation this provoked in the Mexican government. Bush, by contrast, has had much less of a stake in NAALC and little political incentive to placate US labor movements. Accordingly, his labor secretary has been less receptive to labor activists. The other major shift was the 2000 transition from a PRI-led government to one governed by President Vicente Fox of PAN. To be sure, the PRI had resisted political and social change and had long repressed independent political movements (Middlebrook 1995). It did, however, wish to improve its international image as a democratic government that upholds fundamental rights (Chabat 1997). The party also had a populist, pro-worker legacy, having enacted some of the most workerfriendly laws in the world (Middlebrook 1995). Petitioners, then, had considerable means to shame the PRI government by exposing gaps between its claims to be pro-worker and democratic and its record of allowing, and furthering, worker abuses. The Fox administration, whose term of office ended in November 2006, was less vulnerable, at least for the first few years. As a new governing party, its democratic credentials and international image enjoyed much higher status. Although Fox, was, at times, receptive to civil society reform, his ideology was pro-business. Hence, his primary interest in the area of labor reform was to reverse pro-worker laws.18 While Fox accepted input from democratic labor advocates, the latter felt shut out of substantive talks.19 The initial proposals circulated by Secretary of Labor, Carlos Abascal, stressed flexibilization reforms and gutted democratic labor ones. The general

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consensus among democratic labor activists was that the Fox administration sided with backers of the corporatist labor system in hopes of forging a neoliberal reform package.20 These domestic political changes have exerted the most significant impact upon ministerial consultations. With the notable exception of migrant labor issues in the United States (discussed below), neither the Bush nor the Fox administration has shown much interest in using the consultations to pressure greater compliance out of the other. Consequently, petitioners have had less success in shaping ministerial consultations. Significantly, they have been unable to enlist the support of the Bush-led NAO or Secretary of Labor to follow up on the Echlin-Han Young joint ministerial declaration’s commitment to enacting secret ballot elections and public registrations of collective bargaining contracts in Mexican labor law.

Why NAALC remains relevant to activists Some activists following NAALC’s developments over the years argue that the citizen-petition mechanism has lost its political value (Delp et al. 2004). In fact, activists have been able to use the process for political gain in recent years. Coordinators of the Apple Growers petition in Washington have used the fora sponsored by ministerial consultations, particularly one in the Summer of 2001, to get the state of Washington to devote more staff to enforcing health and safety requirements for migrant workers.21 The Asociación Sindical de Subcargos de Aviación (ASSA – Mexican Flight Attendants’ Union) credits a petition it filed with giving the union added political leverage in a later struggle against the practices of Aerocaribe.22 Although the petition was filed in 1999, the favorable NAO finding and follow-up ministerial consultations occurred post-2000. Moreover, the Mexican NAO has continued to support petitions that address migrant labor conditions in the United States. In 2002, the Mexican government obtained a joint declaration by the US and Mexican ministers whereby the United States Department of Labor would develop and disseminate informational material on migrant workers’ rights (US Department of Labor and the Mexican Secretariat of Labor and Social Welfare 2002). In 2004, the Mexican NAO produced an especially critical report on US treatment of migrant workers’ rights in the state of New York (Secretariat of Labor and Social Welfare 2004).23 Perhaps in response to these positive developments, activists from all three states have continued to file NAALC petitions, raising three

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in 2003, one in 2004, five in 2005, and one in 2006. Assisted by the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center in Mexico, the United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) assembled, with Mexican activists and workers, a sophisticated pair of petitions, presented to the US and Canadian NAOs in 2003, alleging a pattern of violations of health and safety regulations and of rules protecting labor organizing. USAS hoped to give a political boost to ongoing advocacy efforts at two Mexican plants producing college athletic apparel and increase pressure on the NAOs to take firmer stands.24 It received a mostly favorable report from the US NAO, which recommended ministerial consultations.25 It is too soon to assess the political results of this petition. Even the UE, which expressed bitter frustration with the process in 2002, remains interested. In a December 2006 letter sent to UE supporters, Robin Alexander praised FAT for coordinating an ambitious petition with 53 co-petitioners before the Mexican NAO, seeking to defend the collective bargaining rights of public sector workers in North Carolina.26 Finally, recent backsliding notwithstanding, the role of the petition process in boosting democratic labor reform in Mexico should not be slighted. As of the end of 2006, there remained an impasse between those favoring neoliberal flexibilization reforms and those favoring democratic labor reforms. Any attempt to pass labor reforms without including secret ballots and public registration of collective bargaining contracts is unlikely to pass, due, in large part, to the momentum following the Echlin-Han Young declaration.27 In fact, a trinational coalition of labor movements filed a petition in 2005 that challenged a neoliberal labor-reform package proposed by the Mexican government. The goal was to help mobilize international pressure against the reform proposals. Although the petition was eventually dismissed, activists credit it with contributing to a successful campaign to halt the proposals (UE 2005).

Conclusion Despite unfavorable post-2000 political winds, the NAALC petition process remains a useful legal and political platform for North American activists. Moreover, there have emerged some promising domestic political developments. In the United States, the Democratic Party has regained control of Congress and the presidency, under Barack Obama. What will happen in Mexico under the new administration of Felipe Calderón, who took office in December of 2006, is uncertain. Because Calderón also belongs to the PAN party, he is likely to favor neoliberal reforms over democratic ones. Given, however, his narrow and disputed

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victory over Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador of the left-of-center Partido Revolucionario Democrático (PRD), he may feel the need to be more accommodating. Accordingly, the citizen-petition mechanism may be about to become a good deal more valuable. Of course, under any domestic political setting, activists would prefer mechanisms with sharper teeth. But for now, the NAALC citizenpetition mechanism offers a transnational political platform of proven value, under certain circumstances, for promoting social causes. To be clear, activists should not settle for trade-investment regimes that offer no more than the NAFTA social model. On the contrary, they should continue to demand trade-investment regimes that give much greater prominence to social justice and community accountability. Yet there is no contradiction between utilizing available, if unsatisfying, institutions in the present while campaigning for new types of governance free of neoliberal constraints. Activists have long recognized that dramatic progress in social justice does not occur abruptly but requires a long and sustained struggle that incorporates a variety of strategies. In fact, most activist-petitioners have displayed this sophisticated understanding in their engagement with NAALC’s citizen-petition mechanisms. On the one hand, they have filed petitions to advance immediate causes, like a labor-organizing drive. On the other hand, they have strongly critiqued limited institutional protections and proposed fundamental changes geared toward prioritizing social justice values. Crucially, activists have creatively demonstrated how engagement of the citizen-petition mechanism can both advance immediate causes and long-term domestic and global reforms. Accordingly, activists who favor a social justice vision of global integration are well advised to continue with selective, strategic engagement of the citizen petitions. Scholars, for their part, should pay far more attention to these developments. After all, the degree of success activists enjoy with NAALC or with NAAEC and similar institutions in other parts of the world will likely influence the broader battle between social justice and neoliberal constituencies in shaping the evolution of global trade governance. It would be a pity if scholars missed the action.

10 North American Transnational Environmental Actors and Mexico Blanca Torres

During the debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), environmental issues were at the heart of contentious politics in the region, with the formation of highly influential coalitions and networks either opposed to the agreement or successfully advocating the introduction of commitments on labor and environmental protection within the latter. Many of the environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) involved in those struggles have continued their activities regarding Mexico during the last ten years. Some maintain their interest in pursuing the links between growing trade and environment. Others attempt to prevent further deterioration of Mexican environmental conditions by promoting stricter enforcement of environmental laws. A handful of them are directly participating in conservation efforts. These organizations have maintained or reinforced their transnational links. ENGOs have carried out their joint work mainly through networks. Their activities sometimes have shown a quite contentious character. In this chapter I will explore the new aims, strategies, and impact of these networks on Mexican policies. Emphasis on Mexico is considered appropriate since the main concern of US and Canadian ENGOs during NAFTA’s negotiations was Mexico’s environmental performance (related to both potential ‘unfair competition’ of goods and migration of ‘dirty industry’ to this country which could promote a ‘race to the bottom’ in environmental regulation in North America). Consequently, their main target was the Mexican government. Thomas Risse, focusing on transnational actors’ impact on domestic policies, advances the following sets of propositions (2002: 266). First, ‘[d]ifferences in domestic structures explain the variation in TNA [transnational actors] policy influence; domestic structures mediate, filter and refract efforts by TNAs and alliances to influence policies’; 195

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in order to affect policies, TNAs ‘have to overcome two hurdles’: access to the political system of the target state and generation and/or contribution to ‘winning policy coalitions’; ‘domestic structures’ are likely to determine both: the availability of access points into the political systems and the size and requirements for ‘winning coalitions’: the more open and more decentralized a political system, and the more pluralistic a society the easier it should be for TNAs to gain access to decisionmakers, although access does not necessarily mean influence; TNAs able to obtain access to closed political systems might have a greater impact (Risse 2002: 266). Another proposition is that the greater the level of institutionalization of interstate relations, the easier the access of TNAs to the decision-making process of the states involved (Risse 1999: 376, 389). TNAs could carry out their activities in conjunction or not with international institutions and organizations. In the first case, a ‘boomerang effect’ is produced; in other words, the targeted state would be submitted to pressures from above and below (Risse 1999: 388–389). Available evidence suggests that a handful of important changes in Mexican environmental policies, promoted by environmental TNAs, on their own or in conjunction with other foreign and domestic actors, were introduced, particularly during the first four or five years after NAFTA’s passage. The main gains have been procedural, and have included a modest degree of law enforcement improvement, though there has not been yet a significant improvement in environmental conditions in Mexico. Evidence also shows that, overall, environmental TNAs have not only achieved far less during the NAFTA era than they got during NAFTA negotiations but that their gains have been diminishing during the last five or six years. Prevailing explanations of the degree of ENGOs’ policy influence variations during the last decade tend to focus on changes in the Mexican domestic political structure: the transition from a liberalizing authoritarian political system to a democracy. Canadian and US ENGOs’ have been increasing or widening their access to Mexico and their calls are also meeting a greater receptivity among Mexican ENGOs. The latter consider links with their Northern counterparts useful in strengthening their domestic position. Increased institutionalization of environmental cooperation, for example through the environmental side accord to NAFTA, has also helped them to advance some of their concerns. However, as could have been anticipated, ENGOs impact was higher when they were able to get access to a closed system than when they operate in a more open one. Some analysts argue that the democratically elected Vicente Fox administration has been less vulnerable to foreign exposure

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than his predecessors, similar to trends in the area of labor rights (see the chapters by Graubart and Dreiling and Silvaggio in this book). This decreasing impact could also be attributed to the diminishing, or, at least, the uneven interest and mobilization of US NGOs shown during the last ten years regarding Mexican environmental protection. They have focused their energy and resources on other international trade negotiations, a behavior quite common among these actors, which try to maximize their relatively scarce resources. However, evidence also shows that TNAs have not benefited from political conditions similar to those prevailing in the United States during the NAFTA negotiations, which vastly increased their leverage vis-á-vis the US government, nor has the latter had the opportunity – or the incentive – to impose conditionality on Mexico as it did during those negotiations.1 Moreover, US government’s willingness to demand better environmental law enforcement in that country and to help strengthen Mexico’s capacity to achieve better compliance has diminished with time, particularly during George W. Bush’s administration. Thus, the importance of the ability of this type of TNA to gain the support of more powerful allies, in this case the US government, is clearly shown.2 This variable is also taken into account by Risse as well as by those researchers who focus on principled issue networks. However, I consider that the weight it has had in the varying degree of ENGOs’ influence on Mexican environmental policies during the last 15 years clearly suggests an alternative realist explanation (Krasner 1995). This chapter starts by focusing on the change in US environmental transnational organizations from basically lobbying their own government during the NAFTA negotiations to promoting the creation of new ENGOs in Mexico, and supporting their counterparts in their lobbying efforts.3 The incorporation of some Canadian organizations in the older and the emerging networks is also mentioned. The second issue this chapter will briefly deal with is the use these TNAs have made of the new channels established by the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC), and by the US–Mexico agreement for border environmental protection.

ENGOs and the NAFTA negotiations By 1990, there were dozens of environmental ENGOs in Mexico, covering a wide spectrum, from those focusing on conservation to those supporting a ‘deep ecology’ philosophy. In addition, it was possible to see the occasional emergence of urban or rural popular movements

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which raised environmental concerns usually related to depletion or pollution of natural resources. A handful of these ENGOs responded to their US and Canadian counterparts’ call to participate in the coalitions against NAFTA or in those favoring an ‘environmentally conditioned’ agreement. Almost all Mexican organizations did not openly reject the trade agreement, but proposed alternatives that should provide for better environmental protection.4 Overcoming the opposition of Canadian and Mexican governments, ENGOs of the three countries, and particularly US organizations, saw several of their demands incorporated in NAFTA’s main instrument and in two parallel agreements: the NAAEC and a United States–Mexico accord, which provided for the creation of the trilateral Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), the Border Environment Cooperation Commission (BECC), and the North American Development Bank (NADBank).5 Previously, trying to address their concerns, the Mexican government created the Procuraduría Federal de Protección al Ambiente (PROFEPA – Federal Environmental Protection Office), improved environmental law enforcement, and took some other measures tending to show an increased commitment to environmental protection. In December 1994, just a month before NAFTA started to be implemented, the Secretaria de Medio Ambiente, Recursos Naturales y Pesca (SEMARNAP – Secretariat for Environment, Natural Resources and Fishing) was created. Half a dozen well-known environmentalists, most of them university researchers, were appointed to the top posts in the new Ministry. The coalitions mentioned above, as already mentioned, focused their campaign in the US political arena.6 However, a couple of US large ENGOs which decided to support a reformed NAFTA did have some direct contact with Mexican officials during the negotiations and successfully lobbied for the creation of a US–Mexican fund for conservation.

ENGO activities in Mexico during the last ten years Some of the US large ENGOs which supported NAFTA – the so-called Group of Seven – have maintained direct contacts with the Mexican government during the last ten years.7 A couple of them opened offices in Mexico, in some cases headed by Mexican officials. Nevertheless, they largely rely on their Mexican old and new allies for day-to-day lobbying and for conservation and environmental education efforts. The proliferation of new potential domestic allies was favored during the early 1990s by greater availability of internal and external financing.8 Several transnational networks emerged.

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Before mentioning the joint activities carried out by these networks it is important to focus on what could be considered the most significant achievement of Mexican ENGOs in the last ten years: the opening of new spaces for their participation in the domestic decision-making process. It would not be accurate to attribute exclusively these, and other, procedural gains, to the direct support of their external allies. Several other factors need to be taken into account, among others, the new environmental ministry’s interest in promoting its constituency. But the general political climate generated by NAFTA’s negotiations, and especially the Mexican government’s awareness of the Clinton’s administration interest in Mexican environmental performance, did help. This interest certainly had been encouraged by US ENGOs’ mobilization. Moreover, many Mexican ENGOs’ demands, during the 1995–1996 process of reform of the 1988 general environmental law, followed several US models, suggesting US ENGO influence. This is particularly true regarding instruments and some legal procedures. In 1995, before the modification of the Ley General del Equilibrio Ecológico y la Protección al Ambiente (LGEEPA – General Law for Ecological Equilibrium and Environmental Protection) started to be discussed, one national consultative council for sustainable development and four regional ones were established in Mexico. A high proportion of their members came from ENGOs, business, and academia. Dozens of newly created state councils and national ad hoc councils to deal with specific issues or problems also became sites of domestic ENGO and other stakeholder participation. Although the newly created environmental Ministry was praised for its receptiveness toward Mexican ENGOs’ participation, the new arrangements could still be considered to follow the traditional patterns of Mexican semi-corporatism. Notwithstanding, during the thorough reform of the LGEEPA, a small number of Mexican ENGOs became key interlocutors to the government.9 While environmental officials shared many of the concerns and proposals of ENGOs, they had to face the staunched opposition of other ministries, beginning with the Secretaría de Comercio y Fomento Industrial (SECOFI – Secretariat for Trade and Industrial Promotion). More subtle, but not less strong, was the opposition to several of the ENGO demands from business organizations. However, ENGOs successfully demanded public participation in several procedures – including greater involvement in the environmental impact assessment of new projects. Their ‘right to know’ demand was also admitted.10 Last but not least, access to justice was granted.11 After several months of tense

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negotiations, their demand for the recognition of ‘intereses difusos’ in the controversies submitted to the courts was to some extent accepted. In other words, to be heard in court, complainants do not need to prove their own direct interest, but to show that they are defending a collective interest (Azuela 2004). This meant a radical change in Mexican laws, although the reform did not entirely satisfy the ENGOs’ demands. The above Mexican ENGOs’ demands reveal a clear influence from, or overlap with, the positions of their Northern counterparts. Actually, some of the Mexican NGOs relied on the technical support of a couple of US and Canadian NGOs, including the International Institute for Sustainable Development, to elaborate their demands. However, some of their positions did not coincide with those of their Northern counterparts. For example, while the latter usually promote decentralization, Mexican NGOs held an ambivalent position on this issue. They successfully opposed the transference of environmental impact assessments and other powers from the federal to state governments.12 They also opposed, though unsuccessfully, the ‘polluter pays principle’, considering it incompatible with the principle of ‘prevention’. The promotion of this and other principles seem to have other sources, particularly the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Declaration. During the NAFTA negotiations, one of the main differences in position between ENGOs in the North and South was related to Mexican organizations’ opposition to the use of sanctions in the case of violation of environmental regulations. During the following years, access to joint field activities of US and a handful of Canadian ENGOs in Mexico, mostly linked to the conservation of biodiversity, was widened. The establishment of the Fondo Mexicano para la Conservación de la Naturaleza (México) in 1994 allowed a sort of geographical distribution of large ENGOs and their domestic allies’ efforts.13 The Lacandona Forest in Chiapas, the Gulf of California, and the Chihuahua Desert continued to occupy their attention. One of these large NGOs, Conservation International, supports sustainable natural resource management in the countryside, including smallholder shade-grown coffee projects. The Environmental Defense Fund carries out some projects at the border related to contingency plans and emergencies response, and addressing urban pollution in the Ciudad Juárez-El Paso-Santa Ana region. The creation of the Joint Advisory Council to address air-quality issues in the area, which was provided for by an addition to Annex 5 of the La Paz bilateral accord, is noteworthy.14 In addition to these kinds of activities, these TNAs, occasionally including Canadian ENGOs as well, have promoted or supported

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Mexican NGOs’ more contentious initiatives: they have jointly launched international campaigns to prevent the deterioration of specific areas. For example, several US ENGOs, and some international NGOs, in conjunction with 50 Mexican groups, headed by the National Resources Defense Council and International Welfare Animal Fund, Grupo de los Cien and Centro Mexicano de Derecho Ambiental, successfully opposed the expansion of a Japanese-owned salt factory in Baja California (Vizcaíno Biosphere Reserve) during Ernesto Zedillo’s government. They have also organized campaigns in support of peasants that ENGOs allege have been imprisoned for their work in favor of environmental protection. Strategic framing and dissemination of information, as well as the use of symbolic politics certainly were the main instruments of these organizations, in this and other campaigns and lobbying efforts. Some of the large US ENGOs that opposed NAFTA, including Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Development GAP, and Friends of the Earth, have also maintained their contacts with the half dozen Mexican NGOs which joined the anti-NAFTA coalitions under the aegis of Red Méxicana Acción Frente Al Libre Comercio (RMALC – Mexican Action Network on Free Trade) (Debase, Equipo Pueblo, Grupo de Estudios Ambientales y Pacto de Grupos Ecologistas), as discussed in the chapter by Massicotte. These Mexican NGOs also maintain their pre-NAFTA links with organizations that belong to Canada Action Network. An outstanding example of these networks’ activities, which usually rely on mass mobilization, but did involve some lobbying of Mexican authorities, is the Metalclad case, which became a key issue in relation to investors’ rights as provided by NAFTA. It involved the first and unexpected use of the state-investor mechanism provided for in Chapter 11 of that Agreement. The refusal of state and municipal authorities from San Luis Potosí, Mexico to allow a toxic waste confinement plant owned by Metalclad to operate in the town of Guadalcázar prompted the first case against Mexico. Greenpeace Mexico, together with a local NGO, Pro-San Luis Ecológico, helped the disgruntled community to develop a strategy to oppose the opening of the confinement plant. Greenpeace also orchestrated the support of US NGOs that launched a campaign in their country against that opening (Bejarano 2001). The mobilization was successful – the confinement plant was definitely closed and the zone was declared a ‘protected area’ – although Mexico lost the international legal battle against the firm. However, Mexico had to pay a lower indemnification than the one asked by the firm and some clarifications regarding the faculties of the panels were made.15

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The subsequent filing of several submissions related to environmental regulations under the state-investor clause against Canada and the United States triggered a heated debate on the limitations that certain provisions in Chapter 11 might have on states’ regulatory capacity (Mann and von Moltke 1999). Concerns focused on governmental regulation being considered expropriation of private property and the lack of the public access to the dispute settlement process. They encouraged the mobilization of a wide spectrum of environmental NGOs from the three countries in favor of the reform of that chapter. Encountering the staunch opposition by the Mexican government to any reform of NAFTA, as well as the ambivalent position of the US administration, ENGOs demanded the search for alternative ways to preserve regulatory capacity, for example, through interpretative statements. They also asked for a more transparent process. Concern and discussion of the issue continue, although the three countries reached some agreement on the matter, revealing the ENGOs’ input (Gagné 2001). The United States–Mexico border also saw the proliferation of ENGOs, whose joint work deserves special attention. A handful of US-based local ENGOs encouraged the creation of organizations on the Mexican side where before there had been almost none, and the establishment of networks and coalitions usually bilateral. Some of the latter just include border ENGOs; others have found allies in distant US states and, occasionally, in central Mexico. The Border Ecology Project (BEP), from Bisbee Arizona, promoted the establishment of the Red Fronteriza de Salud y Ambiente in Hermosillo, Sonora – initially formed by half a dozen NGOs of the two countries – and the Proyecto Fronterizo de Educación Ambiental (PFEA – Environmental Education Border Project).16 The Texas Center for Policy Studies (TCPS) in Austin has worked closely with large and small groups on the east side of the border (Gallardo 1999: 118). The TCPS and Bioconservación (Monterrey) co-founded the Binational Environmental Network, which includes 15 conservation, environmental, and community organizations. The TCPS also joined efforts with a Mexico City-based ENGO, Grupo de los Cien, against the extension of the US Gulf intracoastal waterway to Tampico, which would threaten to degrade the Laguna Madre, an important breeding ground and bird sanctuary. These cross-border networks’ concerns regarding increasing pollution in the border zone led them to campaign for state toxic release inventories and public right-to-know legislation. Environmental education, including a program focusing on elementary and preparatory schools,

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has also been among their priorities. The work in this area by the PFEA and the Proyecto Bioregional de Educación Ambiental (PROBEA – Bioregional Environmental Education Project) is noteworthy. Many of these policy-oriented border ENGOs have been willing to work closely with state and local governments, the BECC and, in few cases, with the CEC.17 Some of them have also worked with academic institutions of bordering states. The University of California in San Diego, San Diego State University, and the University of Arizona-Udall Center are among those that have approached ENGOs. On the Mexican side, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte has also had contacts with them. A handful of these ENGOs have been willing to explore joint activities with business, and to participate in multisector cross-border coalitions. A noteworthy project of this kind tried to provide incentives for pollution prevention in the informal sector (Ciudad Juárez Brickmakers Project) (Kiy and Wirth 1998). In addition, some of these networks have launched campaigns to oppose specific projects that threaten the border environment. For example, there were important mobilizations to prevent the establishment of low-level radioactive waste facilities on the US side of the border area. They were successful in stopping the creation of one of them in Sierra Blanca, Texas. More recently, several border ENGOs have mobilized against the building of a wall along the border designed to prevent illegal movement of people and drugs, but which will undoubtedly have negative impacts on transboundary ecosystems.18 The Defenders of Wildlife and Wildlands Project organized workshops, attended by scholars and US officials, to analyze potential impacts, to identify critical biological corridors, and to recommend measures to protect them, almost a year before President Bush signed the Secure Fence Act in October 2006. Legal challenges by the Sierra Club, Audubon Society, and other ENGOs against the waiving of several environmental laws in order to extend triple fencing through the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve near San Diego were dismissed by a federal judge in December 2005.19 Other ENGOs have resorted to Internet campaigns demanding Department of Homeland Security undertake proper environmental assessments and to allow public input before moving forward with the fence. Alongside these larger mobilizations, it also became more common to see a small number of ENGOs working in tandem with affiliated border neighborhood communities and with other civil organizations. Some of them have evolved into what scholars label ‘environmental justice movements’ (Bandy 2004: 77, 185, 199, 230). They oppose

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neo-liberalism and promote campaigns for corporate accountability, participatory strategies of representation, popular education and consciousness-raising. They have launched campaigns focusing on problems such as toxicity and effects of chemicals inside and outside the workplace, companies’ disregard for worker health and safety and contamination of local water supplies by toxic substances leaks. Demands include higher environmental standards for multinational subsidiaries and their relocation to safer and less populous areas. Some of these bi-national networks resort to legal challenges, like the one that filed a submission to the Environmental Protection Agency regarding contamination of the New River by maquiladoras. Another resorted to community mobilization to stop some projects, for example Chemical Waste’s project to establish an incinerator for hazardous wastes in Tijuana. Links between policy-oriented NGOs and environmental justice networks have not been common. The latter are usually reluctant to work closely with their governments and bilateral organizations. Ideological differences, but also competition for scarce funding, have favored mistrust and recrimination. Mainstream border environmental NGOs from the two countries do not maintain links with labor organizations. Those within the RMALC and border environmental justice NGOs have had more contact and have launched some joint campaigns. As discussed in the chapter by Bandy in this book, the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras (CJM) has been the most systematic effort to establish common spaces for cooperation. Friction have emerged from time to time between US and Mexican environmental NGOs due to cultural differences that favor different priorities and approaches to problems. Open dialogue has been encouraged in order to dilute fears of imposition. However, these principles, objectives, and strategies reveal the US ENGOs’ stronger influence. Promotion of some US values and practices at the border has also caused opposition by Mexican poor communities (for instance, insistence on the communities covering the real cost of services that used to be subsidized by the federal government).

Use of the North American agreement on environmental cooperation and the newly created bilateral institutions ENGOs of the three countries have actively, though unevenly, participated in the implementation of the trilateral North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC) together with the

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bilateral border cooperation accord between the United States and Mexico. The commissions provided by the agreements became important fora for networking. ENGOs have had a significant role in both the cooperative activities and the implementation of the ‘citizens petitions’ related to law enforcement – two of the CEC’s main tasks. Evidence shows that ENGOs’ influence in agenda setting, which, given the wide CEC’s mandate and the scarce resources allocated to it, became crucial.20 The Joint Public Advisory Committee (JPAC) of the CEC, a body whose creation was successfully promoted by US ENGOs,21 has been quite receptive to ENGOs’ concerns which they usually raise during the JPAC’s quarterly public sessions. The public, including several ENGOs, has also had direct interaction with the CEC’s Council at its annual meeting. Moreover, though full member participation in the handful of working groups created by the Council is restricted to the group that deals with Biodiversity, ENGOs participate in almost all of the three dozens of informal groups and committees created by the Secretariat. However, the number of ENGOs in the three countries involved in these activities is still small and the CEC’s outreach is quite limited. It is also noteworthy that Canadian and Mexican NGOs have increasingly shown themselves more eager to participate than US ones.22 Asymmetry is perceived in agenda setting, regarding the exclusion or postponement of some Mexican ENGOs’ main concerns. Not only relatively old issues, such as the US boycott of the import of Mexican tuna, allegedly related to dolphin protection, have not been raised. Among the new issues, it took years and a great deal of effort to have the impact of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) on Mexican maize biodiversity issue included in the CEC’s agenda. In other words, for some time, US and Canadian ENGOs had a greater role in the development of the CEC cooperative agenda, while Mexican input was very small. More recently, better prepared Mexican ENGOs have been able to get their counterparts’ support in promoting the inclusion of some of their concerns.23 Although the NAAEC’s parties’ main commitment is to effectively enforce their domestic laws and regulations, ENGOs of the three countries have been able to put pressure on the Mexican government, through the CEC, to change some policies. They include those regarding sound management of some toxic and persistent chemicals, and Mexico’s agreement to make mandatory the Pollutant Release and Transfer Registry, strongly opposed by Mexican business. Conservation ENGOs have also been able to heighten Mexican authorities’ response

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to their demands of improved strategies to protect some endangered species. Regarding monitoring activities, ENGOs have carried out this task by providing relevant views and information to the CEC, which have been included in the Secretariat’s annual report, through suggestions to this body to prepare reports under Article 13, and by providing information for these reports. They have also resorted to the ‘citizen petition’ mechanism. ENGOs and the ‘Citizen Petition’ mechanism Although ENGOs of the three countries have participated in many of the CEC’s cooperative programs, they have largely focused on the functioning of the citizen submissions mechanism. This mechanism, designed to induce compliance with existing domestic legislation through monitoring by NGOs and individuals, is open to all residents of North America, allowing them to submit complaints concerning enforcement of environmental laws by any of the three parties. Allegations of enforcement failures do not need to be related to trade between the parties. This mechanism does not lead to monetary or trade sanctions.24 The main punishment for governments that are not effectively enforcing their domestic law is public exposure (the sunshine effect). Considered by many supporters a quasi-judicial mechanism, it has been seen by the Mexican government as a problematic mechanism that hampers cooperation. Mexican, as well as Canadian, authorities have for some time also shown dissatisfaction with the Secretariat’s handling of the process.25 The US government has supported wider independence of the Secretariat in this matter. However, in a couple of cases, it has also expressed concern regarding the latter’s behavior. By the spring of 2008 the Secretariat had received around 65 submissions: 26 of them against Mexico, 20 against Canada, and 9 against the United States. Almost all petitions against Mexico have been filed by Mexican NGOs, though some of them have had the discreet support of US and Canadian ENGOs. Submissions against Canada have been frequently filed jointly by Canadian and US ENGOs, and once in a while by a trilateral network. Those against the US have been usually submitted by domestic NGOS, and in a couple of cases they have been joined by Canadian or Mexican NGOs. It is noteworthy that Canadian ENGOs have resorted to this mechanism against their government probably more often that had been expected, while more modest US ENGOs’ use of it could be explained by access to a wide variety of more efficient domestic mechanisms.

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While several petitions against the United States and Canada are related to national- or provincial-scale alleged deficient enforcement of a law, those against Mexico usually refer to specific problems. Canadian and US governments have successfully limited the scope of a couple of factual records, provoking the petitioners’ and ENGOs’ ire. Mexican authorities’ complaints claim that submissions are related to very specific cases with no transboundary impacts and that petitioners usually have not resorted to nor exhausted domestic legal proceedings. Sixteen of these petitions have reached the stage of elaboration and the publishing of a factual record. All in all, seven factual records regarding Mexico, seven against Canada, and two against the US have been published. Probably the first factual record involving Mexico – a project for a cruise ship dock at Paradise Reef in Cozumel – has had the largest impact in that country. It not only led to a significant reduction in the scale of the project, but also stimulated the reform of Mexico’s environmental assessment legislation (Raustiala 2003: 261). Though ENGOs of the three countries have barely resorted to ‘citizen petitions’, they have worked together to preserve perceived gains regarding its functioning, particularly those related to public participation and the Secretariat’s role in the process. Large US-based ENGOs episodes have been most active in defending this mechanism. During the first years, some groups tried to test it by submitting a handful of citizen petitions.26 Later on, they intermittently intensified their participation to face Council’s efforts to make relevant changes in the implementation of this mechanism. During the last few years, they have emphasized the need for CEC follow-up on the impact of the factual records already published on ongoing enforcement.27 ENGOs have also demanded improvement in the timeliness and transparency of the submission process, as well as efforts to widen the CEC’s outreach. Canadian and US ENGOs have seen the Secretariat as a potential ally on these and other issues and have continuously asked for wider independence for this body. ENGOs have been able to gain increased support in these efforts from the JPAC. Unfortunately, this Advisory Committee’s insistence on those issues has occasionally strained its relations with the Council, hampering its advisory capacity in other matters.

Cleaning up the United States–Mexico border ENGO networks on the United States–Mexico border have actively participated in the environmental commission provided by the bilateral environmental accord – the BECC – to prevent further degradation of

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the United States–Mexico border and to allow the cleaning of the area. This division of tasks between the trilateral and the bilateral commissions largely responded to the interest of both countries, but especially the United States, in maintaining a clear separation in dealing with bilateral and trilateral environmental problems. Regarding public participation, the bilateral accord provision which included one representative of the civil society of each country as a full member of the Directive Council of the BECC is noteworthy. Mexican government acceptance of this type of participation was certainly uncommon, as was its acceptance of representatives of state and local authorities in that Council. Until that point, centralization of decisions and contacts with foreign governments was seen as the best way to cope with transnational and informal transgovernmental interaction, which for decades has been seen as potentially undermining federal control of the border. Centralization was also seen by the Mexican federal government as the best way to deal with its powerful neighbor. Border ENGOs also played a significant role in the selection of criteria to be used by the BECC to certify environmental infrastructure projects to be financed by the NADBank. ENGO networks were tough in trying to prevent, and later to condition, funding of private projects. They were also able to get more open procedures. The activism and influence shown by the first two civil society participants on the BECC’s Directive Council in this and other issues is noteworthy. ENGOs also had some indirect influence on new BECC programs to help communities to develop better environmental projects and to offer partial grants for their construction. However, ENGOs’ participation along the border was, and still is, uneven. Several municipal wastewater systems have been ‘certified’ by BECC and financed by the NADBank. A few are already in operation. However, badly needed infrastructure is pending for lack of funding by the NADBank (Kelly 2002). This institution became the target of border ENGO networks, which were able to influence the recent BECC and NADBank’s reform. The creation of a single Directive Board for the two institutions, following the pattern of the BECC’s previous one, is one example. Certification and financing of new projects has become more rapid during the last three or four years. All in all, both federal governments’ attention to the border zone increased. The bilateral Border XXI Program was introduced in the second half of the 1990s to deal with bilateral environmental issues not addressed by the BECC or the International Boundaries and Waters Commission (IBWC). Spaces for the participation of state and local

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authorities were opened up, allowing better coordination of different levels of government. Program 2012, which replaced that program, offers spaces for public participation. Diminishing government attention to environmental protection ENGOs of the three countries are expressing increasing concern for what they perceive as a diminishing interest on the part of the Bush administration in the CEC, and in general, in environmental protection (similar to unions’ concern about declining interest in labor issues, as discussed in the chapter by Graubart). As Julian Castro-Rea discusses in this book, security has become the undisputed priority for the US administration. Some ENGOs claim that this decreasing interest was also seen within President Fox’s administration. Expectations generated by the appointment of Víctor Lichtinger, first executive director of the CEC, as the Secretary for the Environment and Natural Resources, began to evaporate even before he left the government in 2002. More open and cross-subject criticism was expressed during 2005. At the beginning of May, a group of Mexican and foreign ENGOs, including Greenpeace, Defenders of Wildlife and IFAW, accused former Secretary Alberto Cárdenas of weakening norms protecting coastal wetlands and authorizing activities in Cancun and other places nearby that will have a negative impact in wetlands and manglares.28 Frequent complaints followed. President Felipe Calderón’s administration has had a ‘greener’ discourse in its first two years. However, few positive measures have been undertaken.

Conclusions In the NAFTA era, US and Canadian environmental organizations (ENGOs) have been successful in finding Mexican partners or creating them, and in opening up spaces for their domestic allies in Mexico. As suggested in the work of Thomas Risse, domestic structures play a critical role in the ability of TNAs to effect change. In the case of Mexico, with transnational support, domestic ENGOs were able to form ‘winning coalitions’ which pushed for reforms in environmental laws in the last two decades of the twentieth century. These new laws provide for the expansion of public participation in decision-making, mostly at a consultative level, and the right to wider access to environmental information. Despite concerns regarding the declining attention to environmental issues in all three countries in the last several years, this opening has continued to deepen. Domestic ENGOs correctly perceived

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and took advantage of potential gains in networking with transborder allies. However, Mexican ENGOs are conscious that asymmetry between the three North American countries has had an impact regarding both the selection of issues for their joint efforts and their input in the elaboration of the agenda in NAFTA’s environmental institutions. Joint activities in Mexico and in the new fora provided for by NAFTA’s institutions have produced some environmental gains within Mexico. Environmental conditions in this country continue to deteriorate but the feared race to the bottom has not taken place.29 Environmental protection now has a higher profile in Mexico, Secretaría de Medio Ambiente, Recursos Naturales y Pesca (SEMARNAT – Secretariat for Environment and Natural Resources, formerly SEMARNAP) position vis-à-vis other ministries has been strengthened. Although advances have not been spectacular, there have been some improvement in legislation and law enforcement, and institutional capacity-building strengthening that might allow for better compliance in the future. However, the economic slowdown that began in 2001 had a negative impact in terms of drastic reductions in the budget allocated to environmental protection. ENGOs allege that Fox’s administration showed a decreasing commitment to environmental enforcement and that there were certain setbacks in law-making. ENGOs also see with dismay the limited advances in promoting the integration of environmental considerations into the parties’ trade policies. Currently, they are worried by the low priority given to environmental issues in the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, established in 2005. Mexican ENGOs, particularly the smaller ones, have also experienced a sharp decrease in the funding received from their Northern allies, which hampers their activities given their limited success in promoting domestic donations. In summary, it is clear that so far there has not been another conjuncture like the passage of NAFTA in the United States that gave transnational ENGOs a considerable edge, enabling them to secure the signing in 1993 of the two parallel agreements discussed above. Later gains have been more limited. Moreover, transnational coalitions and networks’ leverage seems to be diminishing as the US government’s interest in these issues has largely evaporated.

11 NAFTA and Transnational Contention: A Decade of Alliance and Conflict over Neoliberalism Michael Dreiling and Tony Silvaggio

Introduction As the previous chapters in this book make clear, North American contention over trade and globalization is now part of the world historical stage. Tensions between regionalization and globalization arose from the early struggles against the Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA) and onward to present-day concerns about the evolution of the so-called ‘Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America’ (SPP). In this chapter, we focus on the profusion of conflict at a continental level, though not without acknowledging an implicit understanding that much of what propels regionalization is a response to globalization. Forces of contraction and expansion affect the ambitions of social movements as well as states and corporations. In this chapter, we suggest that contention over international trade in North America has indeed taken a transnational form and has done so within a dynamic ‘alliance and conflict system’ (ACS). From trade unionists to tree-sitters, protests against advancing modes of neoliberal integration in the Americas manifested during the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) fight and well into the global and regional trade meetings from 1997 to 2005. The intense and focused mobilization against the 1999 and 2003 ministerial conventions of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle, Washington, and again in Cancún, Mexico, sparked a widespread public discussion of globalization and the protests against it. Additionally, activists protesting the meetings for NAFTA’s expansion to a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) in Quebec City, Miami, Florida, and Mar del Plata, Argentina, 211

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experienced repression and growing frustration in their attempts to slow or stop advancing free markets. The persistence of alliances within the movement for global justice and the invitation of new actors into those alliances leave little doubt that these forms of contention are now part of the process of globalization, swelling beyond nation states into the global arena. On the other side of the fence sit delegates from nation states, corporations, and economic associations of multinational corporations. This is another kind of collective force – the force behind the ministerial meetings and conventions. Allied to neoliberal governments in Chile, the United States, Mexico, Canada, and others, the resources and expertise of large corporations form a powerful constituency. Their influence lies in internal access to the decision-making centers of states that mold the contours of national and international economies. Heralded by elite organizations in Canada, Mexico, and the United States as a friendlier North America, the new North American initiative, envisioned as the SPP, reflects a high level of shared interest, collaboration, and organization among economic, policy planning, and governmental personnel. The collaborative network behind this and other initiatives forms a responsive system prepared to engage and coordinate transnational agendas for continental integration. The sustained role of the respective alliances on both sides of the trade agenda in North America registers a new apparatus for solidarity and contention over free trade, an interconnected system of oppositional alliances formed in the crucible of conflict over trade policy. Indeed, the political alliances forged in a series of conflicts over neoliberal trade initiatives circa 1987–2005 have created quasi-permanent mobilization structures. For instance, many of the less conspicuous corporate free trade advocacy organizations, such as the Business Roundtable and the United States Council for International Business (USCIB), have figured prominently in the free trade political conflicts in the years since NAFTA: the 1994 implementation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (which created the WTO); the fast track conflict in 1997 over negotiations for an FTAA; the 1998 effort by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to institutionalize the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI); the China Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) campaign; the 2002 vote to expand Trade Promotion Authority for President Bush; and the recent conflicts over the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and FTAA. Likewise, several labor unions, a broad coalition of liberal allies, and an increasingly militant, global justice network of grass-roots groups have figured

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prominently in opposing each new round of free trade initiatives in the Americas. The battle over NAFTA helped to set this stage. Organizations with diverse backgrounds, representing distinct and sometimes conflicting social constituencies, proved central to the formation of challengers to neoliberalism. The historical record of the 1990s makes it clear that in order to understand inter-movement cooperation and the broad, though at times tenuous, alliance system, we need to reflect on the alliances that were established, and have since endured, in the NAFTA fight. What happened in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1997, or Cancún, Mexico, and Miami, Florida, in 2003, for example, was made possible by the creation of new political opportunities by an incipient fair trade movement years earlier in the NAFTA conflict (and even before that in the CUSFTA conflict).

Alliance and conflict systems As many social movement scholars note, it is difficult to consider a movement in a conceptual space independent from the impacts of countermovements. At a minimum, social movement activists anticipate responses from perceived opponents, whether or not opponents are in fact organized (or even exist). At the other extreme, social movement activists confront well-organized, resource-rich, hegemonic countermovements that utilize repression, murder, and imprisonment to quell movement challengers. Social movements attempting to mobilize in a context of hegemonic power structures find it difficult to grease the techniques of mobilization – to obtain high frame resonance with publics, to organize support, and to mobilize actors. The presence, real or imagined, of antagonists remains an important element of movements. In the following section, the notion of an ACS, originally outlined by Klandermans, is expanded (1990). The ideas behind this concept are particularly germane for this discussion, given the manner in which movement-countermovement dynamics as well as interorganizational interactions are highlighted. This conceptualization also provides tools to understand the contested turf of state and para-statal institutions. States are included in both the alliance and the conflict systems. A single state may have conflicting agencies or government bodies that take opposing stands in response to actors in the movement/alliance and countermovement/conflict system. States may also shift in response to emerging transnational political opportunities, joining the movement/alliance system, or attempting to leverage both.

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Klandermans proposed that the background environment of movement organizations consist of both ACSs (1990). His basic assertion stems from the observation, across multiple social movements, of ‘support structures’ for the formation and maintenance of social movement organizations (see, for example, Heirich 1968; Morris 1984 and Gould 1991). These support structures provide the backdrop from which internal and external resources are identified and acquired, issues raised, leaders selected, and allies made. In the context of social movement mobilization, the multi-organizational field – ‘the total possible number of organizations with which the focal organization might establish specific linkages’ – has both supporting and opposing sectors (Curtis and Zurcher 1973). According to Klandermans, the field of organizations and groups that may be supportive of a particular movement organization form an alliance system (1990). Movement actors may scan the alliance system – and in fact may be explicitly aware of changing alignments within it – for political opportunities. Efforts to secure new allies are one manner by which challengers may enhance their political opportunity, even in the face of a relatively unified elite and fortified conflict system. The conflict system is composed of ‘representatives and supporters of the challenged political system, including counter-movement organizations’ (Klandermans 1990: 124). In this regard, the multi-organizational field forms the potential structure for an ACS that engenders the political environment with latent opportunities and constraints. The development of a counter-movement makes the conflict system all the more potent. As Zald and Useem argue, counter-movements are much more likely to develop if a movement is successful (1987). Characteristically representative of the status quo being challenged, counter-movements typically find support from the elite, have extensive financial resources, and ideologically align themselves with the established order. One of the unique and indispensable elements of a conflict system, to which counter-movement organizations are bound, is the ability to restrict opportunities and drain resources from the challengers (Klandermans 1990). Several tactics are commonly used toward these ends: (1) splitting the unity of the movement; (2) undermining the organizational integrity of the leading movement organizations (via infiltration, bribery, arrest, legal harassment, and so on); (3) limiting the opportunity structure of the movement (media propaganda, litigation, and so on); (4) adopting bargaining stances that co-opt movement moderates and institutionalize conflict; (5) increasing the costs of mobilization to the challengers by policing protest and organizations (arrests, repression, and so on).

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For challengers, a deeper reliance on networks within the alliance system offers one avenue for enhancing opportunities for mobilization. Both tangible (money, personnel, equipment, and so on) and intangible (strategic know-how, experience, leadership, and so on) resources may be tapped from this environment. More importantly, as Klandermans notes, ‘the alliance systems provide social movement organizations with extended communication and recruitment networks’ (1990: 126). A common means for accessing these resources and opportunities is in the form of loosely coupled coalitions, such as those formed in the anti-NAFTA mobilization. During cycles of heightened mobilization, these coalitions may endure through difficult political environments. In the NAFTA campaign, the coalitions endured over three years, and in the years following some have matured into semi-autonomous organizations. Their continued presence in an age of neoliberal globalization suggests an entrenchment of the fair trade forces that were unleashed in the early 1990s. This resilience points to a resource advantage of the coalition form of mobilization in an alliance system with transnational properties. Evidence from the last decade suggests that nationally based ACSs can develop and expand into transnationally contentious spaces (Dreiling 2001). In order to consider these developments, we suggest two amendments to existing conceptualizations of ACSs. First, we expand on the idea that a single state may have conflicting agencies or government bodies that take opposing stands in response to actors in the movement/alliance and countermovement/conflict system. In addition to this logical extension, we argue that a transnational ACS must include multiple states and governments. States are themselves actors and objects of contention across the complex, multiorganizational systems of conflict. Moreover, states, like agencies within states, may shift allegiances, seeking new allies and abandoning older ones, as citizens and publics transform domestic political priorities and allegiances. Like other actors in a transnational ACS, state actors may shift in response to emerging national or transnational political opportunities, embracing the movement/alliance system, or trying to manipulate both. Venezuela’s recent rejection of a US-led FTAA is an example of states taking a dissident position within the movement’s alliance system. We refer to states taking these counter-hegemonic positions as dissident states. Second, we posit that transnational political opportunities are not constrained by a single polity, but rather respond to a polymorphous system of states, transnational institutions, and the structure of allies and contenders on this landscape. Khagram, Riker, and Sikkink suggest

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that the transnational character of political opportunities is ‘multilayered’ given the structure of polities at many different levels (2002). Polities, in the classical political process example, revolve around states. In the transnational arena, systems of governance transcend single polities and create opportunities for transnational polities. Kay, for example, shows how the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC) (a side agreement of NAFTA) established transnational political opportunities for labor movements in all three North American countries (2005). More recent research, reported in Chapter 9 of this book by Graubert, highlights a growing reluctance by North American labor unions to utilize the petition process in the NAALC. Below, we elaborate on the manner in which NAFTA governance institutions and regional trade meetings created a political space to nurture a transnational alliance system. But, we argue that this transnationalized space is not a static and homogenous space. Indeed, transnational political structures wax and wane, contracting and expanding as cycles of contention mold institutions, networks, and mobilization capabilities in this emergent political space. That this space is at once national and transnational, regional and global, speaks to varying scale of political action achieved by collective actors in recent decades.

Alliance and conflict over North American trade policy Conflict over the signing of NAFTA continued for over three years and was followed by a series of political actions in North America, beginning with the Zapatista mobilization in Chiapas, Mexico, and followed by numerous actions gathering steam at the transnational level. The outcome of these conflicts over NAFTA stimulated the expansion, and, in some instances, the birth of transnational structures that include movement actors, states, transnational governance structures, and countermovement networks. In the decade-plus following the passage of NAFTA, transnational contention has emerged in three distinct settings over trade and economic policy: contention within the legaljuridical institutions created by NAFTA; multi-city protest mobilizations in cities across North America; the coordination of countermovement activity within the conflict system of elites, sharing policing practices, public relations media, and cooptation of dissidents. Not one of these spheres of contention provides uniform opportunities for protest. Instead, their strategic value to movements and movement leaders is in flux as the political issues and environments change. We discuss each of these below.

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NAFTA was clearly not the panacea celebrated by its proponents; nor was it the death-knell decried by some of its opponents. Neither side has successfully claimed victory to the public. Instead, regional conflicts over trade policy escalated, new alliances emerged, and transnational connections persisted. CAFTA was hotly contested in 2004–2005. At a global and hemispheric level, the legitimacy of the World Economic Forum remains challenged as the World Social Forum sets new goals and directives for globalization. These repertoires of contention now reflect the emergence of a quasi-permanent global justice alliance system, a system that has transcontinental links. However, achieving, much less sustaining, a truly global scale of mobilization defies the capabilities of many collective actors. Instead, regional networks befit the capacities and issue-concerns of many collective actors, making a continental orientation likely. A distinctly North American alliance system does exist, even as it contributes to, and learns from, regional movement alliances from counterparts in South America, Africa, Europe, and Asia. The North American alliance system has a definite periodicity and political configuration, as do other continental alliance systems. By no means do we attempt to explore those details here, but rather, to provide a sketch for thinking about the transnational evolution of this North American alliance system and raise some questions about its contributions to emerging transcontinental alliances.

NAFTA and transnational contention: Opportunities for transnationalizing alliances? Opening the websites for the two institutions created by the NAFTA side accords reveals their transnational character: options for reading them are available in English, French, and Spanish. Yet this transnational character goes deeper than this: as discussed elsewhere in this book, public petitions to these institutions have persisted from all three countries over the last decade. As outcomes of the conflict over NAFTA, the side accords and the emerging institutions reflect the contentious qualities of the ACS in North America. While it is true that many activists in the labor and environmental movement have concluded that the environmental and labor adjudication processes are weak, others maintain the strategic value of pressing their issues via these NAFTA channels and building common understandings of the legal limitations of the respective NAFTA signatories. Under the Commission for Labor Cooperation (CLC), labor unions and labor-related organizations have filed 30 complaints to the National Administrative Organizations from the three

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member countries as of February 2005. Similarly, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) has received 47 citizen submissions in the last decade, with 9 generating a ‘factual record’, 10 currently active, and 32 inactive (as of February 2005). Graubert details the rise and retreat of petitions by labor organizations in Chapter 9 of this book.

Rise and fall of opportunities in a transnational alliance system In an offbeat kind of tempo, with corporate internationalization leading the motion and labor following, neoliberal economic restructuring and its resistance are raising political institutions that at once challenge national labor institutions and make way for contention over labor rights. This ongoing contention over labor rights in North America has left a paradoxical footprint, first in NAFTA with the forging of the so-called ‘labor side agreement’ and followed by labor’s testing of the agreement over the last 12 years. Paradoxically, NAFTA’s labor side agreement was born out of the conflict over the threat of capital flight implied by NAFTA. Labor unions mobilized to prevent the passage of NAFTA but instead their efforts led to NAFTA’s side agreement on labor, the NAALC. This agreement established a pseudo-juridical institution, the CLC, designed to hear complaints regarding failures of signatory nations to abide by and enforce their own labor laws. Critics of the NAALC have made it clear that there are currently two gaping holes in the agreement: enforcement of the labor standards in the agreement is virtually impossible, and so far non-existent, and there is no institutional call for an upward harmonization of worker rights and labor laws.1 Analyses and accounts of the numerous submissions to the CLC via the respective National Administrative Offices (NAO) in each country validate these claims and will not be repeated here (Compa 2001a; see also Compa 2001b). Environmental activists challenged NAFTA on an analogous front. Sparked by ecological devastation along the United States–Mexico border, and moved by activist efforts to link social processes to environmental justice, the North American environmental movement began questioning free trade and the environment. The mobilization and eventual split in the US environmental movement resulted in the environmental side accord, the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC) (Dreiling 2001). The NAAEC established a distinctly transnational juridical body, the CEC. Unlike the CLC, the CEC accepts and reviews petitions as a transnational body. The CLC requires petitions be submitted to, and reviewed by, the NAOs of the

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respective governments. Furthermore, the CEC has numerous avenues for taking action, including drafting plans and proposals for national governments to adopt. Table 11.1 presents all petitions filed and heard by the CLC and its respective NAOs and through the CEC until February of 2005.2 As we might expect, the trend in submissions increased in the first years after passage of NAFTA. Yet, after 1998, the number of labor petitions dropped and environmental petitions crept slightly higher, on average.

Table 11.1 Labor and Environmental Complaints Filed through the North American Agreement for Labor Cooperation and the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, 1994–2004 Year

Labor Petitions

Environmental Petitions

Number

National Origin

Number

National Origin

1994 1995 1996

4 1 2

United States (4) Mexico (1) United States (2)

0 2 4

1997

3

United States (3)

8

1998

10

6

1999

2

2000

3

5

2001

2

2002

0

Mexico (4) Canada (2) United States (4) Canada (1) United States (1) Canada (1) Mexico (1) United States (1) Canada (1) United States (1) –

– United States (2) Canada (2) Mexico (1) United States (1) Canada (5) Mexico (1) United States (1) Canada (1) Mexico (4) United States (1) United States (2)

2003

3

Canada (1)

5

2004

0

–

7

Total

30

All NAFTA nations

2

3 5

47

Canada (1) Mexico (3) United States (1) Canada (1) Mexico (2) Canada (2) Mexico (3) Canada (2) Mexico (3) Canada (4) Mexico (3) United States (1) All NAFTA nations

Source: Commission for Labor Cooperation (2005) and Commission for Environmental Cooperation (2005).

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Critics attribute these trends to the failure of these NAFTA side institutions to provide any significant remedy to labor or environmental violations in the NAFTA countries. For example, by the close of 2001, of the 21 submissions evaluated by the CEC, only two had achieved the venerable ‘factual record’, the most authoritative position this institution can take. Skepticism by both labor and environmental groups appears grounded in these failures of the institutions to hold governments or firms accountable for labor or environmental violations (Blair 2003). As evident in Table 11.1, the evolution of conflict through the CLC and CEC involved an initial deepening and broadening of movement participation in all three countries. In some cases, more marginal movement organizations joined in the petitioning. For example, the independent labor movement in Mexico became directly involved as a petitioner in several cases.3 Yet the pace of deepening and broadening has clearly slowed. At a recent activist gathering on the topic of the CEC, several leaders from environmental groups in Canada, the United States, and Mexico testified to this issue. Activists from Mexico, frustrated by efforts with their own government, expressed greater hope for using these transnational petitioning processes. The case against the Mexican government for failing to enforce national environmental protection laws in the large Lake Chapala basin was cited as a case for persisting with the CEC. This case began with a submission in 1997, which was terminated by the Secretariat of the CEC. As activists continued work in the state of Jalisco, the Mexican government continued to urge the CEC to dismiss the second case – even arguing that many elements of the petition should remain confidential. The July 2005 decision by the Secretariat to make a ‘factual record’ in favor of the petitioners and against the Mexican government was seen as a beneficial outcome that supported their efforts on the local level. While many activists in North America appear disheartened with the CEC and CLC because of the lack of any substantial legal authority, others see it as a means to support their legal initiatives at the local level. Barring substantial new conflict or new national-level pressures to improve the labor and environmental protocols at the transnational level, the status quo will continue to prove disappointing to activists.

Protest and transnational mobilization in NAFTA countries The protest in Seattle was one in a series of events that illustrated the expanding alliance structures that emerged with NAFTA. This

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was a ‘transformative event’ that heralded a unique turning point in the global justice movement; it revealed the mobilizing capacity of national and international Social Movement Organizations (SMOs), it catapulted supranational organizations and multilateral trade agreements into the public view, and it produced one of the first victories against neoliberalism (McAdam and Sewell 2001). Post-Seattle mobilizations continued in the United States and abroad (DC WB/IMF meetings in April 2000 and September 2001). Social networks, developed through years of challenging supranational institutions, continued to play an important role in linking movement organizations to a developing and maturing alliance system in North America and beyond. Sustained, coordinated transnational mobilizations against globalization spread across North America throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s. This contentious action took place against similar targets, with virtually the same NGOs and representatives from civil society, and in the name of goals that were almost identical. Mobilizations in Canada and Mexico against the WTO, the G8, G7, G20, and the FTAA illustrated that these were not, as some considered, short-term and ephemeral connections.

Quebec 2001 In April 2001, over 60,000 people from around the world converged in Quebec City to protest FTAA negotiations. The authorities, fearing a repeat of the blockades in Seattle, took a defensive posture and erected their own perimeter blockade (‘the wall of shame’) to keep protesters from disrupting the trade talks. Once again, the grass roots and SMOs recruited, assembled resources, and coordinated collective action in the largest protest demonstration against the FTAA. Activists from various social movement sectors collectively challenged authorities utilizing a mobilization strategy of labor marches, rallies, die-ins, and people’s summits. As mass demonstrations and negative public perceptions of the FTAA increased outside of the barricaded meetings, opposition percolated from periphery countries over agriculture, poverty, and other social issues inside the ministerial meeting. The existence of both internal and external disruptive challenges did little to enhance the reproductive potential of the neoliberal vision. After seven years of negotiation, six ministerial meetings, and numerous gatherings among governmental and business interests, the FTAA was unable to go far beyond the preparatory stages.

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The mobilization in Quebec is noteworthy, first, because it revealed an institutional vulnerability to challengers and, second, because it signaled a tactical shift in the ACS. Protests on the street opened up space for national resistance in the trade talks. Government representatives from several Latin American states found opportunities to express concerns over neoliberal trade policy and, in some cases, voice sympathy with protesters. These dissident state actors began to redefine the fault lines around the transnational ACS. A relatively new transnational institutional space for solidarity and contention over free trade began to develop. Within the conflict system, a tactical shift was evident in the Canadian government’s response to protest activity. In order to limit the disruptive potential of demonstrators the state took a number of precautions: it militarized security; it situated the meetings in a well-fortified, nearly inaccessible location; and it denied non-national protesters entry into the country. Each of these institutional responses to protest would become a standard model for subsequent trade meetings. Yet the attempts to shield themselves from public protest were not effective. By taking this approach, these state actors openly acknowledged the disruptive potential of the movements, further solidifying the belief that mass mobilizations are a necessary element to create change. As a consequence, it also sparked a revitalization of local solidarity actions across North America, with labor, environmental, and social justice networks gathering to localize resistance to international trade agreements.

Cancún, Mexico 2003 With neoliberals on the defensive, events in Cancún at the WTO’s fifth Ministerial illustrated further the level of transnational resistance and expanding global justice alliance system. Instead of a manifesto for international trade liberalization, the talks collapsed as unified opposition from developing countries surfaced. The coalition-building and networking characteristic of popular movements were matched by networks of dissident states within the ministerial meetings who voiced opposition on key issues involving medicine, agriculture, trade in services and investment. Over 80 of the poorest WTO member countries, along with Brazil and India, called on the trade body to develop a more transparent and democratic process so that their voices could be heard. This transnational network of challengers, with shared grievances and a collective understanding of the problems with current trade policy,

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exploited new political opportunities opened by grass-roots contention and tapped a variety of resources made available through previous trade talks. The growing transnational resistance to unfair agriculture subsidies, anti-dumping laws, intellectual property rights, and inadequate labor and environmental protections enhanced opportunities to question the discourse of free trade. The institutional alliance of dissident states enabled issues concerning nations of the global South to gain negotiation leverage as a bloc against the United States and European Union. This combination of elite and popular dissent against neoliberalism signaled a new dimension of international solidarity. These institutional alliances opened up new political space for challengers; mobilization opportunities were created, new external allies emerged, and the structure for contention over future neoliberal trade policies changed in favor of the fair traders. Miami 2003 Despite a post-9/11 climate of fear, the movement for global justice and fair trade continued its resistance at the seventh FTAA ministerial in Miami. Once again, contention was facilitated by transnational labor, environmental and social justice alliances that were established in previous trade battles. These alliance networks provided tangible resources and opportunities that enhanced collective action. For example, labor unions afforded direct action activists high-rise hotel rooms to run communications to demonstrators on the streets. The Canadian United Auto Workers Union (CAW), United Steel Workers of America (USWA), and numerous international unions bused thousands from all over the country to march with environmental, social justice, and anti-globalization activists. In addition, an alliance of international unions and SMOs sponsored three days of rallies and marches adjacent to the ministerial meeting. Funded by an $8.5 million grant from the federal government (a line item in an $87 billion appropriation for Iraq) security police, most of the time clad in full riot gear, patrolled the city in helicopters, on bikes, and on horseback. The intimidation, hyper surveillance, arrests, and media propaganda were unprecedented. Despite increasing repression, NGOs and grass-roots activist networks were not discouraged from participating in collective action. Violent police actions against peaceful demonstrators did not deter mainstream labor organizers like American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) President John Sweeney from joining meetings with

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the direct action community at the activist convergence center. This show of solidarity and cooperation with the broader international social justice and environmental community helped strengthen the alliance system. Subsequent USWA lawsuits against the city of Miami and calls by SMO’s and labor unions for investigations into police brutality further solidified intermovement alliances and solidarity. Where Cancún represented a major setback for US and EU hegemony in global trade negotiations, the FTAA failure in Miami represented a huge blow to the US designs in the western hemisphere. Opposition in Latin America was widespread, and the United States walked away from negotiations having failed to get the biggest economies, Brazil, Venezuela, and Argentina, to sign on to the agreement. A North American alliance system, increasingly networked into the transcontinental global justice networks with loose ties to dissident states, organized these challenges to a neoliberal conflict system.

The neoliberal conflict system As activists learned in 2001 and 2002 WTO Ministerial meetings, tactical innovation is not exclusive to movement challengers. Although research indicates the existence of different national styles for dealing with challenging groups (Kriesi et al. 1995; Della Porta and Reiter 1998), post-Seattle responses to protest activity have taken on a more homogenous character. In their attempt to restrict the opportunities and drain challengers’ resources, the pattern of protest policing has been standardized transnationally. Distinct cross-national differences once seen in policing may be giving way to a uniform approach to dealing with challenging groups. In the post-NAFTA conflict system, with its financial resources and ideological support from the established order, North American governments have militarized cities and provided remote, fortified locations to hold trade talks. These states have also denied entry to foreign activists; raided media and convergence centers; denied march/rally permits to demonstrators; infiltrated challenging groups; restricted public access to city streets and convention centers; arrested key leaders and legal representatives; and assaulted activists. Within the conflict system, the combination of governmentsponsored talks and repression of citizen movements is further buttressed by media and political campaigns by corporate associations. For example, following the collapse of the ministerial sessions of the WTO in Seattle, Washington, in December 1999, corporate leaders, and various political benefactors, initiated a legislative program to ‘normalize’

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US trade policy with China and expedite full admission into the WTO. While China was formally invited to join the WTO months prior to the November meetings, foreign policy leadership in China asserted that US corporations could not participate in the new investment framework unless the US Congress established PNTR with China. In early 2000, the Business Roundtable-sponsored ‘Go Trade’ coalition applauded President Bill Clinton’s initiative to support PNTR with China, despite widespread opposition. The ad hoc ‘Go Trade’ coalition has a striking resemblance to the corporate coalition that promoted and defended the NAFTA, the USA∗ NAFTA coalition. The China PNTR campaign involved a blitzkrieg of corporate advertising, lobbying by the CEOs of some of the largest US corporations, and a multimillion dollar commitment by the members of the Business Roundtable.4 Prior to the Cancún Ministerial meetings of the WTO, the Business Roundtable explained their hopes for deepening US ‘leadership’. The press release provided an insightful analysis of the Congressional vote for Trade Promotion Authority supporting the new rounds. It said, ‘First, the vote showed that the US Congress will support new trade agreements when they are well designed. Second, the vote sent a warning that foot-dragging behavior in the WTO can be countered by bilateral and regional negotiating tracks. Thus, the United States will go to Cancún with greater capacity to offer leadership.’ The press release went on to explain how ‘the CEOs that comprise the Business Roundtable are increasingly working with companies and business associations in other countries that share our support for the WTO and our aspirations for new and ambitious market-opening initiatives’. Transnational cooperation by business associations is not new, but its presence in this context points to the need to consider the organization of the conflict system as a determinant of transnational political opportunities and processes. Two other recent policy initiatives, emanating from the United States, highlight the transnationalization of a neoliberal conflict system. The first of these efforts – the North American Initiative – is emerging from non-governmental policy planning networks in the NAFTA countries. In the United States, these networks are composed of government officials, academics, corporate officers, and various media representatives. Research on the US policy planning network and its influence on US government policy formation is extensive.5 What is relevant for this chapter is the transnationalization of this network. The involvement of elite policy planning organizations from Canada and Mexico in shaping policy recommendations by the Council on Foreign Relations reflects this expanding conflict system. The Council on Foreign

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Relations’ Task Force for a North American Initiative offers this innovation and expansion quite explicitly as a new program for a transnational North America. Reading the report of this task force, one is struck by the clear references to the trinational nature of elite cooperation in devising the series of policy recommendations. Overarching these policy recommendations is the establishment by 2010 of a North American economic and security community. This new North American initiative will define and establish boundaries defined by a common external tariff and an outer security perimeter. Unlike previous Council-sponsored Task Forces, this project was international, or trinational to be precise. The membership was comprised of policy practitioners, scholars, and business leaders from each of the three countries. The Task Force held meetings in Toronto, New York, and Monterrey. Their initiative is at once political and economic, aimed at consolidating neoliberal economic reforms in all three countries – and transnationally shared neoliberal relations, that is, NAFTA – and introducing political coordination of national and international security relations. Expanding police and military coordination reflects this transnationalization of North American governance. Last, the recent passage of the Dominican Republic – Central American – United States Free Trade Agreement and the ongoing search for an FTAA highlight the continental expansion of the neoliberal conflict system. The Business Coalition for United States–Central America Trade mobilized hundreds of corporations, business associations, and local chambers of commerce to pass CAFTA. Their strategy mimicked previous methods, building bridges across business sectors, nurturing diplomatic relations with foreign heads of state, and advertising in all the effected countries.

Conclusions On the cusp of the twenty-first century, it is worth noting that we are witnessing the birth of a quasi-permanent ACS over economic globalization in North America – and beyond. The unique form of this system is structured by the economic and ecological consequences of a market economy dominated by mega-corporations, which are generating deleterious effects for workers, communities, and the environment. These conditions hold open the political possibility for movements to activate a politics that challenges neoliberalism. The collective bonds created on the streets, the global handshakes made, and the nods of international solidarity exchanged have helped foster a movement with a mutual

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understanding of many different struggles. The fair trade movement is the driving force for reinventing democracy, calling for a world without hunger, war, environmental destruction, and worker exploitation. It is, as Tarrow claims, ‘the most rapidly growing sector of transnational politics today’ (1998: 188). Yet, these political moments wax and wane as movements face an expansion and contraction of political opportunities at both the national and the transnational level. As political contention over jobs, environmental protection, and international market expansion proliferated during the decade of 1990s, new opportunities for contentious politics expanded. Indeed, many activists have declared the recent mass demonstrations in North America as ‘coming-out’ parties for a movement for global justice. Unprecedented in the breadth of movement participation, these demonstrations are deepening the links between a rank-and-file labor movement and the broad, international alliance of environmental, consumer, human rights, and faith-based organizations. Among the host of demands made by these activists are calls for global labor rights, fair trade, environmental justice and sustainability, human rights, amnesty for immigrants, an end to sweatshops and prison labor, debt relief for the poorest nations of the world – the list goes on. This call, in its broad form, is an emergent offensive in the name of global justice, and the vocal leaders in this offensive are straddling national, class, race, and gender differences in a hodgepodge of loosely knit social movement alliances. As events in Seattle, Quebec, Cancún, and Miami illustrate, transnational contention has opened space in the institutional realm of trade policy. Sustained activity by people’s movements in the streets strengthened the alliance system and enhanced the political opportunities for dissident states. Yet these moments of expanding political opportunity were matched by contracting political terrains. NAFTA’s labor and environmental agreements produced institutions that remain weak and have failed to sustain the attraction of citizens and movement representatives. Moreover, the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 and the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan have done their part to expand security as a North American, and especially US, objective, constraining movement organizing. Yet, political discourse about trade policy and NAFTA in the 2008 US presidential campaigns reveals a persistent sorespot for millions and the successful politicization of trade policy by the left in the United States and across the region. With contracting opportunities are born new moments for alliance building and expansion. The aggregation of protest activity – on legal,

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street, and cultural terrains – over the last 15 years has expanded the alliance system and provided challengers with opportunities to act against the neoliberal trade policies. Dissident states, international SMOs, and grass-roots movements recently made their fight against the free trade agenda more sensitive to national and regional interests, as well as to social issues. During the third summit of the Americas in Quebec City, Canada 2001, due to massive protests, more than 400 arrests and hundreds of injuries by police, diplomats drafted procedures for including civil society actors, affirming trends and calls in the Organization of American States from the preceding seven years. Summit leaders stated, ‘affirming that openness and transparency are vital to building public awareness and legitimacy for our undertakings, the Summit Plans of Action call upon all citizens of the region to contribute to the Summits of the Americas process’ (Summit of the Americas 2005). Pressed forward by left-leaning, dissident states, these media savvy statements may find substance in the years ahead. As the Summit of the Americas (fourth) in Mar del Plata, Argentina (2005) suggests, the role of dissident states and an oppositional alliance system that includes movements and movement organizations will define the contours and conflicts of a transnationalizing hemisphere. Venezuelan President Chavez made those hopes a central part of his speech to a large opposition rally. The associations forged among individual participants and organizations is birthing a series of regional, even continental alliance systems to challenge the wave of neoliberal globalization and the governance institutions erected under its sway.

Part IV Conclusion

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Conclusion: Contention and Deepening North America Stephanie R. Golob

North American contention: Completing the map of a New North American space As many a schoolchild will attest, it is relatively straightforward to locate ‘Europe’ on a map. It is also, arguably, a manageable and consensual matter among policymakers, publics, and scholars to agree on a more abstract ‘map’ of the European integration project. Its geographic borders coincide with the borders of its member states; its jurisdictional borders are formed by the interplay of national and supranational institutions and legal regimes; its economic borders are constituted by common tariffs and by the core of participants in a single shared currency; and, most of all, its conceptual borders, while actively debated within and outside the zone itself, are secure: there is a ‘there’ there. Not so ‘North America’. Despite a long history of commerce and social interactions across its internal borders, a core treaty, and a shared dominant neoliberal philosophy amply analyzed and critiqued by the authors in this book, this trinational space remains shrouded in mystery. Supporters of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), both in governments and in the private sector, have learned from the acrimonious debates of 1988 and 1993 and have kept their efforts to deepen integration below the political and media radar screens. As noted by Macdonald and Ayres in their introduction to this book, the post–2005 ‘Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America’ (SPP), led by inter-executive branch cooperation with targeted ‘stakeholder’ consultation, is a recent example of this aversion to public controversy. With these processes driven underground and the general public unwilling to enter into a broader debate, critics of neo-liberalism have, to a great extent, moved on from NAFTA to attack corporate-led globalization at its multilateral heart: the World Trade Organization (WTO) and other international financial organizations. This general state of denial is then juxtaposed with the emergence of a vocal anti-NAFTA right in the United States – allied with the anti-immigration movement – which 231

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interprets any talk of North American integration as code for a secret project to bring about a ‘North American Union’ at the expense of US sovereignty. All three ‘sides’ in this odd dance believe that there is a ‘there’ there, but it is not necessarily the one lived in and experienced by the citizens of its constituent states (see, for example, Carlsen 2008b). This book completes the map of today’s ‘North America’ by bringing to light the ways in which groups of citizens from the three member states have formed social and political bonds of solidarity across borders to contest the way NAFTA has shaped their own local reality, a phenomenon which is too often written off due to their obvious lack of ability to stop the juggernaut of corporate-led globalization enabled by the NAFTA agreement. This terra incognita of contention, often demonized in the press and yet clearly vibrant and increasingly attractive to the many left out of globalization’s promise, also forms part of our emerging continental reality. Perhaps counter-intuitively, the evidence presented by the authors of this book suggests that, conceptually and politically, ‘North America’ does have a shared, substantive meaning for many of these cross-border critical social movements. Specifically, the cases suggest not a wholesale rejection of ‘North America’ per se, but rather a rejection of a project of regional integration which puts business and profits ahead of other key societal goals that are, in fact, shared by groups across the borders of a culturally diverse and economically unequal triad, including labor and environmental standards, social justice (including social, economic, and cultural rights), and local, or national, decision-making sovereignty. This position is not without contradictions. Indeed, if social movements have the right to invoke universal, global standards for labor rights and environmental protection, one may ask, why is it illegitimate for businesses to do the same in challenging local regulations that threaten their profitability, which is also a ‘global’ value? The response is a normative one: the environment and social welfare are public goods that require protection by governments, while the ‘protection’ of profitability is not a public good, as its benefits are distributed first and foremost within the business entity. Herein lies the core of the alternative vision of regional integration advanced by many of the social movements profiled in this book: the reassertion of the public good over private profit. This vision is not purely anti-capitalist. As noted in the chapter in this book by Cadena-Roa, El Barzón, one of the most successful groups to organize against NAFTA was a multi-class coalition that argued for rules to permit farmers in Mexico to remain in business, not for agriculture to become

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nationalized or collectivized. At the same time, the vision is clearly critical of neoliberalism’s rhetorical equation of market liberalization and the advancement of ‘freedom’, and perhaps even more critical of the way this vision has been promulgated and inculcated to the point that it has gained currency as ‘common sense’ rather than as a set of ideas that should be subject to critical assessment. This ideological hegemony, also referred to in Castro-Rea’s chapter on the emergence of a ‘transnational right’, coupled with the asymmetry of resources and access to policymakers and the media, has quite effectively muffled the message of contentious groups in North America. Rather than providing a platform for debate regarding the businessled ‘competitiveness’ model advanced by pro-NAFTA writers such as Wendy Dobson and Thomas d’Aquino, mainstream media outlets in the region have let the business views stand virtually alone, as if to suggest that there is no legitimate alternative to be discussed. Contentious groups have, as this book shows, worked tirelessly over the past two decades to contest the dominant view, with admittedly little success in their battles to change policy or enforce the law. At the same time, as illustrated by the authors and as I will argue in this concluding chapter, the results-driven bias of public discourse regarding politics – privileging ‘interests-shaping-outcomes’ success stories – tends to miss the contributions made via process. What is being constructed via contentious politics, I would suggest, is a practice of civil society that could potentially make each of our three ‘North American’ nations more vibrantly democratic over time by pushing our political institutions – local, national, and trilateral – toward greater transparency and accountability. In the first part of this chapter, I will briefly review the concept of ‘civil society’ and argue that, rather than a site or a location, civil society is a set of practices, a repertoire of beliefs and behaviors that bring individuals into collective action independent of the state. Social movements like the ones profiled in this book engage in civil society not simply by contesting dominant policy paradigms, but also by deepening their commitment to three key practices: social self-organization and autonomy; holding governments accountable and pressing for transparency; and empowering group members to view themselves as claims-makers rather than simply rule-takers. Complicating this picture, of course, is a central paradox: if civil society needs the state (to define its autonomous realm of action or to serve as the focus of its watchdog efforts, as many theorists would claim), then here we have a civil society in search of an absent or minimal state at

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both the trilateral and national level. Lack of transparent and authoritative trilateral institutions means that there is no supranational North American ‘state’ to speak of; meanwhile the ‘states’ (that is, national governments) of North America have all been infused by the neo-liberal ethos, which has meant a reduction, even abdication, of state authority as governments embrace a role focused on enabling or advancing private interests. In the second section of this chapter, drawing upon the rich case material presented in this book, I will highlight how this perceived ‘statelessness’ has shaped the evolution of contentious political action in the region across the three main civil society practices laid out above. In the final section, I will shift my focus from process to outcome, asking how contentious groups could better leverage the practices they have developed and their message of citizen empowerment to bring about a deeper, more meaningful practice of democracy in both national and trilateral institutional contexts.

Contentious North Americans: Practicing civil society Over the past decade or so, the literature on democracy and democratization has experienced a ‘civil society moment’. Whether lauding voluntary associations as the font of ‘social capital’ and civic engagement, (Putnam 1993) questioning whether non-governmental organizations (NGOs) should be viewed by international financial institutions as the antidote to the corrupt state as a recipient of aid for development aid and democracy promotion (Carothers and Ottaway 2000), revealing civil society’s inability to construct democracy single-handedly in the absence of legitimate and transparent democratic institutions (Encarnación 2003) or warning against the oppressive potential of wellorganized but exclusionary ‘civic’ groups (Berman 1998), civil society was very much a concept whose time had come. Similarly, as described by Ayres and Macdonald in the introduction to this book, in the decade after the end of the Cold War international relations scholars began to speak of the ‘democratization’ of the international system, as nonstate actors such as transnational advocacy groups – often referred to as ‘global civil society’ – activated cross-border networks to advance shared universal norms regarding issues such as the environment, gender and labor rights (see Lipschultz 1992; Wapner 1995; Keck and Sikkink 1998; and Smith 1998). Keck and Sikkink’s famous ‘boomerang’ model (1998: 13) captured how local groups, facing blockage at the level of their national government, were now able to draw upon the speed and ease of new communication technologies and the resources

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of foreign allies to project their message on the wider global audience, in turn motivating external actors such as international organizations and foreign governments to challenge the blockage and effect policy change. Moderating this scholarly euphoria, contrary research and world events have since underscored that the international system remains mired in the politics of power and sovereignty, despite the greater organizational autonomy and nominal empowerment of these non-state actors (see, for example, Clark, Friedman and Hoschstetler 1998). Still, in both subfields, there was a normatively driven desire to see civil society play a central role in politics, countering the massification of class or other structural theories, as well as the hyperindividualist logic of rational choice. Civil society, as a theoretical construct and as a site of political activity, appeals because of its promise of giving power back to the people. At the same time, this conceptualization of civil society as a site or location of political activity limits its usefulness in making sense of contentious politics in North America as it is so evocatively portrayed in this book. Focusing on place, or location, captures only the literal transnational alliances, such as those formed to file citizen petitions with the labor and environmental commissions (as seen in Graubart’s chapter), or the participation of US labor organizers in Mexican maquiladoras (as described by Bandy). As these authors point out, direct contact and eventual confrontation of asymmetries and cultural divergences often problematize what appears at first as an exercise of universalizing and equalizing through transnational solidarity. What may matter more, and which is not diminished by these problematic encounters, is the set of participatory practices that are created, fostered, and disseminated by those who become active in these groups. We can think broadly of these practices as encompassing both action and discourse, drawing upon the work of civil society theorists such as Avritzer (2002) and Cohen and Arato (1992), who make the connection between the Habermasian model of a rational public sphere and the advance of democracy via individuals’ direct experience with egalitarian ideas put into practice in collective ways within that sphere. While limited somewhat by their spatial metaphor, these theorists should be credited with viewing civil society in dynamic terms, not as a static thing to be measured by counting numbers of organizations, or tallying strikes or successful efforts to change public policy. To shift metaphors a bit, because civil society is itself constituted by political, organizational, and discursive practices that ebb and flow, and respond to new ideas, new actors and constrained circumstances (that is, a variety of ‘opportunity

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structures’), it is perhaps more useful to speak of civil society ‘moments’, or a time of greater deepening of civil society practice.1 This book reveals that, despite their near invisibility and their relative lack of success in reversing NAFTA’s course or its corporation-friendly provisions, groups practicing contentious politics in North America have, over the course of the past two decades, made a significant contribution toward defining and developing a civil society ‘moment’ for our continent. Though clearly constrained by hegemonic institutions and ideologies unfriendly to their cause – vividly profiled by McBride and associated by Castro-Rea with the ‘transnational right’ – the rise of a counterhegemonic discourse and practice within civil society (in Gramsci’s terms) may yet bring about a different kind of ‘deepening’ of North America: the expansion of repertoires of citizen action which incrementally and tenaciously force each of our three democracies – and the trilateral institutions they grudgingly create – to become subject to higher standards of transparency and accountability. For our purposes, we can identify three sets of practices that stand out as the central repertoires of ‘civil society’ formation. 1. Social Self-Organization and Autonomy: This refers, in the first instance, to the classic definition of civil society (pace Hegel) as a sphere of public, associational life independent from both the family and the state. With a very modern cast, the emphasis is on the free choice of membership in the group by the individual. It also reflects the tendency of individuals to seek out like-minded peers who are not their close relatives or in their kin group for the expression of common interests or shared ideas within a rule-based environment enforcing internal norms of equality among individual members.2 Unlike citizenship, which is organized by the state, civil society is organized by society itself: membership in rule-based associations is purely voluntary, and thus reflects a commitment to both belonging and individual autonomy, as well as a commitment to maintaining the association’s autonomy from the state and from vested interests which might co-opt it. This formula provides what Polanyi called ‘embeddedness’ and ‘autonomy’, which he argued are key ingredients of a healthy society. In the Latin American context, group autonomy also takes on a special significance, as many of those polities were historically characterized by vertical, corporatist relations between state and society, even under electoral regimes (see Cruz 2004). Similarly, a history of violations of national sovereignty by the United States and outside powers has made Latin Americans understandably sensitive to the possible capture of local groups by more wealthy and powerful transnational NGOs ‘shopping’ for domestic allies.

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2. The Watchdog Role: Holding the State Accountable, Demanding Transparency: As an independent source of ideas, discourse and behavioral practice, groups engaging in civil society claim the sufficient distance and credibility to serve as a check on arbitrary state power. This was one of Tocqueville’s central claims: that a rich associational life helped the United States stave off the tyranny of the state, and the tyranny of the majority by empowering collectivities of autonomous individuals advocating alternative views and visions. As we see in Latin America, this role is assumed even when – and perhaps more so when – legitimate channels for peaceful political participation and association have been blocked by governments fearing popular mobilization. The micropractices will vary greatly across groups and associations, ranging from organizing major street marches to seeking allies (and money) for formal legislative lobbying, to placing op-ed pieces in major newspapers and interviews on Sunday talk shows, to demonstration lawsuits. Through a shared consciousness, group members see themselves as ‘civil society’, not merely as protest groups or even as individual aggrieved citizens. They also embrace their role as the subjects of popular sovereignty, whereby the state’s authority emanates from the authority of the people, and has legitimacy insofar as it enjoys the consent of the governed. Conversely, as Ariel Armony has cautioned, ‘civic engagement’ must be channeled so that the watchdog role does not degenerate into a purely obstructionist or anti-state discourse (2004). Moreover, the ‘watchdog’ role can be played by reactionary dissenters, such as those who opposed civil rights legislation in the mid-century American South.3 3. Empowering Members as Claims-Makers vs Rule-Takers: The writers of the Scottish Enlightenment such as Adam Ferguson ([1767] 1995) first coined the term ‘civil society’ to denote the ‘civil’ nature of exchanges within groups of rational and morally autonomous individuals. This may lead to the erroneous assumption that ‘civil society’ practices are limited to those that encourage collective action that eschews controversy and reinforces rule-following through intra-group disciplining. The full gamut of practices must include some borderline ‘uncivil’ behaviors, most notably fomenting a publicly oriented identity as claims-makers rather than simply rule-takers. This is a particularly important point for understanding the conflicting conservative and transformational potentials of civil society in settled democracies such as the United States and Canada, where formal means of participation such as voting are assumed to be adequate and street protest is viewed suspiciously as unnecessary at best and dangerous at worst. For similar reasons, it is perhaps even more important for a new democracy such

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as Mexico, where generalized apathy regarding the stasis of 71 years of single-party rule has given way to not only an explosion of expectations but also a logjam of demands, leading many to spill over onto the streets, as they did after the 2006 presidential elections. Going back to our temporal metaphor, there are civil society ‘moments’ which require or inspire more direct action, whether because of bias in the application of the law or unmet legitimate claims of citizens. Engaging in the practice of making claims against the state and against other private actors in the public sphere is a behavioral repertoire which spills over into a general political identity as an active citizen. At the same time, these same ‘uncivil’ collective actions aimed at the state may coexist with internal practices which emphasize consensus decision making and the construction of a shared collective democratic identity. As Philip Oxhorn has argued in the case of Chile’s shantytowns, groups that perform and propagate civil society repertoires serve as a school of sorts where democratic norms are learned, most notably the value of maximum direct participation of citizens in decision-making processes (Oxhorn 1995). While Habermas may not at all approve of some of the more overheated, emotional discourse that gets tossed around under these circumstances, the emphasis on making claims in the public sphere – asserting rights, alerting others to injustice, advocating for greater inclusiveness in the political and economic system, deliberating the contours of the ‘public interest’ and the ‘common good’ – arguably places this behavior firmly in the universe of democracy-promoting acts. These three sets of practices contribute in distinct ways to shaping expectations regarding rights and responsibilities of citizens, pushing individuals beyond what Guillermo O’Donnell famously called ‘lowintensity citizenship’ (O’Donnell 2004), toward a more demanding and active role that can most effectively be developed through collective action. The obvious contradiction, and paradox, which arises in the case at hand is that ‘North America’ as a political entity does not have any citizens, per se. There are virtually no supranational North American institutions, nor is there a North American parliament with local representatives or a North American constitution enumerating North American rights. At the same time, as the chapters in this book attest, NAFTA can be viewed as a de facto constitution of sorts in the age of neo-liberalism, legally codifying the limited role of the state in advancing a narrowly defined public interest (enforcing property rights and, in the post–September 11 context, providing security). Moreover, as McBride argues, the NAFTA regime systematically privileges

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corporations as the region’s only true ‘citizens’ (viz. Chapters 11 and 19 of the agreement). The lack of a state authority against which to make claims, whether it is a supranationally empowered institution or a national government responsive to citizens, has surely played a role in internally dividing and blunting the external political impact of North American contentious political groups. However, the chapters in this book provide intriguing evidence that such ‘statelessness’ has ironically served as a focal point for the construction of a deeper and more broadly appealing critique of NAFTA and neo-liberalism, particularly as we head into a recessionary, post-Bush era.

North America’s ‘Stateless’ civil society: In search of traction The picture of North American contentious politics that emerges from the case studies compiled in this book is one of perseverance in the face of adversity, and organization as a response to powerlessness. Groups of like-minded citizens in the three countries continue to come together, despite geographic and material obstacles, to decry the absence of legitimate, accountable and transparent institutions, either at the trinational or at national levels, willing to respond to citizen objections to the neo-liberal values advanced through NAFTA. While the ability of these movements to shape outcomes has admittedly been limited, the cases in this book demonstrate that a full understanding of these campaigns is necessary to complete our conceptual ‘map’ of an emerging North American regional system. Specifically, the deepening of civil society practice among North American contentious political actors suggests the formation of political skills and shared understandings of citizens’ role in a democracy that may yet have an impact on both domestic politics and trilateral policy direction in the future. We see the deepening of civil society practice, and learn lessons about its implications, in the three repertoires mentioned above: 1. Social Self-Organization and Autonomy: Contentious politics in North America are, admittedly, mainly a reactive affair. As Castro Rea, Brunelle and Dugas, Clarkson and Torres Ruiz, and Dreiling and Silvaggio all point out, the need to counter a hegemonic neoliberal elite has been exacerbated by the ‘head start’ of that elite in getting the free trade wagon rolling in the 1980s, and by the geopolitical asymmetry which favors a US-style of neo-liberalism as the convergence point of post-NAFTA policy. At the same time, these same authors

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note that a more positive agenda has emerged from this oppositional stance, based upon the dynamism of transnational organizing and the educational and socialization function played by groups such as the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras (CJM). As Bandy describes, through worker-to-worker exchanges and other face-to-face experiences, activists from different national contexts and from different cultural backgrounds can come to ‘share frameworks of grievance and action’ as well as ‘a culture of solidarity’. Massicotte, in her analysis of the Red Mexicana de Acción frente al Libre Comercio (RMALC – Mexican Action Network on Free Trade), stresses its role in providing member groups with shared ideas for critiques of, and alternatives to, neo-liberalism, strategically written in the language of policymakers and economists as an empowering move. While both groups suffer from accusations of elitism and paternalism – similar to those plaguing the US environmental movement, as described by Torres – they are both in the business of shaping how the opposition talks about its ideas, and in building a shared culture of solidarity around that discourse. Brunelle and Dugas make a similar case for the trinational anti-NAFTA coalitions, arguing that their repeated interactions and trilateral meetings allowed members to view one another through the lens of solidarity and shared discourse, rather than the lens of resource asymmetry and cultural disjuncture. Another way in which contentious political movements have been practicing social self-organization and autonomy is in the resistance to government co-optation, particularly noteworthy in the case of Mexican groups. Bartra and Otero tell the story of the ‘rise, fall and rebirth’ of the organized peasantry in a way that emphasizes the difficulty of breaking out of traditional corporatist vertical patterns of state–society relations, not only because of the coercive capacity of the state, but also because of the repertoires of action and the vested interests of the actors themselves. The Peso Crisis of 1994–1995, also a crisis of legitimacy for the Salinista neo-liberal model for the countryside, helped to break down some of these repertoires as farmers faced destitution and the abdication of state responsibility for their survival. In this more fluid context, movements such as El Barzón and El Campo No Aguanta Más (MCAM – ‘The Countryside Can Take No More’ Movement) came together to confront the state in ways unthinkable before, in terms of both their autonomy from traditional Mexican agrarian politics and their solidarity with one another. More recent mass mobilizations by farmers against the implementation of the agricultural chapters of NAFTA further demonstrate the willingness and ability of what were

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previously captive sectors to stand up to the state and proclaim their autonomy from the official neoliberal ‘consensus’ (Rosenberg 2008). 2. The Watchdog Role – Accountability and Transparency: The cases give us a number of creative and innovative ways in which contentious political groups have sought to hold national governments and trinational institutions to standards of accountability and transparency, often leveraging suboptimal but available mechanisms for influence. Graubart explains that, despite their flaws, ‘transnational quasi-judicial mechanisms’ such as those created by the NAFTA side accords can at least symbolically advance the goal of holding states accountable for enforcing their own laws. He also underscores that contentious groups in all three countries have been able to advance their domestic agendas (such as the drive for independent union organizing in Mexico) via these legally based mechanisms, often with the participation of allies across borders. This is a fascinating variation on the ‘boomerang’ pattern: blockage at home is targeted through a transnational mechanism, but the aim is not to enforce globalized norms, but rather national ones. In the meantime, Graubart’s petitioners gain experience dealing with the secretariat bureaucracies, and learn how to leverage public findings through the media. These skills are important for future campaigns, and interactions among activists further forge the shared culture of solidarity described by Bandy. A more dramatic example of an exercise in demanding state accountability and transparency is the Referendum for Liberty organized by the RMALC, described by Massicotte. By organizing this mock referendum, RMALC engaged in societal education on a variety of levels, most fundamentally by demonstrating in action the kind of consultation and accountability that Mexican citizens should expect from their state. At the same time, the RMALC exercise also communicated that citizenship was about responsibilities as well as rights, and that part of the responsibility of participation is to be informed and to question received wisdom. 3. Claims-Makers vs Rule-Takers: The RMALC referendum thus contributes to deepening this third practice of civil society, one which has broad implications for organized resistance to the hegemonic neo-liberal project codified and institutionalized via NAFTA. The act of making claims challenges underlying assumptions about who counts; similarly, stepping forward publicly to assert rights rather than accepting that rights have been transformed into contingent ‘entitlements’ further

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socializes citizens in an active and questioning stance toward power. As McBride notes, and as Castro-Rea concurs, neo-liberalism is not merely an economic model; it has become a way of life whose ideological assumptions have passed into ‘conventional wisdom’ and thus out of sight for many in the NAFTA triad. The importance of the culture of solidarity as described by Bandy is therefore more than just the deepening of civil society practices within groups; it also challenges the broader culture of aguantismo (bearing all burdens) that has plagued Mexican society under authoritarianism, and its analogue of apathy and resignation in the United States and Canada where the ‘conventional wisdom’ tells us that globalization is a force of nature and is unstoppable – that is, that we are all rule-takers and must leave it at that. The culture of making claims, of using the legal system and any and all institutions possible, and the development of high-quality economic analyses of alternatives all can contribute to an incremental chipping away of this hegemony. It can also, by extension, empower citizens of a country like Mexico, whose democracy is still in formation and whose legal system is only slowly gaining credibility, to trust that their claims will be viewed as legitimate and to take the institutional road rather than rely on traditional corporatist or clientalist routes to influence. At the same time, contentious politics also means to make claims in more confrontational ways, and to rehabilitate the use of protest and other direct actions to advance those claims. In addition to delegitimating critiques of neo-liberalism as ill-informed or backwards, the dominant view of globalization has also disciplined our three political systems via the media to demonize protest and protesters as disloyal and misguided. Civil society is fine, as long as it is ‘civil’; this type of bias has been rife in coverage of the anti-globalization and anti-war movements over the past 15 years. This book, by giving us close-up views of the grievances and the humanity of NAFTA’s opponents, reminds us of the power of collective action in bringing change – perhaps not immediately or directly, but certainly by dramatically presenting alternative ways to view the world.

Conclusions: Beyond the democratic deficit – Contention and democratic deepening in North America The chapters in this book make an eye-opening and long-awaited contribution to our knowledge about the evolving form and content of an increasingly interdependent ‘North American’ regional space, in particular foregrounding contentious political actors whose impact has often

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been overlooked and undervalued in mainstream media accounts and policy analyses. Specifically, as I have argued above, contentious political actors have challenged the ‘democratic deficit’ of a highly privatized NAFTA-led region by deepening their own civil society practices, both within the three national contexts, and across borders through transnational collaboration. These diverse efforts – including protest and union organizing, filing petitions with NAFTA-based institutions, and formulating and publicizing anti-neoliberal discourse – may have had quite limited success in changing corporate-friendly provisions of the agreement, or in enforcing laws against corporate interests. However, what the authors of this book show us is a vibrant community of activists and organizers who are in the process of constructing a ‘North American civil society’ via discourse and practice even in the absence (literal and symbolic) of a ‘state’ against which claims can be made to define and advance a common interest. Another reason why the contribution of contentious politics has been understudied in the North American context is the implicit comparison with Europe, which has come to define what ‘regional integration’ means. From this perspective, it is easy for NAFTA’s supporters to argue that there is no ‘democratic deficit’ in North America because there is no Brussels or Strasbourg usurping national sovereignty from member governments. This characterization, however, unknowingly makes the point it seeks to dismiss. North America’s democratic deficit is defined by the absence of trinational institutions and the de facto (rather than de jure) usurpation of popular sovereignty by executive agencies and private interests under the neo-liberal model. Unlike the European Union, which integrated incrementally but with a central animating idea of political unity at its conceptual core, North America’s integration started with a central animating idea of neo-liberalism which internally contradicted any sense of political project beyond getting government out of the way of markets. The primacy of economics – specifically, of freemarket economics favorable to mobile capital – implied that politics in the traditional sense would be inadmissible to the NAFTA system. Trilateral institutions such as the labor and environmental secretariats were appointed with mechanisms for citizen participation, but they remained weak, and the exception to the generalized rule of a system dominated by bureaucratic insularity coupled with private-sector access, and sheathed in the gloss of inevitable globalization. Contentious political actors in North America therefore have first had to establish the political and contestable nature of the rules of NAFTA. In the process, they have faced both too many (multiple agencies) and too few (no centralized

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institutions, no regional parliament) targets to gain traction against those rules. At the same time, despite these setbacks in the external arena, these contentious actors have expanded the range and intensity of their internal civil society practices, and it is this set of processes which holds the potential for a future assault on North America’s own brand of ‘democratic deficit’ into the future. The question now becomes, can these groups and actors find a way to translate these internal dynamics into success in external political arenas – the policymaking process and the electoral arena – in the future? Here, I will imagine two possible ‘turns’, or alternative strategies, contentious political actors may take in the next five to ten years to advance their twin goals of bringing neoliberalism’s anti-democratic assumptions into the public consciousness and building support for policies that rein in the power of corporations. As I will argue, much hinges on these groups recognizing that it is in the three domestic political contexts that their influence – ideational and organizational – can most concretely and effectively be manifested. In other words, ‘North American civil society’ needs to bring ‘the State’ back in, and bring itself into closer contact with traditional politics.

Alternative scenario 1: The institutional turn One way to channel the energies and skills of North America’s contentious political groups toward external influence is to rethink the general project of contention as ‘another North America is possible’. North America’s activists could take the advice of Jeff Faux, a leading critic of NAFTA, and launch a coup to fill NAFTA’s institutional vacuum to advance a more social NAFTA. In an essay published in early 2006 entitled, ‘NAFTA – Towards the Continental “We” ’, Faux urged civil society groups and others who feel marginalized by NAFTA to stake their citizen-like claims to shape the system. ‘Like it or not’, he writes, ‘we are building a continental society . . . [which requires that we] create a much broader sense of community – a continental ‘we’ – upon which to base a cross-border politics that can effectively promote the interests of ordinary people in this new North American economy’ (Faux 2006). From here, the logical step is to then conceive of and fight for a more social NAFTA, adding a very different ‘plus’ than that envisioned by NAFTA’s business base. With a possible turn away from Bush’s neo-liberal project and toward more progressive politics in the United States after 2009, the ‘North American’ agenda may be a site where critical groups can have an impact.

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One short-term goal could be to open up the ‘stakeholder’ consultation process for the SPP, pushing legislators to reclaim their oversight position over the executive and open space in the agenda for social issues and their advocates, thus altering the SPP’s aims as well as its insular operations. Another, also targeting already-existing yet truncated institutions, would be to launch a campaign to democratize the North American Development Bank, pushing it to sponsor local conferences and targeted research that would help develop border policies on the federal, state and municipal levels that are sensitive to citizen input on issues of environmental protection and local control (for further ideas, see Abel and Sayoc 2006). A longer-term goal could be to commit to Mexico’s equal participation in the benefits of integration via the extensions of social welfare protections, health and education funding, and infrastructure improvements paid through the equivalent of Europe’s cohesion funds (see Pastor 2007). This ‘turn’ may appear counterintuitive, given past convergence on an anti-NAFTA message. However, adopting a more pragmatic strategy which advocates greater inclusiveness for the region and positions contentious groups as autonomous ‘watchdogs’ making claims and resisting settled rules could best leverage these groups’ potential political influence.

Alternative scenario 2: The coalitional turn The second alternative ‘turn’ challenges contentious groups to trade off some of their much-vaunted autonomy to engage more deeply in their local and national political arenas. This ‘turn’ involves constructing issue-specific coalitions, cross-class as well as cross-border, which seek to overturn the neo-liberal ‘regime’ one rule at a time. Here it will be necessary for contentious groups to view incremental fights and opportunities to broaden their base as the means to a greater end. The goal is to build ‘winning’ coalitions for certain issues related to the effects of neoliberalism and NAFTA – such as ‘taming’ globalization through programs like job retraining, demanding government transparency, exposing corporate welfare, ‘off-shore outsourcing’, unequal access to decision-makers, and so on – and to leverage this new status as a ‘constituency’. Arguably, if a constituency exists, politicians will take notice. On the US side, Democratic candidates characterized as ‘new populists’ due to their critical views of NAFTA and US free trade policies gained leverage in the 2006 midterm elections. Writing in February 2007 in the US progressive journal The Nation, media critic Eric Alterman expressed his amazement that leading news organizations

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had not recognized that these issues were election winners, representing ‘mainstream values’ as opposed to the elite’s free trade ‘religion’ (Alterman 2007). The Democratic presidential primaries in Spring 2008 further demonstrated the electoral might of these growing constituencies in key battleground states such as Ohio and Texas (see Palmer 2008). If contentious groups can take the lead in bringing ‘ordinary people’ into the political process and energize the movement with a shared discourse – that is, build on the civil society practices developed over the past ten years – then their influence and legitimacy in the US political arena are likely to increase. In Canada, the potential for influence comes from the opposition Liberals seeking to mount a challenge to the Conservative Harper government’s pro-Bush US policy. As we move into a post-Bush era and the SPP and other deep integration projects face the exit of perhaps their most important executive advocate, Harper may look to the Liberals to endorse continuity, but the Liberals may opt to ally with the New Democratic Party (NDP), which has come out strongly against the SPP (NDP 2008). Here, given the leadership of Canadian contentious groups in popular forums protesting the SPP, such as the trinational People’s Summit against the SPP in New Orleans in April 2008,4 the NDP may look to these groups in the near-term for drafting policy papers and offering advice about the key policy initiatives to be negotiated with the Liberals. In the medium term, they might forge new coalitions at the local and provincial level, especially in border areas and those negatively impacted by NAFTA, where they also might register new voters to elect trade-critical candidates to both federal and provincial parliaments. The message, again, is that the way to change policy is by constituency-building and electoral strategies. In Mexico, the challenge is to channel the energies of dynamic and angry ‘contentious confrontational coalitions’ (such as the antineoliberal Asamblea Popular del Pueblo de Oaxaca/Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Mèxico (APPO/APPM – Popular Assembly of Oaxaca and of the Peoples of Mexico) in Oaxaca5 and the anti-NAFTA farmers mentioned earlier) into electoral coalitions, but this depends upon various types of institutional reforms that are still not consolidated in post-2000 Mexican democracy. As seen in the occupation of the Paseo de la Reforma following the 2006 presidential election by supporters of defeated Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD – Party of the Democratic Revolution) candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexican opposition voters are now mobilized to be claims-makers, but the continuity of neoliberalism and the hardening of President Calderón’s

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security-based agenda (as discussed in the chapter by Castro-Rea) attests to the lack of influence of that mobilization. Much work remains to be done to democratize political parties internally, to expand press freedom and freedom of association, and to create more reliable and institutionalized channels for citizen input into policymaking. At the same time, the ‘all or nothing’ style of Mexican popular politics at this moment – that is, on the street, or on the sidelines – could arguably use some of the civil society practices that anti-NAFTA contentious groups have developed that are profiled in this book. Specifically, groups affiliated with Red Méxicana Acción Frente Al Libre Comercio (RMALC) might experiment with participation in nonpartisan voter registration and education drives to eventually transform the anti-neoliberal position into a winning electoral coalition, both at the state level and nationwide. The trick will be to maintain autonomy and claims-making power without succumbing to cooptation, as is the perennial pattern in Mexican politics spanning the democratization divide. Indeed, in all three national political contexts, the major objection to the ‘coalitional turn’ strategy is the loss of autonomy: allying with politicians is still perceived as a dirty business. As Cadena Roa and Bartra and Otero discuss, El Barzón and the Movimiento ‘¡el campo no aguanta más!’ (MCAM) offer two possible paths to consider: the decision to ‘go political’ will inevitably split the movement, but in the former case there was leverage gained by some Barzón members joining the PRD legislative caucus, while the MCAM’s split ended up fragmenting the movement. The underlying question is an ethical as much as a practical one, and it haunts the NGO world: how can you change policy without touching politics? Or, in other words, is it possible to maintain autonomy and avoid cooptation while also entering into the bargaining realm of ‘political society’? At the same time, there is perhaps a higher price to pay for remaining unsullied and above politics, and that is the distinct possibility of remaining irrelevant to mainstream political debates that could lead to real policy change. As this book shows, there is much to be appreciated about the deepening of democratic practice within contentious groups in North America; however, the next step will be to come in from the cold, and shift focus outside the group to build solidarity and community in a broader, more politically effective way. Without needing their votes, politicians will continue to feel little obligation to respond to or to promote alternatives to corporate-led integration. The danger, then, is that these voices will remain ‘contentious’ without really being able to contend where it counts.

Notes Introduction: Conceptualizing North American contentious politics 1. See the report Creating a North American Community, released on 14 March 2005 by the Independent Task Force on the Future of North America, available at the website of the Council of Foreign Relations, http://www.cfr.org. 2. See the ‘Statement by North American Social Networks on the Future of NAFTA’, a critique of the proposals for deepening North American integration cosigned by Common Frontiers-Canada, Quebec Network on Continental Integration, Mexican Action Network on Free Trade and the Alliance for Responsible Trade-USA, available at www.globaljustice.org. Also see Canadian Labour Congress document, ‘CLC Executive Council Statement on North American Economic Integration’, 27 June 2005, available at http:// www.canadianlabour.ca/index.php.statements _ convention/Statement_on_ North_A. Retrieved on 3 July 2005. For some of the most recent trilateral critiques developed out of the April 2008 People’s Summit in New Orleans, see www.summitneworleans.org.

1 The political economy of neoliberalism in North America 1. This account is based on McBride and Shields (1997). 2. Subsequent elaborations of comparative advantage theory include the Heckscher-Ohlin and Stolper-Samuelson theories. Cohn (2005: 222–224) provides a succinct account. 3. For a fuller account, see chapter four of McBride (2005). 4. Since renamed the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), see McBride (2005). 5. Such mechanisms have engineered paradigm shifts at various points in Canadian history; see Bradford (1998). 6. Carroll (2004) traces the influence and interconnections between equivalent groups in Canada.

2 North American politics after September 11: Security, democracy and sovereignty 1. This chapter inspired a research seminar, where students explored diverse political impacts of the events of 11 September 2001. Some of their results are available at http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/polisci/innovative.cfm. 2. Admittedly, previous PRI governments in Mexico, Liberal governments in Canada, and Democratic administrations in the United States also endorsed 248

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3. 4. 5.

6.

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neo-liberal policies. What made the situation unique from January 2006 on is that the main openly right wing parties – PAN in Mexico, the Conservative Party in Canada, and Republicans in the United States – were simultaneously leading the federal executives across North America. A detailed abstract of these acts’ provisions is found in Meyers (2003: 9–10). For critical analyses, see Brasch (2005) and Parker and Fellner (2005). See section on impacts on sovereignty below in this chapter. This corporation is the same that allegedly skimmed Florida’s electoral lists in 1999 to delete the names of supposedly ineligible voters, most of whom were members of ethnic minorities, traditionally supportive of the Democrats. This procedure contributed to the Republican victory in that crucial state in 2000, paving George W. Bush’s way to the presidency. He was architect of that government’s policy in Central America during the 1980s and key player in the Iran/Contra scheme (Allen 2001; Corn 2001).

3 Civil society organizations against free trade agreements in North America 1. This article is a substantially revised version of a paper published initially in: D. Brunelle and C. Deblock (eds) (2004) L’ALENA: Le Libre-Échange en Défaut (Montréal: Éditions Fides). The authors wish to thank the editors and reviewers for their comments and suggestions in preparing the present version. 2. See Subcomandante Marcos’ declaration (1997) in which NAFTA is seen as the first shot in World War Four. 3. Although the division just discussed, between CSOs against and CSOs which agree to participate in official consultations seems easy to establish in theory, it is somewhat delicate to manipulate in practice, given the fact that many organizations can successively assume both roles. Some groups, in fact, agree to participate in dialogue with governments in sites established for this goal, all the while reserving the right to contest governments in other settings. 4. See, for example, ‘Reisman Exclut les Programmes Sociaux’, Le Devoir, 20 May 1986, page 3. 5. US lobster fishers would win their case by default, since the mere threat of a legal suit prompted the federal government to henceforth pull back from financing the unemployment insurance fund’s deficits. This decision would confirm the negative impact of a so-called free trade agreement on social policy made by some analysts. 6. The Conservative government had announced its intentions in a document presented shortly after its election. See Ministry of Finance 1985. The document proposed scaling down payments to beneficiaries and bringing down government spending. 7. The Canada Bill of 1982, which put into effect the patriation of the Canadian constitution, had not been ratified by the Quebec government. 8. A short chronological reminder is in order here: negotiation of the Meech Lake Accord began shortly after the election of the Progressive Conservative government in September, 1984 while the Parti Quebecois was still in power, but there was little progress until the return of the PLQ of Robert Bourassa,

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in December of 1985. This event opened up ‘renewed collaboration between Quebec and her partners in Confederation’. The official launch of free trade negotiations between Canada and the United States occurred in March 1985. 9. See also Barlow and Clarke (2002: 90–122). 10. See the chapter by Bartra and Otero in this book for more discussion of this realignment. 11. Common Frontiers also played a strategic role in the rallying of opposition to NAFTA and later, the FTAA. The Canadian network was a pillar in the organization of an eventual parallel meeting to the ministerial meeting in Toronto, in November 1999, and to the General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Windsor, in 2000.

4 Paradoxes of a transnational civil society in a neoliberal world: The coalition for justice in the Maquiladoras ∗ An earlier, longer version of this chapter was published as: Bandy, J. (2004). ‘Paradoxes of a Transnational Civil Society in a Neoliberal World: The Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras.’ Social Problems. 51(3). Social Problems is published by the Society for the Study of Social Problems, Inc. and the University of California Press. All rights reserved.

1. Richard Falk uses the term, ‘global civil society’ (1993). Here, ‘transnational’ is preferable because of its more limited scope, and its accuracy in representing movement networks that operate merely at a regional scale. 2. Thanks are due to an anonymous reviewer for assistance in making this clarification. 3. A third independent union was founded with the assistance of the AFL-CIO, which left the CJM in 2004, and the Centro de Apoyo al Trabajador at the Kukdong/Mexmode maquila in Puebla. 4. I am expanding Sidney Tarrow’s ‘political opportunity structures’ (1994), beyond state institutions to apply to cultural conditions as well, since these are vital to dynamics of coalition brokerage. This expansion is more consistent with Tarrow’s recent work with Doug McAdam and Charles Tilly (2001). 5. Nielan Barnes has noted this phenomenon among anti-AIDS organizations on the border as well (2000).

5 Contesting neoliberal globalism and NAFTA in rural Mexico: From state corporatism to the political-cultural formation of the peasantry? ∗ This chapter is based on an article published in the Journal of Latino-Latin American Studies in 2005. Thanks are due to anonymous reviewers of this journal and to Jeffrey Ayres for useful comments on a previous version. Gerardo Otero gratefully acknowledges research funding from the Social Sciences and the Humanities Research Council of Canada through various projects from 1994 to 2006.

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1. In Mexico’s usage, ‘independent’ organizations are those outside of the official realm of state cooptation, but they may still be linked to some political party. ‘Autonomous’ organizations, then, are those that are independent both from the state and from political organizations and focus on the corporate-economic interests of their constituencies. 2. This division of labor was made explicit publicly by Luis Téllez Kuenzler at a symposium on forthcoming agrarian reforms, sponsored by the Mexican Center of the University of Texas at Austin. It was held in November of 1990, and Gerardo Otero was invited to provide commentary on Gustavo Gordillo’s presentation (Otero 1991).

7 Coalition politics: A political analysis of the strategies, discourses and impact of the Mexican action network on free trade (RMALC) 1. For a comparison with Gramsci’s concept of organic intellectuals, see Massicotte (2004). 2. The Red constantly develops its alternative proposals on integration and development. For instance, they propose the creation of a fund to bridge the gap between rich and poor regions, and an upward harmonization of labor and environmental standards that would benefit citizens from different countries instead of putting downward pressure on each others (RMALC 1992, 1996; HSA 2001; RMALC, Arroyo et al. 2001; Massicotte 2004). 3. The HSA is a transnational network connecting NGOs, unions, and sociopolitical movements from across the Americas to oppose the dominant model of integration, as exemplified by NAFTA and the proposed FTAA. The HSA was launched in Santiago de Chile in 1998, during the First People’s Summit of the Americas that was held in parallel to the state leaders’ Second Summit of the Americas. 4. Responding to regional organizations’ demands for strengthening communication and possibilities for regular inputs in the functioning of the coalition, the weekly Noticiero RMALC was electronically sent to affiliates and allied organizations, but it lasted only from March 1999 until November 2000. 5. ‘Plan Estratégico 2000 de la RMALC’, dated February 2000, internal document. 6. During the Monterrey World Conference, the Red’s idea of consensual decision-making was contested by some activists who argue that it impeded actions and decision-making rather than seeking most widely acceptable positions and compromises (RMALC mailing list and website postings 2002). 7. For analyses on internal democratic practices in other popular movements, see (Haber 1994; Hellman 1987, 1992, 1997). 8. In Mexico, 401.2 people out of 1000 had access to fixed lines and mobile telephones in 2002, a notable increase from only 138.5 per 1000 in 1998 (World Bank 2004). Yet in 2002, only 82 Mexicans out of 1000 had a personal computer. 9. In Canada, some organizations hold their meetings in different parts of a city, or regions of the country, at different times, as well as offering childcare services to its participants. Obviously, these can be costly alternatives but

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they highlight the dilemmas involved in taking concrete actions to increase grassroots participation. 10. They are calling for civil disobedience, and are seeking to use the Supreme Court of Justice, the National Commission on Human Rights, and the Interamerican Human Rights Court to hear their case and to gain support for their demands. 11. The RMALC’s contacts helped some of its allies and other movements to get in touch with counterparts in other countries, which in some cases led to the creation of new cross-border networks. The RMALC also contributed to build a common identity among many movements that advocate socioeconomic and political changes. This case study demonstrates that coalition politics helps to diffuse alternative values and knowledge production and to effectively share scarce human and material resources.

8 The globalized complexities of transborder governance in North America ∗ This chapter grows out of some of the research embedded in Stephen Clarkson, Does North America Exist?: Governing the Continent after NAFTA and 9/11 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008).

1. For a more elaborated discussion of the distinction between these two concepts, see Torres-Ruiz (2006). 2. Unsurprisingly, the main advocates of globalist policies have been the governments of rich countries, banks, private corporations, investors, and technocratic élites, who have profited the most from their implementation. Of the world trade, for example, 46.3 percent of exports and 46.4 percent of imports take place between the European Union, the United States, and Japan (WTO 1998). 3. For an interesting discussion of its recent uses, see Hewitt de Alcántara (1998). 4. For the significance of looking at transnational or transborder relations, see Risse-Kappen (1995). 5. Here, we are referring to various works such as Robert Dahl’s Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition or his Dilemmas of pluralist democracy: autonomy vs. control, as well as to James Bohman’s Public deliberation: pluralism, complexity, and democracy, or Paul Gottfried’s After liberalism: mass democracy in the managerial state. It is also worth mentioning some works with a more national focus such as those by Paul Herrson et al. (2005) by Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada and Luis Antonio Godina Herrera (2004) and by Pierre B. Meunier et al. (2003). 6. The Bank had begun discussing the issue of governance (accountability, openness and transparency, and predictability) back in 1991, in one of its Policy Research Working Papers entitled ‘Governance and the economy: a review’, by D. Brautigam. For its part, the IMF also adopted the discourse of good governance; See for example IMF 1997. For a critique of the new enthusiasm for the topic, see Demmers (2004). 7. For a serious work on the analogies between government and the corporate sector, we must refer back to Wilson (1989).

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8. Halbert’s work is part of a growing body of literature that illustrates and discusses the existence of ‘thinkable’ alternatives to the strong defence of intellectual property protection. 9. See coverage of the meeting in Mexican Newspapers La Jornada and Reforma, 8 and 9 June, 2008. 10. This reflects some of the ideas discussed in a recent roundtable on the ‘Future of North America’, organized by the New Centre for North American Studies (CEDAN) at the Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico City campus, on 9 June 2008.

9 The legalization of transnational political opportunity structures: Mobilization of NAFTA’s labor citizen petitions for domestic political gain 1. Of the three member states, the United States House of Representatives was the lone legislative body where support for NAFTA was in doubt. 2. Interview with Tim Beatty, AFL-CIO representative in Mexico City, 9 August 1999, Mexico City. 3. Interview with ANAD attorney Maria Estela Rios, 12 August 1999, Mexico City. She helped prepare the petition and testified at the ministerial consultation. 4. Interview with Robin Alexander, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 11 June 1999. 5. Interview with Alexander. 6. Ibid. 7. Interview by author, 22 July 2003, Mexico City. 8. Interview with Hector Barba, labor attorney negotiating for the UNT in labor reform talks with the government, 27 July 2003, Mexico City. 9. Interview with Alexander. 10. Interview with Bouzas. 11. The Canadian NAO has had limited activity though it was quite supportive in a 1998 follow-up petition to Echlin, known as Dana. 12. Interview with Alcalde. 13. Interviews with Alcalde and Bouzas. Earlier, UE President John Hovis wrote to US Labor Secretary, Elaine Chao, ‘We believe that the NAO process has deteriorated into a farce’, 24 July 2002, http://mhssn.igc.org/naftaII.htm. 14. Phone interview with Monica Schurtman, lead coordinator, 15 August 2003. 15. Interview with Schurtman; Delp et al. 2004. 16. Interview with Schurtman; Schurtman et al. 2002. 17. Interview with Alcalde. 18. Interview with Barba 19. Interviews with Alcalde and Barba. 20. Interviews with Alcalde, Barba, Bouzas and Ana Elsa Eviles, AFL-CIO representative in Mexico, 29 July 2003, Mexico City. 21. Phone interview with Becky Smith, National Employment Law Project and lead coordinator, 28 August 2003. 22. Interview with Arturo Aragon, Secretary General of ASSA, 29 July 2003, Mexico City.

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23. In our interview, Mexican NAO Secretary Claudia Anel Valencia stressed her office’s interest in this petition and underlying cause, Mexico City, 24 July 2003. 24. My familiarity stems from advising on the drafting of the complaint. 25. US NAO Public Report of Review 0301, 3 August 2004, www.dol.gov/ilab/ media/reports/nao/pubrep2003-1.htm. 26. Letter from Robin Alexander to Union Sisters and Brothers, Activists and Friends, December 2006, copy on file with author. 27. Interviews with Alcalde, Bouzas, and Barba.

10 North American transnational environmental actors and Mexico 1. I explored the conditions that increased the leverage of these transnational actors in Torres (1999). 2. This variable has been included by Kathryn Sikkink when analyzing ‘principled networks’ impact. However, I want here to emphasize the importance of this variable. See Keck and Sikkink (1998). 3. During the negotiations, they did organize some activities in Mexico, but their main interlocutor certainly was the US government. They sought to wring its commitment to persuade Mexico to accept environmental commitments. 4. The banner of Mexican ENGOs that joined the anti-NAFTA coalitions, like those within the Red Mexicana de Acción Frente al Libre Comercio, was ‘Not this NAFTA’. 5. Actually, Canadian and Mexican ENGOs’ input was quite limited. 6. For an analysis of their strategies during NAFTA’s negotiations, see Mayer (2002: 96–115). 7. Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Defense Fund, National Wildlife Federation, National Audubon Society, World Wildlife Fund, Defenders of Wildlife and The Nature Conservancy. Other analysts only include the first four ENGOs in what they call the ‘Green group’. See Wirth (2003: 200). 8. NAFTA negotiations coincided with the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development which also gave an impetus to ENGOs’ creation. US and European funds encouraged this proliferation, though the flux tended to decrease since the late 1990s. 9. The main discussions were held between a handful of domestic ENGOs (sometimes specifically their lawyers) and SEMARNAT officials. Once they reached to a consensus-based law proposal, it was unanimously voted by Congress (Azuela de la Cueva 2004). 10. This overture was widened with the Ley General de Transparencia y Acceso a la Información introduced during the first year of Vicente Fox’s government. 11. The 1988 law just provided for public denunciation of potential wrongdoings (denuncia popular). 12. Most probably, Mexican NGOs felt that the federal government was more receptive to environmental concerns and to their demands.

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13. It was established in 1994 as an independent NGO responsible for administering the resources provided by the US and Mexican governments. 14. It is formed by five public officials of the three levels of government of each country and five citizens; one of them shall be an ONG’s representative, chosen by the parties. 15. Inside US Trade 19, no. 8 (23 February 2001): 9–10 and no. 18 (4 May 2001): 3. Also see Vega Cánovas, Posadas, Winham and Mayer (2005). 16. The BEP, the Arizona Toxic Information, Enlace Ecológico, and the PFEA are their main members. 17. For example, in 1994, the ARI, the PIEF, and Enlace Ecológico submitted a project on public access to environmental information to the CEC. The ARI and the BEP also designed a model project for public participation in environmental infrastructure planning for the BECC. 18. The fence has been opposed by several border government officials and civil organizations, particularly in Texas. On September 2007, a US Fish and Wildlife Service spoke person declared that most than two-thirds of the protected lands and refuges in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas would be affected by the wall. 19. Among these laws we can mention the Endangered Species Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Clean Air Act. Dismissal was based on the 2005 Real ID attached to a supplemental appropriations bill funding the wars in Iran and Afghanistan. 20. After some years of testing the CEC now has four main programs: Law and Policy, Environment and Trade, Pollutants and Health, and Conservation of Biodiversity. 21. Several JPAC’s members have belonged to NGOs from all three countries (Wirth 2003: 200). 22. According to John Wirth different national styles of public participation has been displayed; ‘the Canadians, with their well-tuned ear for process and procedure; the Americans, impatient to obtain results, attending sporadically; and the Mexicans reveling in the opportunity to participate openly in a democratic forum with their North American Counterparts’ (2002: 202). 23. Certainly several other priorities, which Mexico shares with underdeveloped countries have been given less attention, like deforestation and soil erosion. 24. There is another more adversarial mechanism – the government-togovernment dispute resolution procedure – which can lead to these types of sanctions. Until now it has not been used by the parties. 25. Complaints have included alleged Secretariat failures in following the guidelines and comments on parties’ compliance, and the publication of a factual record before the Council authorized it. See Ten-year Review and Assessment Committee (TRAC) (2004). 26. It is noteworthy that most of the large ENGOs that promoted this mechanism have rarely filed submissions against Mexico. 27. This demand was dismissed by the Council in 2002. 28. ENGOs published a statement arguing that SEMARNAT has failed in its job, listing 21 specific cases. They accused this Ministry of lax enforcement of the law (Reforma 6 May: 2).

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29. Certainly there have been advances in specific areas. According to the 2008 Environmental Performance Index (EPI), Canada’s, the United States’, and Mexico’s ranks are the following: 12, 39, and 47. EPI scores are 86.6, 81, and 79.8 (Objective scores: Environmental health, 98.9, 98.5, and 91.3; Ecosystem vitality: 74.4, 63.5, and 68.3) (EPI 2008).

11 NAFTA and transnational contention: A decade of alliance and conflict over neoliberalism 1. Actual trade sanctions may only be sought if a nation has shown a persistent pattern of failure to effectively enforce its labor laws with respect to the following three labor standards: occupational health and safety, child labor, and minimum wage. Moreover, the non-enforcement of these standards must involve mutually recognized labor laws and the jobs must be trade-related. Another layer of the NAALC designates five areas of labor standards that are subject only to ministerial consultations and review by a committee of independent experts: protection of migrant workers, forced labor, employment discrimination, equal pay for men and women, and compensation in cases of work accidents or occupational diseases. There is no requirement for action beyond producing a written report. Finally, perhaps the deepest weakness of the NAALC is that three crucial areas of international labor rights are subject only to consultations at the ministerial level: the right to freely associate and organize a union; the right to bargain collectively; and the right to strike. A persistent disregard of these rights by any of the signatory nations has no requirement for action beyond consultations (Attributed to Thea Lee’s testimony at the Commission for Labor Cooperation 1999). 2. There is an extensive literature that analyzes the impacts of NAFTA’s labor and environmental side agreements; for example, see Compa (2001b); Deere and Esty (eds) (2002); Kirton and Maclaren (eds) (2002). 3. After the financial and political crises of 1994–1995, many segments of organized labor in Mexico began to distance themselves from the official labor federation, Confederación de Trabajadores de México (CTM – Mexican Workers’ Federation). In early 1995, the Foro Sindicalismo ante la Nación emerged as numerous unions affiliated with the CTM, and some independent unions, joined to urge major reforms in Mexico’s labor law. Subsequently, more radical wings of the Mexican labor movement have aligned with the moderate forces in the Unión Nacional de Trabajadores (UNT – National Workers’ Union). This organization, representing over 1.5 millions workers from 200 labor organizations, appears to be making a genuine break from the old charro unions of post-revolutionary Mexico. Some of the more radical unions and union leaders are in significant positions of power within this new federation, including the unions that attempted to organize ITAPSA and Brakelock, both Echlin/ Dana subsidiaries. 4. The Business Roundtable set aside $6 million for the China PNTR campaign and others involved were likely to spend several million (Cox 2001). 5. For a summary of this literature, see Domhoff 2005: 69–98.

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Conclusion: Contention and deepening North America 1. I am indebted for this formulation of the temporal element of civil society to Jeff Maskovsky and the members of the seminar in which we both participated on ‘Justice, Citizenship and Civil Society’, sponsored by the Center for Civil Society and Philanthropy at the CUNY Graduate Center, in 2005–2006. 2. I would like to thank Alfonso Quiroz for helping me formulate this insight. 3. I would like to thank Corey Robin for making this observation. 4. For the official site, see http://www.summitneworleans.org/, accessed 13 January 2009. 5. See http://www.asamblepopulardeoaxaca.com/nueva, accessed 13 January, 2009 and Poy Solana (2006).

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Index Note: The letter ‘n’ denotes note numbers. 9/11, see September 11 attacks Abbott, K., 181 Abel, A., 245 Abrams, E., 50 accountability cabinet members, 71 in coalitions, 85, 90 corporate, 204, 220 demands for, 118, 139, 183, 194, 233, 236–7, 241 as governance issue, 158 institutional failures, 220 lack of, 10 political, 113 Ackleson, J., 11 Acteal massacre, 120 Action Canada Network (ACN), 63 activism, cross-border, see transnational activism Adam, B. D., 80 AFDC, 33 Afghanistan offensive, Canada’s participation, 44, 53, 173 aid, conditions for receipt of US, 172 airport protests, Mexico, 114, 120, 125, 130–1 Alarcón, N., 83 Alcalde, A., 188, 190 Alcano, 98 ALCOA, 78–9 Alcocer, J., 124 Alexander, R., 185, 193 Alfonso, J., 188, 190 Allen, T., 249 n.6 alliance and conflict system (ACS) birth of quasi-permanent, 226 counter-movement development, 214 counter-movement tactics, 214 environmental movements, 218–19

expansion, 227–8 failures, 220 Klandermans’ observations, 213–14 neoliberal conflict system, 224–6 transnational development, 215–16 Alliance for Responsible Trade (ART), 66, 182–3 Alonso, J., 139 Alterman, E., 245–6 alternative scenarios, 244–5 Alvarez, A., 17, 29, 30 Alvarez, S. E., 74, 76, 90 American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), 66–7, 72, 78, 81, 85–7, 177, 182, 184, 191, 193, 223 American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), 77–8 American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), 66 Americas Business Forum (ABF), 69–70 Amoore, L., 75 Anderson, B., 87 Anderson, G., 11 Anderson, S., 180 Andreas, P., 40 Anner, J., 80 anti-dumping (AD), 165 anti-globalization protests, 220–4 Anti-terrorism Act (Canada), 41 anti-terrorist legislation, social impact, 46–7 Ararat, 79 Arar, M., 48 Arato, A., 89, 235 Araujo, H. A., 98 Armony, A. C., 237 Arrieta, F., 119 Arroyo, A., 251 n.2 Arroyo, P. A., 68, 72 284

Index 285 Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Mexico (APPM), 246 Asamblea Popular del Pueblo de Oaxaca (APPO), 246 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), 68 Asociación Mexicana de Uniones de Crédito del Sector Social (AMUCSS), 103, 106, 109–10 Asociación Nacional de Abogados Democráticos (ANAD), 83, 86, 183 Asociación Nacional de Empresas Comercializadoras de Productores del Campo (ANEC), 104, 106, 109–10 Asociación Rural de Interés Colectivo (ARIC), 102 Asociación Sindical de Subcargos de Aviación (ASSA), 192 assassinations, 121, 166 Atenco movement, 114, 120, 125, 130–1 Audley, J., 26 Avritzer, L., 235 Ayers, J. M., 80 Azuela de la Cueva, A., 254 n.9 Babb, S., 17, 18, 23, 25 Bacon, D., 81, 189, 190 Baker, D., 25 Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD), 172–3 Bandy, J., 5, 6, 13, 74–91, 203, 204, 235, 240, 241, 242, 250 Barlow, M., 58 Barnes, N., 250 n.5 Barry, T., 182, 183 Bartra, A., 13, 92–113, 121, 148, 240, 247, 250 n.10 Basch, L., 74 Baumeister, R. F., 82 Becker, E., 170 Bejarano, F., 201 Benasayag, M., 59 Bennett, C., 47 Berman, S., 234 Bieler, A., 38 Black, L., 65 Blair, D. J., 220

Blanchard, M., 45 Blaney, D. L., 74, 84, 88 blowback, 27 Bobb, C., 86 Bohman, J., 252 n.5 Bolton, J., 50 Border Committee of Workers, see Comité Fronterizo de Obreras (CFO) Border Ecology Project (BEP), 202 Border Environment Cooperation Commission (BECC), 198, 203, 207–8 Border Infrastructure Fund (Canada), 41 border security bilateral agreements, 40 cost, 43 September 11 impact, 39–43, 175 Boundary Water Treaty, 167 Bourassa, R., 65 Bouzas, O., 77 Bradford, N., 22, 248 n.5 Brasch, W. M., 249 n.3 Brautigam, D., 252 n.6 Brecher, J., 74, 79–80 Breed, 78 Bretton Woods system, 21 Britt, L., 83 Brown, L. D., 81 Brunelle, D., 13, 57–73, 133, 239, 240, 249 n.1 Buchanan, P., 66 Buie, C., 167 Burkeman, O., 50 Buse, K., 159 Bush doctrine, 50 Bush, G. W., 37, 48, 49, 50, 52, 73, 167, 169, 173, 174, 191, 192, 197, 203, 209, 212, 239, 244, 246, 249 n.5 Business Council on National Issues (BCNI), 61 Business Roundtable, 23–4, 212, 225 Bystydzienski, J. M., 80 Cabrera, T., 120 Cadena-Roa, J., 14, 94, 114–31, 232, 247

286

Index

Calderón, F., 37, 73, 174, 193 Calvillo, M., 119 Cameron, M., 179 Campbell, B., 72 Canabal Cristiani, B., 97 Canada Afghanistan participation, 44, 53, 173 Alberta’s tar sands, 166 anti-terrorism legislation, 41, 42 association with US aggression, 53 elections, 31, 49, 60, 64–6, 72 extent of anti-free trade movement, 65 federal program spending, 30–1 government employment rates, 31 impact of neoliberalism, 26–8, 30–2, 34 income statistics, 31 international popularity, 53 job losses, 72 locus of potential for influence, 246 Macdonald Report, 22, 61 military co-operation with US, 44–5 motivations for US relationship, 4 neoliberalist shift, 21–2 notion of governance, 158 Smart Border declaration, 40–1, 42 ‘war on terror’ response, 173 Canada Command, 45 Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA) coalitions against, 62–4 creation of, 22, 160 CSO opposition, 60–6 as election issue, 64 fishermen’s concerns, 62 Macdonald Report, 22, 61 negotiations and debate, 60–2, 65 policy impact, 62 referendum campaign, 63 Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), 62 Canadian Auto Workers Union (CAW), 223 Cancún protests, 222–3 caracoles, 125 Cárdenas, A., 209 Cárdenas, C., 96, 127–8

Cárdenas, L., 148 Carlsen, L., 49, 115, 232 Carothers, T., 234 Carrillo, J., 77 Carroll, W. K., 20 Carton, H., 121, 123 Castañeda, J. G., 53 Castro-Rea, J., 11, 12–13, 35–53, 156, 158, 173, 209, 233, 236, 241–2, 246–7 Cavanagh, J., 180 Celis Callejas, F., 112 Centeno, M. A., 93 Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), 212, 217, 226 Central Campesina Independiente (CCI), 95 Central Independiente de Obreros Agrícolas y Campesinos (CIOAC), 97, 104–8, 110, 137 Centrale de l’Enseignement du Québec (CEQ), 64 Chabat, J., 191 Chamber of Commerce, 24, 61 Chambers, E., 115 Chatfield, C., 8 Chávez, C., 129, 228 Cheney, D., 50 Chen, J., 25 Chiapas rebellion (Zapatistas), 28–9, 105, 108, 121, 123–4, 130, 137, 200, 216 child labour, 67 China, 212, 225 ChoicePoint, 47 Chossudovsky, M., 24 Chrétien, J., 44, 172–3 citizen-petition mechanisms assessment of overall record, 189–90 background and description, 179–80 future of, 194 labour reform role, 193 NAOs, 179–80 petitions, 183–5, 190–3, see also Echlin petition as political opportunity structure, 180–2 relevance to activists, 192–3

Index 287 requirements, 182 reversals and disillusionment, 190–2 scholarly interest, 178 citizenship emergence of politics of, 114 flexible, 89 low-intensity, 238 responsibilities of, 241 transition from clientelism to, 118 Citizens Trade Campaign (CTC), 66 civil rights, and anti-terrorist legislation, 46–7 civil society central repertoires, 236–42 coiners of term, 237 concept analysis, 233–6 definition, 236 North America’s ‘stateless’, 239–42 civil society organizations (CSOs), 71, 159 Clark, A. M., 235 Clarke, T., 58, 62–3 Clarkson, S., 14, 22, 58, 155–76, 239, 252 clientelism, transition to citizenship, 118 Clinton, B., 10, 32, 66, 179, 191 Coalición de Organizaciones Democráticas Urbanas y Campesinas (CODUC), 104, 108–9 coalitional turn strategy, objections to, 247 Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras (CJM) campaigns, 78–9 coalition building, 79–80 conflict resolution, 83–4 fora, 80–3 historical context, 76–9 identity conflicts, 87–8 internal conflict areas, 84 organizational conflicts, 84–7 overview, 74–6 and paradoxes of transnational civil society, 88–90 participants, 75, 77 practical achievements, 79 strategies, 78

structure, 77–8 tensions, 75 topics of concern, 77 Coalition Québécoise sur les Négociations Trilatérales (CQNT), 69 Coalition Québécoise d’Opposition au Libre-Échange (CQOL), 63 Coffee Forum, 107 Cohem, E., 155 Cohen, J. L., 89, 235 Cohn, T. H., 248 n.2 Colás, A., 37–8 Cold War, 8, 66, 234 Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos (CNDH), 120 Comité Fronterizo de Obreras (CFO), 78, 84–5 Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), 168, 198, 203, 205–7, 209, 218–20 Commission for Labor Cooperation (CLC), 168, 182, 184, 187, 217–20 Commission of Concord and Pacification (COCOPA), 124–5 common sense, as neoliberal strategy, 38–9, 51, 137, 139, 149, 233 Compa, L., 190, 218, 256 n.2 comparative advantage, Ricardo’s theory of, 20, 103 compound interest, legality of, 123 Conasupo, 104 Confederación de Trabajadores de México (CTM), 67, 179, 183, 187 Confederación Nacional Campesina (CNC), 92, 95–8, 100, 104–5, 107, 110 Confederation des Syndicats Nationaux (CSN), 64 Congreso Agrario Permanente (CAP), 95, 97, 109–10 Congreso Nacional de Pueblos Indígenas (CNPI), 95 Congreso Nacional Indígena (CNI), 107, 111 Consejo Agrarista Mexicano (CAM), 95 Consejo Coordinador Empresarial (CCE), 22

288

Index

Consejo de Organización Agrarias (COA), 96–8, 110 Consejo General de Huelga (CGH), 128–31 continentalism, 22, 164, 167–8 Contras, 135, 162 Convenio de Acción Unitaria (CAU), 94–5, 110 Cook, M. L., 183 Coordinadora Nacional ‘Plan de Ayala’ (CNPA), 95, 97, 106, 108, 110 Coordinadora Nacional de Organizaciones Cafetaleras (CNOC), 105–8, 110 Cordon, S., 51 Corn, D., 249 n.6 Cornelius, W. A., 93 corporatism, 18, 101–2, 118 corruption, 75, 79, 115, 130, 234 Costello, T., 74, 79–80 countervailing duty (CVD), 165 Covarrubias, J., 127 Cox, J., 256 n.4 credit unions, 102–3, 106 Cross Border Network for Justice and Solidarity (CBNJS), 82 Cruz, C., 236 CSOs against FTAs and ABF, 69–71 conclusions, 71–3 CUSFTA, 60–6 indicators for resurgence of, 72 NAFTA, 66–9 overview, 57–60 transnational actions, 68–9 see also Red Mexicana de Acción Frente al Libre Comercio (RMALC) Cuba, 48, 162 Cullen, P. P., 84 Curtis, R. L., 214 CustomTrim/Breed, 78–9 Daalder, I. H., 161 Dagnino, E., 74, 76, 90 Dahl, R., 252 n.5 Dale, K. L., viii, 82 Dana, 79, 185, 189

Dean, J., 83 Deblock, C., 61, 249 n.1 Deere, C. L., 256 n.2 defence policies, September 11 impact, 43 De Graaff, N., 48 De la Cueva, H., 77, 254 n.9 de la Madrid, Miguel, 95 Della Porta, D., 5, 6, 224 Delp, L., 192 Demmers, J., 252 n.6 democracy, concern about quality of Mexican, 119 democratic deficit, 71, 242–4 deregulation, 6, 8, 23–4, 37, 45, 99, 104–5 Díaz-Polanco, H., 112 Dillon, S., 187, 188 Dobson, W., 28, 43, 233 Domhoff, W. G., 256 n.5 Dreiling, M., 14, 38, 58, 182, 183, 197, 211–28, 239 Drolet, M., 31 Dugas, S., 13, 57–73, 133, 239, 240 Duménil, G., 20, 21 DuPont, 78 Duro, 78–9 Dye, T. R., 23–4 Echeverría, L., 95 Echlin petition alliance members, 185 background, 185 coordinator, 185 filed, 185 legal framing, 185–6 NAO response, 187 political context, 186–7 results, 188–9 Ed Finn, 62 Ejercito Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN), 28–9, 57–9, 71, 105, 107–8, 111–14, 120–4, 130–1, 137, 200, 216 ejidos, 29, 93, 97, 99, 103, 125–6, 140 expropriation, 125–6 Ekland-Olson, S., 81

Index 289 El Barzón, 131 achievements, 108, 131 actions, 107–8, 122 emergence, 121 function, 122 Guadalajara takeover, 107 joins MCAM, 108 and peso devaluation, 121–2 PRD links, 123 roots, 107 topics of concern, 109 elections Canada, 31, 49, 60, 64–6, 72 and citizen-petition mechanisms, 191 labour union, 186, 188, 191–2 Mexico, 49, 73, 94, 105, 115–16, 118–19, 121, 123–4, 127–8, 174, 190–1, 246 US, 10, 48–9, 73, 174, 191, 245–6 Zapatista involvement, 124 Elena, L., 100–1 elite-bias, evidence for, 11 Encarnación, O., 234 Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act (EBSVERA), 40 environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs), 198–9, 202, 207–8 Erfanick, J. A., 23, 28 Escobar, A., 74, 76, 90 Esteva, G., 89 Esty, D. C., 256 n.2 European Union (EU), 9, 15, 157, 160, 170–1, 174, 223–4, 243 executive leaders, personal profiles of current North American, 37 extraordinary rendition, 47–8 Fabrionics, 79 fair trade movements, 213, 215, 223, 227 Falk, R., 74, 88, 250 n.1 Faux, J., 244 Favela, A., 119 Fédération des Travailleurs et Travailleuses du Québec (FTQ), 64 Fellner, J., 249 n.3 Ferguson, A., 237

finance capital, 20–1 flexible citizenship, 89 Flores Felix, J., 94–5 Florini, A. M., 74 Ford Motor Company, 79 Fox, J. A., 75 Fox, V., 41–2, 118, 120, 124–6, 173, 188, 191 Franck, T., 181 Fraser, N., 89 Freedberg, S., 43, 45 Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) HSA campaign against, 144 protests against, 211, 221–4 free trade agreements (FTAs) social mobilizations against, see CSOs against FTAs; Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA); North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) free trade, social impact, 25 French, M., 46–7 Friedman, E. J., 158, 235 Friedman, M., 19 Frente Auténtico del Trabajo (FAT), 81, 87, 183, 185–6, 191, 193 Frente Democrático Campesino de Chihuahua (FDCCH), 95, 108 Frente Nacional de Defensa del Campo Mexicano (FNDCM), 109 Fustukian, S., 158–9 Gagné, G., 202 Gaitán Riveros, M. M., 77 Gallagher, K. P., 30 Gallardo, D. S., 202 García, M. del C., 94–5 Garza, B., 100–1 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) implementation, 212 Mexico’s entry, 101, 114 General Motors (GM), 79 Geneva Convention, 48 Gereffi, G., 36 Giddens, A., 156 Gilbert, E., 11

290

Index

Gill, S., 38 Gilpin, R., 23 Giugni, M., 58 Glick Schiller, N., 74 global governance definition, 9 Wilkinson on, 10 globalism, definition, 155–6 globalization alliances for and against, 211–13 impact on sovereignty, 27 protests against, 220–4 term analysis, 155–6 vs globalism, 155 global justice, activists’ demands, 227 GM-Delco, 79 GM food, 165, 169, 172 Godina Herrera, L. A., 252 n.5 Goffman, E., 80 Goldstone, J., 117 Golob, S. R., 14, 231–57 Gómez-Peña, G, 81 Gonzaga, M. L., 100–1 González Casanova, P., 93 González, H., 107 Goodin, R. E., 32 Gordillo, G., 98–100, 101, 102–3, 251 n.2 Gordon, M. E., 86 Gottfried, P., 252 n.5 Gould, R. V., 214 governance ‘shallow’, 161 term analysis, 158 see also transborder governance Gramsci, A., 38, 75, 143, 236, 251 n.1 Gramscian perspectives, 38, 75, 143, 236 Graubart, J., 14, 78, 177–94, 197, 209, 235, 241 Grayson, G. W., 177 Great Depression, 17 Grinspun, R., 16, 72 Gruber, L., 30 Guantánamo Bay, 48 Guidry, J. A., 60, 74

Habermas, J., 83, 235, 238 Haber, P. L., 251 n.7 Halliday, F., 9 Hallmark, 78 Hansen-Kuhn, K., 36 Han Young, 78–9, 185, 188, 190–2 Hardt, M., 89 Harper, S., 37, 49, 174 Harvey, D., 20, 21 Harvey, N., 28–9 Hathaway, D., 77, 142 hegemony and civil society, 75, 89 ideological, 233 legitimization and maintenance, 38 material basis for neoliberalism’s, 34 neoliberal fight for, 24 pursuit of, 38 setbacks for EU and US, 224 Heirich, M., 214 Heise, D., 82–3 Held, D., 156 Helleiner, E., 21 Hellinger, S., 36 Hellman, J. A., 251 n.7 Hemispheric Social Alliance (HSA), 69, 136, 138, 140, 144, 152 Hendrix, J., 47 Heredia, C. A., 133, 142 Hernández, H., 77 Hernández Navarro, L., 93 Hernández, S. J., 125 Herrson, P., 252 n.5 Hewitt de Alcántara, C., 252 n.3 HIV/AIDS, drugs for, 158–9 Hobsbawm, E., 87 Hoffman, A., 77 Hogenboom, B., 29 Holzner, C., 118 Homeland Security Act, 40 Howse, R., 156 human capital, 29 human rights, 4, 36, 47, 77, 115, 126 abuses, 120 Hurtig, M., 62 Hyundai, 78

Haas, P. M., 38 Haas, R., 8

illegal immigration, 67 Imig, D., 15

Index 291 Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (Canada), 41 import substitution, 17, 114 import substitution developmentalism (ISD), 25 inequality, 20, 25–9, 31, 36, 72, 76, 84, 90, 123, 129 Inmecafé, 105 intellectual property right (IPR), 170–1 interdependence, 7–8, 27, 36, 40 Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), 77–8, 86 International Boundaries and Waters Commission (IBWC), 208 International Joint Commission (IJC), 167 International Labor Organization (ILO), 178, 180 International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF), 182–3 international legal sovereignty, 27 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 9, 17, 23, 122, 156, 171, 221 Internet, 8, 80, 138, 166, 203 Iraq war, 44, 49 Israel, 66 Jayasuriya, K., 45 Jeffrey, T. P., 40 Johnston, H., 6, 74, 81 Joint Public Advisory Committee (JPAC), 205, 207 Jugenitz, H., 111 Kamel, R., 77 Kaplan, F., 51 Karger, H. J., 33, 34 Kastner, J., 11 Kay, T., 216 Kelly, M. E., 77, 202 Kennedy, M. D., 60, 74 Keohane, R. O., 7–8, 9–10 Kerr, W. A., 16 Kerry, J., 72 Kerstetter, S., 31 Keynesianism, 17–18, 21 Keynes, J. M., 17 Khagram, S., 8, 215–16 Khalema, N. E., 47

Kidder, T., 82 Kirchheimer, O., 119 Kirkland, L., 177 Kirton, J. J., 256 n.2 Kiy, R., 203 Klandermans, B., 180, 213, 214, 215 Klein, N., 40 Koh, H., 181 Kopinak, K., 77 Korzeniewicz, R. P., 20 Kourous, G., 77 Kraev, E., 25 Krasner, S., 27, 162, 197 Kreklewich, R., 16 Kriesberg, L., 59–60 Kriesi, H., 224 Kurtz, M. J., 29 Labastida, J., 115 labour activism, cross-border, see transnational activism labour rights, ongoing contention over, 218 Lachapelle, E., 168 laissez-faire economics, 17, 20–1 Lake Chapala basin, 220 Laux, J. K., 30–1 Law, D., 38 Lear, 79 Lee, K., 159, 256 n.1 Lerdo de Tejada, S., 252 n.5 Lévesque, R., 65 Lévy, D., 20, 21 Ley de Fomento Agropecuario (LFA), 100–1 Ley General del Equilibrio Ecológico y la Protección al Ambiente (LGEEPA), 199 Leyva, X., 94–5 Libby, L., 50 Lichtblau, E., 47 Lichterman, P., 79–80 Lio, S., 80–1 Lipschultz, R. D., 88, 234 Loaeza, S., 67 López, M., 115, 193–4, 246 López y Rivas, G., 112 Luján, B., 141, 144 Lustig, N., 116

292

Index

McAdam, D., 6, 58, 80, 117, 221, 250 n.4 McBride, S., 12–13, 16–34, 52, 61, 93, 115, 155, 236, 238–9, 242 McCarthy, J. D., 6, 117 Macdonald, L., vii, viii, 3–15, 161 Macdonald Report, 22, 61 McGinn, M., 82 Mackinlay, H., 92–3, 94, 106 McKinley, J. C., 166 Maclaren, V., 256 n.2 McQuaig, L., 69 Magnéticos de México, 78 Mann, H., 202 Mantsios, G., 80 maquilas, 26, 75–9, 82 Martínez, M. A., 36, 103 Martin, P., 72, 172 Massicotte, M. -J., 14, 68, 132–52 Mayer, F., 254 n.6 Mayer, J., 48 Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), 158, 170, 175 Meech Lake Accord, 64 Melucci, A., 82 Mérida Initiative, 49 Mestries, F., 107 Meunier, P. B., 252 n.5 Mexican Action Network on Free Trade, see Red Mexicana de Acción Frente al Libre Comercio (RMALC) Mexico agrarian reform, 93 airport protests, 114, 120, 125, 130–1 anti-free trade movement background, 67 anti-terrorism policies, 41–2 armed struggle’s emergence in, 57, 58–9 association with US aggression, 53 Chiapas rebellion, 28–9, 105, 108, 121, 123–4, 130, 137, 200, 216 coalition against free trade, see Red Mexicana de Acción Frente al Libre Comercio (RMALC) co-operation with US, 49 corporatist system, 183

debt crisis, 17, 23, 93 democratic transition, 115–17 elections, 49, 73, 94, 105, 115–16, 118–19, 121, 123–4, 127–8, 174, 246 employment rates, 30 environmental protection, 220 EU partnership agreement, 115 foreign debt repayments, 30 GATT entry, 101, 114 impact of democratization, 118 impact of neoliberalism, 25–6, 28–30, 34 increased US admission policies, 43 international popularity, 53 introduction of market-oriented policies, 114 job losses post 1994, 72 joins GATT, 101 Lake Chapala basin, 220 locus of potential for influence, 246–7 military co-operation with US, 44 minimum wage rates, 30 and NAALC’s citizen-petition mechanism, see citizen-petition mechanisms neoliberalist shift, 17, 22–3 and NORTHCOM, 44 out-migration, 26 Peso Crisis, 25, 29, 103, 121–2, 139, 171, 240 political system, 92–3 poverty rates, 30 protests, 114, 119–20, 125, 130–1, 148 scrutiny of human rights abuses in, 120 social spending, 30 state corporatism, 18 ‘war on terror’ response, 173 Meyer, D. S., 79–80 Meyers, D. W., 42, 249 n.3 Miami protests, 223–4 Micklethwait, J., 48, 51 Middlebrook, K. J., 183, 191 Mika, S., 83 Millán, R., 128

Index 293 Movimiento Ciudadano por la Democracia (MCD), 137 Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), 136 Movimiento ‘¡El Campo no Aguanta Más!’ (MCAM), 94, 240 creation, 148 emergence, 108 focus, 110 fragmentation, 112 members, 108–9 promoters, 104, 106 role, 148 split, 247 Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), 10, 58, 212 Multinational Corporations (MNC), 62 mobilization anti-FTA, see CSOs against FTAs importance of antagonism for, 213 peasant, 103–4 Monarca, 96 Montiel, R., 120 Morissette, R., 26–7, 31 Morris, A., 214 Morton, D. A., 38 Mulroney, B., 22, 60, 64 Mulroney governments, 64 Muraven, M., 82 Myers, D., 117 NADBank, 198, 208 ‘NAFTA -Towards the Continental “We” ’ (Faux), 244 National Action Party, see Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) National Administrative Offices (NAO), 78–9, 179–80, 183–93, 218 National Security Strategy (NSS), 50 nationalism, 65, 81, 84, 87–9 national security policies Canada, 41 Mexico, 41 US, 40 Nava, J. M., 187 Negri, A., 89 neoconservatism, 17, 24 neoliberal globalism, term analysis, 93

neoliberalism core ideological thrust, 17 doctrine of, 18 economic rationale, 19 first regimes, 16–17 impact and contradictions, 25–34 paradigm shift to, 20–4 social impact, 28–34 theory of, 16–20 trigger for Mexican, 93 welfare policy impact, 30–1 see also transnational right Nepstad, S. E., 83–4 New Democratic Party (NDP), 246 New Peasant Movement, 98, 100, 102 New York Labor-Religion Coalition (NYLRC), 81–2 Nicolaidis, K., 156 non-governmental organizations (NGOs), 8–9, 88, 119, 151–2, 201, 247 see also environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) Norris, P., 76, 89 North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), 44–5, 173 North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC), 9–10, 14, 179, 194, 197–8, 204–5, 218 North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC) establishment, 177, 179 labour activists’ interest, 182 mobilizations for domestic political reform, 183–9, see also Echlin petition negative assessments, 177 petition process, see citizen-petition mechanisms principles, 179 relevance to activists, 192 scholarly interest, 178 North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (NACEC), 168 North American Competitiveness Council (NACC), 11, 71, 175

294

Index

North American Energy Working Group (NAEWG), 164 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) armed opposition to, 57, 58–9 autonomous environmental and labour commissions, 167 CJM complaints, 78 CJM defeat of Fast Track authorities, 79 coalitions against, 66, see also Red Mexicana de Acción Frente al Libre Comercio (RMALC) conflict outcomes, 216–17 continental governmental elements, 164–5, 167–8 cost of IPR regulations, 170–1 economic impacts, 72 and energy policy, 166 environmental challenges, 218–19, see also North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC) exclusionary model, 10 extension beyond traditional coverage, 21 impact on Canada, 26–7 impact on Mexico, 26, 28 impact of opposition to, 57–8 impact on US and Mexican labour movements, 182–3 implementation, 5, 7, 12–13, 35, 96, 114–15, 121, 160, 163 and importance of borders, 39–40 judicial processes, 164 labour citizen petitions, see citizen-petition mechanisms labour side agreement, 218, see also North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC) Mexican concerns, 115–16 Mexican hopes for, 26 Mexico joins, 93–4 mobilization against, 57 as mobilization catalyst, 4 negative perceptions, 72 opposition to, 66–9 panels, 165 and peasant organizations, 97

peripheral governmental communications, 166 petitions against, 219 as political constitution, 163 power discrepancies, 163–4 presidential nominees’ threats, 4 protest and transnational mobilization against, 3, 220, see also protests reasons for extension beyond traditional coverage, 21 signatories’ mistake, 4 transnational character of side accords, 217 North American Steel Trade Committee (NASTC), 169 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 44 Northern Command (NORTHCOM), 43–5, 53 Nye, Jr. J. S., 7–8, 9–10, 53 Obama, B., 4, 49, 73, 193 O’Brien, R., 5, 9, 10 O’Connor, B., 32 O’Donnell, G., 238 Ojeda, M., 77, 82–3 Oliver, P., 117 Ong, A., 88–9 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 30, 212 Otero, G., 6, 13, 17, 92–113, 121, 240, 247, 250, 251 n.2 O’Toole, G., 18 Ottawa protests, 3 Ottaway, M., 234 Oxhorn, P., 238 Pact for Peace, Democracy and Justice (Mexico), 124 Palley, T. I., 24 Palmer, D., 246 Panebianco, A., 119 Panitch, L., 50 Papademetriou, D. G., 26 Paré, L., 96 Parker, A., 249 n.3

Index 295 Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), 73, 94, 97, 107, 113, 123, 124, 125–6, 188, 190, 191, 248–9 n.2 Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD), 94, 97, 124, 126–9, 131, 194, 246–7 Partido de la Revolución Mexicana (PRM), 92 Partido Nacional Revolucionario (PNR), 92 Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) candidate assassination, 121 civic insurgency against, 94–5 dominance, 67–8 inefficient corporatism, 102 lobbyist spending, 135 loss of presidency, 92, 116 nepotism, 183 obstacles to coalition-building, 134 SMO links, 118 Parti Libéral du Québec (PLQ), 61, 64–5 Parti Québécois (PQ), 61, 63–5 Pasha, M. K., 74, 84, 88 Pastor, R. A., 245 paternalism, US, 87–8 PATRIOT Act, 40, 46 patronage, 118 Paz Paredes, L., 103 peasant movement achievements, 111–13 death and resurrection, 101–8 mobilization, 94, 103–4 state negotiations, 94–101 sustained mobilization, 108–10 Pechlaner, G., 97, 101 Peña, D. G., 77 Pérez, M., 124–5 Perle, R., 50 Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR), 212, 225 Perot, R., 66 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), 32 Peso Crisis, 25, 29, 103, 121–2, 139, 171, 240 Phillips, S., 37

Pieterse, J. N., 161 Plan of Anenecuilco, 96 Plan Colombia, 49 political opportunity structures, 15, 35, 59, 80, 178, 180–2, 190 Posadas, A., 255 n.15 poverty-alleviation programmes, Mexico, 29 Poy Solana, L., 257 n.5 Prakash, M. S., 89 pre-emptive action, 50, 173 Prisoner of War (POW), 48 privatization, 6, 23–4, 28–9, 93, 97, 99, 101, 127, 130, 134 Problemas sin Fronteras, 78 Pro-Canada Network (PCN), 62–3 Procuraduría Federal de Protección al Ambiente (PROFEPA), 198 Programa Nacional de Solidaridad (PRONASOL), 29, 102 PROGRESA, 29 Pross, P., 38 protectionism, 17–18, 22, 65, 67, 87, 90, 114–15, 121, 168 protests anti-globalization, 220–4 Cancún, 222–3 impact of anti-neoliberal, 211–12 Mexican airport, 114, 120, 125, 130–1 Mexico City, 148 Mexico’s handling, 119 Miami, 223–4 Ottawa, 3 Quebec City, 221–2, 228 Seattle, 220–1, 224–5 Zapatista uprising, 114, 120, 123–5 Proyecto Fronterizo de Educación Ambiental (PFEA), 202–3 public choice theory, 19 Public Safety Act (Canada), 41 Purcell, M. E., 142 Quebec City protests, 221–2, 228 Química Fluor, 78 Quintero Ramírez, C., 77 Rally for Indigenous Dignity, 124–5 Ranney, D., 180

296

Index

Raustiala, K., 207 Reagan, R., 24, 32, 50, 60, 160, 162 Reagon, B. J., 84 Red Mexicana de Acción Frente al Libre Comercio (RMALC) conclusions about, 149–51 creation, 68, 132–3, 183 criticisms, 144 decision-making methods, 145 diffusion methods, 136–42 educational tools, 141–2 electronic distribution lists, 138 expert analyses vs movement building, 143–9 interviewees, 151–2 legitimacy, 140, 145 links, 137 lobbying strategy, 141–2 obstacles to grass-roots participation, 146–7, 150 office location, 146–7 popular education initiatives, 139 publications, 136–8, 140 referendum campaign, 139–40, 241 responsibilities, 68 role, 143 strategies and objectives, 68, 133–6 Referendum de la Libertad (Freedom Referendum), 139–40, 241 regional integration, 11, 134, 183, 232, 243 Regional Security Cooperation Initiative (RSCI), 49 Reiter, H., 224 rendition, 47–8 Réseau Québécoise sur l’Intégration Continentale, (RQIC), 69 Reveles, R. A., 29, 30 Reygadas, R., 119, 133, 143–4 Ribeiro, G. L., 76, 88, 89 Richter, S. M., 26 Riker, J., 8, 215–16 Ríos, M. E., 83 Risse-Kappen, T., 252 n.4 Risse, T., 181, 195–6, 197 Robinson, R., 62 Robles, B., 83

Rochlin, J., 29, 30 Rochon, T. R., 79–80 Rodgers, H., 34 Romano, C., 181 Rose, F., 80, 81 Rosenberg, M., 240–1 Ros, J., 30 Ross, J., 44, 47 Rumsfeld, D., 50 rural–urban migration, Mexican, 29 Safa, H. I., 77 Saiz, J. M. R., 139 Salas, C., 72 Salazar, H., 115 Salinas, C., 18, 67, 95–100, 102, 110, 123–4 Samstad, J. G., 92–3 Sánchez, C., 112 Sandoval, C., 83 Sands, C., 11 San Salvador Atenco, airport protests, 114, 120, 125, 130–1 Sayoc, M., 245 Schacht, S. P., 79–80 Schmitter, P. C., 18 Scholte, J. A., 6 Scott, R. E., 72 Seattle protests, 220–1, 224–5 Secretaría de Comercio y Fomento Industrial (SECOFI), 199 Secretaría del Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (SEMARNA), 210 Secretaria de Medio Ambiente, Recursos Naturales y Pesca (SEMARNAP), 198, 210 Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) agenda and implications, 45 alternative scenarios for, 245–6 criticisms, 11–12 deep integration process, 70, 73, 212 establishment, 11, 45 launch, 4, 45, 58, 174–5 protests against, 3 renewed push for, 4 Senghaas, D., 17

Index 297 September 11 attacks defence policy impact, 43 democracy impact, 46 security impact, 39–43, 45, 161, 171–2, 175, 227 sovereignty impacts, 50 transborder governance impact, 171–4 Sewell, Jr. W. H., 221 Shields, J., 248 n.1 Sikkink, K., 8, 74, 86, 141, 180, 181, 215–16, 234, 254 n.2 Silvaggio, T., 14, 38, 58, 196–7, 211–28, 239 Singelmann, P., 94 Skidmore, D., 75 Sklair, L., 77 Smart Border declaration (Canada), 40–1, 42 Smith, B., 74 Smith, J., 5, 6, 8, 74, 234 Smith, M. A., 23–4 Smith, P. J., 46, 115 Snidal, D., 181 Snow, D., 80, 81 Soberón, X., 128 social dumping, 67 social mobilizations against FTAs, see CSOs against FTAs social movement organization (SMO), 224 social movement sector consequence identification, 130–1 discussion, 129–31 political-ideological diversity, 130 understanding, 117–20 see also Atenco movement; El Barzón; UNAM student movement; Zapatistas social policy Canada, 31 Mexico, 29 US, 32–3 socioeconomic indicators, impact of neoliberal globalization, 25 Sony, 78–9 sovereignty, Krasner’s typology, 27 Stanford, J., 26, 27 Stepan Chemical, 78–9

Stryker, S., 87 student strike, UNAM, 114, 120, 127–31 sublimation, managed, 84 Sweeney, J., 223 Szanton Blanc, C., 74 Sztulwark, D., 59 Tamayo, S., 116 Tarrow, S., 5, 6–7, 8, 15, 37, 75, 80, 117, 119, 180, 227, 250 n.4 tar sands, 166 tax credit schemes, 33 Taylor, J. E., 26 Teamsters, 3, 177, 182, 185 Téllez Kuenzler, L., 101 Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), 33 Terán, A. S., 29, 30 terrorism agency definitions, 46, see also September 11 attacks Texas Center for Policy Studies (TCPS), 202 Texas Coalition for Responsible Investment (TCRI), 77 Thacker, S. C., 23, 30 Tiano, S., 77 Tilly, C., 58, 80, 117, 250 n.4 Tomlin, B. W., 179 Tong, M., 77, 79 Torres, B., 14, 195–210, 254 n.1 Torres, M., 103 Torres-Ruiz, A., 14, 155–76 torture outsourcing, 47–8 Trade Agreement Administration and Technical Cooperation, (TAATC), 78–9 trade agreements reasons for extension beyond traditional coverage, 21 US concerns, 28 transborder governance banking perspective, 171 border region management, 167 Canadian view, 158 conclusions about, 175–6 continental elements, 164–5, 167–8, 169–71

298

Index

transborder governance – continued and drugs for HIV/AIDS, 158–9 globalized context, 155–61 informal communication as type of continental, 166 and security, 162 vs government, 156–60 and ‘war on terror’, 171–4 transnational activism evolution, 182–3 legalization, 183–5 Transnational Actors (TNA), 195, 197 transnational alliance system, rise and fall of opportunities in a, 218 transnational civil society, paradoxes of, 88–91 transnational corporations (TNCs), 156, 158–60, 162–3, 168–9, 171 transnational movement networks, 13, 75, 84, 86 see also Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras (CJM) transnational quasi-judicial mechanisms activists’ use, 178 administration agencies, 178 and state accountability, 241 status derivation, 181 see also North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC) transnational right policy objectives, 37–8 political actors, 38 positive effects of September 11, 48 post-September 11 influence, 51–3 prevailment, 39 term analysis, 36–7 Trentmann, F., 75, 76, 89, 90 Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), 170 Turner, L., 86 Unión Campesina Democrática (UCD), 97, 102, 108 Union des Producteurs Agricoles (UPA), 64 Unión General Obrera, Campesina y Popular (UGOCP), 98, 108

Unión Nacional de Organizaciones Regionales Campesinas (UNORCA), 95–6, 98, 100–1, 104–6, 108, 110 Unión Nacional de Productores del Café (UNPC), 105, 107 Unión Nacional de Trabajadores (UNT), 109, 187 Unión Nacional de Trabajadores Agrícolas (UNTA), 108–9 Unitary Action Agreement, see Convenio de Acción Unitaria (CAU) United Auto Workers (UAW), 182 United Electrical, Radio, and Machinist Workers (UE), 182–3, 185, 193 United Nations Human Rights Committee, 178 United States (US) business unity, 24 citizen participation, 10 citizen petitions against, 206–7 colonial sense of responsibility, 88 compliance record, 165 concerns about impact of trade agreements, 28 and drug patent protection, 170 economic miracle, 27 elections, 10, 48–9, 73, 174, 191, 245–6 illegal Mexican workers, 26 job losses, 72 locus of potential for influence, 245–6 Mexican border cleanup, 207–9 migrant labour issues, 192–3 negotiations with China, 225 neoliberal policy model, 24 policy planning networks, 225 politicization of trade policy, 227 public debt repayments, 30 rise of the New Right, 17 security concerns, 4 terrorist attacks, 35 unified military command, 43 unilateralism, 53 welfare state, 32

Index 299 United States–Canada Smart Border Declaration, 40 United States Council for International Business (USCIB), 212 United States–Mexico Border Partnership Agreement, 40–1 United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), 193 Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) student movement, 114, 120, 127–31 Urmetzer, P., 20 Useem, B., 214 Useem, M., 24 USWA, 223–4 Vadi, J., 23 Valadez, C., 83 Valdés Ugalde, F., 23, 93 Van Appeldoom, B., 48 Van Dyke, N., 80, 83–4, 86 Van Voorhis, R. A., 32 ‘Vaquerías’, 100–1 Vega Cánovas, G., 255 n.15 Vietnam War, 17 Villamar, A., 87 Villarreal, R., 67 violence, 76, 79, 84, 97, 121, 124, 126, 174 von Moltke, K., 202 Voz y Voto, 124 Waco meeting, 4, 11, 45, 174–5 Wada, T., 116 Walsh, N. P., 50 Wannas-Jones, J., 47 Wapner, P., 234 ‘war on terror’ in election strategy, 48 human rights violations, 47–8 impact on US, 53 policy adoption, 48 and transborder governance, 171–4 Washington Consensus, 24, 155

watchdog role, 233, 237, 241, 245 Weisbrot, M., 25 Weissert, H., 44 welfare policies Clinton administration, 32–3 Reagan administration, 32 Westphalian sovereignty, 27 Whittier, N., 79 Wiarda, H., 67 Wilkinson, R., 9, 10–11 Williams, H. L., 123 Williamson, J., 24 Wilson, J. Q., 252 n.7 Winham, G. R., 255 n.15 Wirth, J. D., 203, 254 n.7, 255 n.21, 255 n.22 Wise, T. A., 30, 115 Wolfowitz, P., 50 Wooldridge, A., 48, 51 World Bank, 17, 23, 38, 122, 156–8, 171 World Bank Inspection Panel, 178 World Coffee Organization (WCO), 105 World Economic Forum, 217 World Social Forum sets, 217 World Trade Organization (WTO) Cancún protests, 222–3 intellectual property rights, 158–9 protectionism, 171 protests against, 211–12 Yalnizyan, A., 31 Young, I. M., 80 Yúdice, G., 88 Yunez-Naude, A., 26 Zald, M. N., 6, 60, 74, 117, 214 Zapatistas, 28–9, 57–9, 71, 105, 107–8, 111–14, 120–5, 130–1, 137, 200, 216 Zedillo, E., 124, 201 Zenith, 79 Zhang, X., 31 Zurcher, L. A., 81, 214