The North American Free Trade Agreement

This chapter presents a case study of the NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. NAFTA is a case of ‘non-parliamentarization’ in a democratic, albeit task-specific organization with low authority, and narrow scope created after a momentous governance success—the end of the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union—in a regional environment without relevant examples of international parliamentary institutions (IPIs). NAFTA illustrates that, absent of certain organizational characteristics that make IPIs a convincing strategy, even intense contestation focuses on other concerns—NAFTA’s narrow trade policy priorities in this case. The analysis also shows that democracy alone does not suffice to trigger the creation of IPIs.