The rise of ethical trade advocacy: NAFTA and the new politics of trade

This dissertation focuses on three empirically linked questions: (1) who were the new coalitional actors that gained prominence during NAFTA, and why did they coalesce at this time; (2) how did non-governmental actors in the U.S. transform the trade policy debate during NAFTA and beyond; and (3) why were U.S. environmentalists able to achieve greater gains under NAFTA than other coalitional actors, and in particular more than politically influential U.S. labor activists. Because of systemic changes that integrated northern Mexico into U.S. manufacturing and expanded the scope of trade policy into domestic regulatory law, activists in different social movement sectors prior to NAFTA were increasingly coming to view their interests as threatened by the same trade liberalization agenda. This would create the seeds for “ethical trade advocacy,” or advocacy that promotes efforts to maintain regulatory safeguards as economic activity ratchets up from the national to an international level. These ethical trade advocates included activists that had not previously mobilized on trade issues, and they would find their combined strength and full articulation in the NAFTA fight.; The ability of domestic actors to influence international regime negotiations depends in part on their own state's receptivity to mobilization at three political levels: (1) the relevant policy domain; (2) the legislative domain; and (3) the larger political action field. Each political level corresponds to a different dominant type of non-governmental leverage: (1) suasion through the alignment of interests in the policy domain; (2) alliances with decision-makers in legislative bodies; and (3) mass mobilization of constituents or organizational members in the broader political action field.; Throughout the three years from the announcement of intent until final passage, U.S. NGOs would negotiate among the political fields in a dynamic process. Those non-state actors with alliances with access to the trade domain would focus most of their efforts on advocacy politics. Coalitional actors without such access would pursue a mixed approach that would combine congressional alliances and populace politics. The Bush administration would be able to use access to the trade domain itself to exploit divisions among environmentalists and split the more pro-growth activists from the rest of the cross-sectoral coalition. President Clinton would also exploit the same divisions to find a compromise that furthered environmental aims. Environmentalists would therefore gain substantively from their ability to add to labor's influence in threatening the agreement, while benefiting from their ability to distance themselves from labor concerns.; However, the NAFTA battle also demonstrates the continued importance of the systemic international context in which negotiators find themselves. Even the dominance of the U.S. could not guarantee the inclusion of the strong labor rights protections. Mexican and Canadian negotiators would be influenced by their own domestic political configurations; the zero-sum nature of the supplemental agreements would further limit the negotiating leverage of U.S. trade representatives in their efforts to obtain strong protections. Mexican negotiators would risk the failure of the agreement by declaring that their bottom line was the maintenance of their industrial relations system, and U.S. negotiators would have no substantive concessions to offer in exchange for a softening of that stance. Indeed, the labor side agreements would prove insufficient to ensure passage of NAFTA within the U.S. House. Only through the entrepreneurial efforts of Clinton to provide congressional side payments would the treaty be approved by Congress. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...