The Post-NAFTA Political Economy: Mexico and the Western Hemisphere - Hardcover

"Carol Wise's well-edited The Post-NAFTA Political Economy: Mexico and the Western Hemisphere has the broadest range and the most synthetic approach of any book under review here."-Jonathan Fox, Latin American Research Review "This is a very good book on many levels. It is chock-full of data and yet remains accessible to the non-economist; it presents sound empirical research on the topic and yet provides sufficient background information to make it appropriate for the undergraduate; and it escapes the facile dichotomous pro-NAFTA/anti-NAFTA polemics of the past while raising critically important policy questions regarding the future of Mexico and hemispheric integration."-Stephen D. Morris, South Eastern Latin Americanist (SELA) "Carol Wise's collection . . . is a major contribution to the intellectual and political debate about the political and economic forces explaining the transition from state-led inward-looking models of development to market-led outward-looking paradigms in Mexico and to some extent Latin America. . . . Carol Wise has collected a fine and well-balanced selection of topics dealing with regional integration and its impact in Mexican economic and political life. No doubt this book will become a major reference and source of inspiration for both the specialist and non-specialist."-Isidro Morales, Canadian Journal of Political Science

Four years after the launching of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), debate over its costs and benefits remains intense-as revealed late in 1997 when President Clinton failed to get Congress to approve his administration's request for a "fast track" authority to negotiate the broader proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). This volume of original essays attempts to understand why by looking closely at the effects that NAFTA has already had and sorting out fact from fiction. The first part of the book examines the impact that NAFTA has had on the Mexican economy, seeking to distinguish those trends that can be attributed to Mexico's participation in NAFTA from those that are more related to domestic politics and long-term structural weaknesses of the country's economy. The second part, using an interdisciplinary approach, studies the wider political and economic ramifications of NAFTA, asking how much NAFTA has helped or hindered the efforts to establish the FTAA. The essays together provide alternative explanations for the anti-NAFTA mood that prevails among important sectors and constituencies within the United States. The contributors are Peter Andreas, Denise Dresser, Stephan Haggard, Jonathan Heath, Sylvia Maxfield, Manuel Pastor, Adam Shapiro, and Ngaire Woods.