| Growing interdependence of Canada, the United States, and Mexico in production, trade, and consumption of natural gas and electricity during the 1990s produced a new North American functional entity---partly governmental, partly non-governmental, and partly intergovernmental. Cooperation among three dissimilar, jealously sovereign countries has surmounted several shocks (California's flawed energy "deregulation" experiments, Enron's scandal, disagreements over the Kyoto Protocol and the Iraq invasion, soaring energy prices, and economic downturns).; Explaining this as an international regime (a system of principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actor expectations converge in a given issue area), this work explains the timing of its emergence...and how its self-adjusting nature portends increasing significance. Extensive interviews are augmented by newly obtained U.S. government documents about U.S.-Mexican gas negotiations in the late 1970s---when a regime seemed logical, but when necessary and sufficient conditions were lacking.; The North American Free Trade Agreement had to be accompanied by regulatory reforms and some market effects, while the gas and electricity industries converged and electronic developments facilitated exchanges of current and future supplies of gas and/or electricity. Now, mutually beneficial pipeline and powerline connections spur expansion, while backsliding from regime acceptance becomes ever more costly---especially for some regions.; This is a "virtual" regime---sensed by those involved with no formal charter beyond NAFTA's vague treatment of energy. It is "metanational"---grounded both within and beyond these nation-states. Operating in accord with varied modes of governance, but also through such modest institutions as the North American Energy Working Group and the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation, the regime supports differing national energy policy goals for the three countries and adjusts to their changing perceptions of how desirable objectives (supply adequacy, affordability, reliability, and environmental acceptability) should be interpreted and balanced. Defection becomes politically unacceptable for fear of damaging national interests.; Relative power is a motivating force, but domestically in each federal state as well as internationally. Earlier analyses of U.S. decisionmaking in foreign affairs are adapted to energy policy for multi-branch structures influenced by both private sectors and geopolitics. |
