| This dissertation analyzes the linkage of trade and environmental issues in two free trade agreements. The Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA), passed in 1988, has no environmental protection measures due to complacency regarding the similarity in levels of economic, legal, and environmental protection development between the two countries. By contrast, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), passed in 1993, is notable for its linkage of trade and environmental issues due to concerns over the disparity in development between Mexico and the United States and Canada. In an effort to placate environmentalists critical of NAFTA, Canada, Mexico, and the United States added environmental side agreements, creating three international bodies to monitor and aid in the correction of environmental problems. This work explains the process in which trade and the environmental issues became linked, and it argues that economic integration, has led, in a limited way, to legal harmonization and integration as well.; This dissertation analyses the dynamic interactions between corporations, social movements and state actors in debates over free trade. Following from Joseph Gusfield's (1981) analysis of the culture of public problems, it shows how trade debates are shaped in ongoing meaning construction, and uses theories of international relations and globalization, and political sociology and public policy to explain variations in the linkage of trade and environmental issues. The importance of resources, opportunities, and problem recognition is emphasized in social movement theory, and in political sociology, this work examines theories of the social, political, and economic influences on public policy. This study of CUSFTA and NAFTA indicates a process in which actors attempt to define goals under changing circumstances, focusing on the ways in which actors develop arguments about trade and the environment. Accordingly, it examines rhetoric and action pertaining to both broad conceptions and specific outcomes of the relationship between world trade, comparative economic advantage, and environmental protection. |
