North American Regionalism
North American Regionalism
Stagnation, Decline, or Renewal?
North American Regionalism problematizes "North America" as an important region in its own right, breaking with the area-studies convention that divides the Global North and Global South portions of the Western Hemisphere at the US-Mexican border. By cutting across this division, the theoretically sophisticated essays in this volume yield new insights about politics, society, and the economy of North America, opening dialogues with the New Regionalism approach and the literature on comparative regional studies.
Drawing on a six-year interdisciplinary collaboration among leading scholars from Canadian, Mexican, US, and European universities, the book brings North America back into International Relations’ study of regions and regionalism. The book includes robust theoretical and empirical engagement with issues of trade, migration, security, energy and climate, and the rise of China.
“Coeditors Hershberg and Long smartly go beyond supranational institutions, considering not only top-down executive branch initiatives but also transnational dealings between social actors (such as corporations and nonprofits) and subnational actors (state and provincial governments) and assessing the influence of more subjective notions, such as national identity and the acceptance or rejection of neighboring political systems and cultures.”—Richard Feinberg, Foreign Affairs
Eric Hershberg is a professor of government at American University, where he served as the founding director of the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies from 2010 to 2022. Tom Long is a reader of international relations at the University of Warwick and an affiliated professor at CIDE-Mexico City.
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Placing North America in a World of Regions
Eric Hershberg and Tom Long
List of Abbreviations
Part I. Constructing a North American Region
Chapter One. An Embarrassment of Regions: North America and Regional Orders
Arturo Santa-Cruz
Chapter Two. Ménage à Deux: Canada and the Limits of the North American Idea
Asa McKercher
Chapter Three. The Two US-Mexico Borders and the Limits of the North American Project
María Celia Toro
Part II. New Regionalism and North America
Chapter Four. "I Was All Set to Terminate": New Regionalism Theory, the Trump Presidency, and North American Integration
Laura Macdonald
Chapter Five. Fortress North America: Theorizing a Regional Approach to Migration Management
Ernesto Castañeda, Michael Danielson, and Jayesh Rathod
Chapter Six. When Cooperation Is Not Enough: North America’s Security Paradigm and the Failure to Protect Citizens’ Security
Gema Kloppe-Santamaría
Chapter Seven. Energy Regionalism in North America: Subnational Leadership in the Transition to Low-Carbon Economies
Daniela Stevens
Part III. Interdependences and institutions in North America
Chapter Eight. North America’s Circulation Governance and Polycentric Drives for Integration and Fragmentation
Isidro Morales
Chapter Nine. North America in Comparative Perspective: Regional Cooperation Dynamics in the Western Hemisphere and the World
Diana Panke and Sören Stapel
Chapter Ten. China and North America: How an Asian Power Disrupted the US Neighborhood
Barbara Stallings
Chapter Eleven. Conclusion: The North American Idea Looking Forward
Eric Hershberg and Tom Long
Afterword. The United States and Its Near Abroad: From Hegemonic Presumption and Intermittent Interventions toward Strategic Cooperation
Abraham F. Lowenthal
Contributors
