NAFTA: The governance of economic openness

Although the rule-based regime of the North American Free Trade Agreement ( NAFTA) has instituted the empowerment of private actors vis-a-vis governmen t bureaucracies, and of transstate institutions at the regional level, it i s contended in this article that NAFTA should be envisioned as a hybrid mod el of economic governance. Under the agreement, some issue areas still rema in under the administration of state-centered authorities, and other ones, such as investment, trade remedy policies, and labor and environmental issu es, under the surveillance and fragmented authority of nonstate actors. Thi s transfer of authority to private or civil society actors is, in fact, a m ajor trait of the NAFTA policy mechanism. It is also argued in this article that, contrary to what some authors have suggested, NAFTA's hybrid institu tional machinery is provoking deep integration in the region, in spite of t he absence of supranational institutions or the homogenization of national legislation.