Does North America Exist?

Understood as one among a number of world regions, North America is an enigma displaying many diverse realities. Seen in its formal but ineffectual at ineffectual institutionalization by the North American Free Trade Agreement, it is considerably less than meets the eye. When examined in such governance spheres as transborder water management or agriculture where geographical proximity matters, it turns out to have considerably more substance than first meets the eye. In other cases, such as the regulation of financial services or intellectual property rights, what appears as continental policy harmonization is really a manifestation of globalization. In contrast, antiterrorist border-security measures are just what they seem: us-driven inter-governmental policy coordination in which the hegemon ends up depending on the periphery’s collaboration. Global market consolidation in the steel and automobile industries suggests that the continent has lost its chance to become a regional regulatory space. The failure of the 2005 Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America to reconcile the us government’s fixation on border security with the continental market’s need for free trade confirms that North America is not about to develop along the lines of the European model in which the wealthy help the poor and continent-wide infrastructure knits are the member states together.