Greening international trade: Environmental issues in United States-Mexico relations

Although programmatic institutions typically resist the inclusion of new and unrelated policy issues, in the 1990s two international trade institutions, GATT and NAFTA, brought environmental provisions onto their agendas. They did so because domestic political pressures (whether state or non-state actors) threatened the operation and, at times, the existence of the trade institutions. This study explains how issues identified as problems by domestic issue entrepreneurs reach the international level. The ability of domestic actors to influence the global trade agenda is conditioned by the international power of their country, the degree of bureaucratic insulation allowed by state institutions, their ability to form both cohesive alliances with other interest groups at home and abroad, and policy networks with domestic bureaucracies.;In the NAFTA and GATT negotiations, state actors first adopted a "diverting strategy," attempting to deal with the issue through a parallel track, so that trade negotiators could address the domestic political concerns of U.S. environmental NGOs outside these trade institutions. However, because of the NGOs' high level of ideological commitment, organizational resources and, mainly, access to U.S. elected officials and political institutions this strategy failed to silence opposition to these trade agreements. Institutionalized arrangements (national elections, authorization to negotiate international agreements and domestic ratification of international negotiations) made it impossible for state actors to dismiss domestic issue entreprenueur's demands. Accordingly, domestic state actors adopted a "pre-emptive strategy," a defensive political response which formally included the environmental issue in the trade agenda, but which also redefined it to guarantee the new issue's consistency with the institutions' original mission and principles.