Neoliberal mercantilism and North American free trade: A study of the political causes of globalization

This dissertation investigates why and how different types of countries have embraced economic globalization in the last 25 years, often reversing in the process previous policies of restraining international economic integration. Empirically, the dissertation uses a comparative analysis of the pathways by which Canada, Mexico, and the United States each arrived at the decisions to negotiate and ratify continental free trade agreements. A bilateral agreement between Canada and the U.S. (implemented in 1989) and the trilateral North American Free Trade Agreement (1994) have contributed substantially to the internationalization of these three countries' economies. On the basis of this comparative analysis, the dissertation makes three main arguments. First, differences in the three countries' trajectories were caused both by variation in the relationships between their respective private and public sectors, and by the hierarchical transnational relationships among the three countries' business classes. These relationships were in turn rooted in enduring differences in the three countries' positions in the world economy. Changes in external economic relationships over time, however, provided the impetus for each country's embrace of North American integration. Second, the dissertation shows that these changing social structural circumstances contributed to changes in political and economic elites' worldviews, which subsequently motivated their decisions to pursue free trade. Within each country, recognized economic policy experts contributed to these ideational shifts. But their intellectual influence was constrained by business people's common mercantilist understanding of international trade, forcing experts to use arguments based on a hybrid economic worldview I call "neoliberal mercantilism." Third, the dissertation examines how each country's business class established and sustained internal unanimity in support of regional free trade, despite the threat of opposition from business actors vulnerable to increased import competition. States included potentially hostile industries in the negotiations, and provided them with preferential---sometimes trade-restrictive---content in the terms of the agreements, thereby muting latent intra-business conflicts of interest. The resulting class unity proved essential for the political feasibility of regional economic integration. To make these arguments, the dissertation applies selective insights from Gramsci's theory of hegemony, and speaks to literatures on ideas in politics, business class formation, and international economic relations.