The Social Construction of Free Trade: The European Union, NAFTA, and Mercosur Francesco Duina Department of Sociology, Bates College (USA) Copenhagen Business School (Denmark) fduina@bates.edu Paper presented at EUSA Austin, Texas March 31 - April 2, 2005 The Social Construction of Free Trade: The European Union, NAFTA, and Mercosur Francesco Duina Bates College (USA) and Copenhagen Business School (Denmark) A large number of nation states throughout the globe entered into regional trade agreements (RTAs) during the 1980s and 1990s. Most observers assumed that the majority of RTAs could be understood as expressions of a single phenomenon: a widespread embrace of free trade. Uninterested in comparative questions, they made the collective turn to integration the subject of their analyses. This paper challenges this undifferentiated view of RTAs. In so doing, it produces evidence that directly speaks to current debates on globalization, the nature of markets, and the spread of neoliberalism across the world. The starting premise is that regional market building is a social endeavor, occurring in the midst of thick institutional contexts. Those contexts give rise to RTAs with remarkably different characteristics. The empirical analysis focuses on the European Union, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and Mercosur. Attention is given to the divergent evolution of law and organizations in three spheres of social life: working women, dairy products, and labor rights. The concluding section discusses additional variables shaping RTAs and venues for future research. The closing of the twentieth century and the opening of the twenty-first witnessed an unprecedented proliferation of regional trade agreements (RTAs). As Europe pushed for the completion of its regional market, a stunning number of countries in North America, South America, Africa, and Asia rushed to form their own regional markets. Numerous academics, journalists, and other observers responded to these events. Most, however, assumed that the majority of RTAs could be understood as expressions of a single phenomenon: a widespread embrace of free trade and the ideology of capitalism. Uninterested in comparative questions, they then made the collective turn to integration their subject of analysis. This paper challenges this undifferentiated view of RTAs. In so doing, it undermines notions of a global world where the 'local' has lost its relevance, confirms the insights of economic sociologists about the constructed nature of markets, and contributes to recent works on the uneven spread of neoliberalism across geographies. The starting premise of the article is that regional market building is a social endeavor, occurring in the midst of rich institutional contexts. Those contexts both guide and limit what is possible, providing much continuity between the shape of RTAs and realities on the ground, and giving each RTA a very particular profile. The article focuses on two dimensions of difference across RTAs: the legal architecture of RTAs and the response of major societal organizations to integration. Faced with the task of harmonizing the worldviews of people from multiple member states, RTA officials have used regional law to define and make normative statements about much of the world. In line with existing legal approaches in the member states and the power arrangements that those approaches represent, however, officials have made remarkably different choices about what aspects of the world they have subjected to definitional and normative standardization. When they have targeted similar aspects of the world, they have produced remarkably different definitional and normative notions. On the organizational front, interest groups, businesses, and state units have developed regional structures and programs in all RTAs. Yet, depending on their historical position in their national contexts and the nature of regional law that now defines their environment, different organizations have often become active at the regional level. When, in fact, similar organizations across RTAs have acquired a regional character, important differences in their specific structures and programs have set them apart. The empirical analysis concerns the three most important RTAs in existence: the European Union (EU), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and South America's Mercosur. Evidence from three areas of social life - working women, dairy products, and labor rights – illustrates the extent of differences across those three RTAs. Only EU officials have generated complex laws on working women. Only Mercosur officials have standardized the world of dairy products. In all three RTAs, officials have generated important principles surrounding labor rights; yet, their definitions and visions vary significantly. Organizational changes have paralleled these legal developments. Regional-level women's groups have developed only in the EU. In Mercosur alone have dairy companies rushed to expand their operations across borders. In all three RTAs, national administrations have developed units with regional structures and programs in the area of labor rights; crucially, however, the nature of those structures and programs varies across RTAs. This paper explores in detail these differences. The concluding section discusses the importance of culture and rationality in shaping RTAs and venues for future research. THE TURN TO INTEGRATION Between 1990 and 1994, officials from the World Trade Organization (WTO) were notified of 33 new RTAs. This doubled the total to 68 (Frankel 1997: 4; International Monetary Fund 1994). Then, between 1995 and 2001 another 100 RTAs formed. A patchwork of regional agreements covered much of the world. As one observer wrote, RTAs have become "almost a craze in the sedate world of economics, springing up here, there and everywhere" (Urata 2002, p. 21). The most prominent examples included NAFTA, the ASEAN Free Trade Area in Southeast Asia, the South African Development Community Protocol on Trade, South America's Mercosur, and a rejuvenated EU. All of these RTAs shared a similar broad objective: establishing spaces where some or all (depending on the RTA) trade can take place free from tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade. Trade refers to the movement of goods, services, capital, and labor across national borders. Tariff barriers refer to taxes imposed on the movement of whatever is being exchanged. Non-tariff barriers include quotas, subsidies, fiscal incentives, and other forms of support used by national governments to help certain industries or players. More subtle forms include disparate regulatory regimes and inarticulate expectations that market participants might hold about the world, such as expectations about all aspects of a visit to a grocery store, the characteristics of wheat beer, or the equipment available at a ski resort. But for a few exceptions concerned with the broad objectives and design of RTAs (Atksinon 1999; Mansfield and Milner 1997; Milner 1997; Grieco 1997), observers reacted to the wave of regional integration in the 1980s and 1990s by assuming RTAs to be essentially similar attempts to liberalize trade among neighboring countries. Largely uninterested in comparative questions, they proceeded to make the widespread turn to regional integration the subject of their analysis. Three lines of analysis became especially popular. First, observers asked why so many countries felt compelled, in the space of a few years, to enter into such trade agreements. The focus was on the collective turn to regional integration. What factors could explain this general embrace of regional free trade? The key questions, applied in blanket fashion to all RTAs, became "why the change, and why now?" (Frankel 1997, p. 4). Economic explanations for the explosion of RTAs were the most popular. Scholars pointed to the growing ineffectiveness of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and, later, the WTO, in dealing with trade issues (Yeung, Perdikis, and Kerr 1999, p. 4; Hormats 1994, p. 99; Bergsten 1996, p. 106). They added that the collapse of Communism and the failure of import substitution experiments in Latin America made the benefits of free trade all the more clear (Gibb 1994, p. 6; Yeung, Perdikis, and Kerr 1999, p. 5; Hormats 1994, p.101). They then suggested that RTAs were 'supplying' the institutional structures demanded by the steep increases in trade across nations (Jayasuriya 2003, p. 200; Yeung, Perdikis, and Kerr 1999, p. 11; Stubbs 2000). Political and sociological explanations for the proliferation of RTAs were quickly developed to complement economic accounts. For some, RTAs were mostly the creation of political leaders everywhere eager to remain in power (Milner 1998, p. 20; Mattli 1999; Moravcisk 1998). Geopolitical considerations also played an important role: RTAs helped stabilize countries that had just emerged from dictatorial or communist regimes. (Milward 1992; McConnell and PacPherson 1994, p. 170). RTAs offered, as well, advantages for bargaining with powerful third parties, such as the United States, or even other RTAs (McConnell and MacPherson 1994:, p.167; Mattli 1999: p. 166). Sociological accounts focused more on the rise of a new culture of cosmopolitanism, openness, and progress (Higgott 1998, p. 42; Inglehart, Nevitte, and Basañez, 1996). Emulation also seemed quite important. The successes of the EU in the late 1980s instigated changes in North America. Officials in South America, Asia, and elsewhere, eager to demonstrate both an understanding of world events and their progressive attitudes, mobilized quickly with plans of their own (Baldwin 1997, p. 884; Hormats 1994, p. 101). RTAs spread rapidly, fueled by a 'domino effect' (Baldwin 1997, p. 871) driven by legitimacy and a quest for prestige (Yeung, Perdikis, and Kerr 1999, p. 20). A second set of studies turned their focus away from the causes of integration and towards the impact of so many RTAs on the global economy. The critical question was whether "regional arrangements" as a whole should be seen as "stumbling blocks or building blocks for a more integrated and successful economy" (Lawrence 1996, p. 2; Krueger 1999; Kerremans and Switky 2000; De Melo and Panagariya 1993). Could RTAs coexist with a global economic system, or would RTAs "supplant the WTO?" (Yeung, Perdikis, and Kerr 1999, p. 27). Cogent arguments concerning the destructive impact of RTAs on the world economy were quickly produced (Bhawgati and Krueger 1995). For many, RTAs represented islands of protectionism, designed to protect "less-competitive or inefficient domestic industries from the rigours of wide open global competition" (Yeung, Perdikis, and Kerr 1999, p. 19; Michalak 1994, p. 64). Pundits pointed to a long list of discriminatory measures, such as voluntary export restraint agreements, dumping, subsidies, and complex regulatory regimes (Frankel 1997, p. 212; Hormats 1994, p. 103). "These agreements," thus wrote Henderson, "are . . . discriminatory . . . and can be viewed as a factor making for disintegration, rather than integration, within the world economy as a whole" (1992, p. 644; Thurow 1992, p. 644). Others pointed to 'trade diversion': the inevitable increase in regional trade at the expense of trade formerly conducted with third countries (Krueger 1999, p. 107; Gordon 2003; Frankel 1997, p. 14, 215). Yet others stressed how regional integration diverted energies away from multilateral efforts (Bhagwati 1993; Frankel 1997). These pessimistic arguments about the incompatibility of RTAs with the global economic system were opposed by a vocal group of economists and others (Kono 2002; Panagariya 2000; Henderson 1992, p. 664). They argued that trade blocs were in fact increasing trade across regions (Krueger 1999, p. 118; Frankel 997, p. 209-210; Salinas 1995, p. 38; Reuveny and Thomson 2000, p. 5). Moreover, they viewed RTAs as 'building blocks', 'stepping-stones', or even 'apprenticeships' towards the formation of a global economy (Summers 1991; Thapanachai: 1999; Gordon 2003, p. 112). RTAs were serving as a "useful laboratory for new approaches to deeper integration which can be applied multilaterally" (Cable 1994; Teague 2003, p. 338). A third set of scholars investigated the impact of the general embrace of free trade on welfare, understood to include employment, environmental degradation, inequality, and other matters. The resulting analyses tended to be for the most part negative. NAFTA in particular caused much concern (Cavanagh and Anderson 2002), especially with regard to job losses in the United States and Canada (McConnel and MacPherson 1994, p. 175; Griswold 2003, p. 22; MacDonald 2003, pp. 176-179), with some finding negative effects even for Mexico (Ramirez 2003: 863). NAFTA attracted also the ire of environmentalists, who charged that it lacked sufficient environmental provisions (The Ecologist 2002, p. 16; Cavanagh and Anderson 2002, p. 59) and was thus triggering 'race to the bottom' in regulation (Reuveny and Thompson 2000, p. 64; McConnell and MacPherson 1994, p. 177). Mercosur and the EU generated significant concerns as well. The former seemed to perpetuate social economic inequalities within the member states, and destined Argentina and Brazil to remain "under-developed" nations unable to achieve genuine macroeconomic growth (Mecham 2003, p. 378), either because of their participation in a exploitative world system or their isolation from it (Richards 1999, p. 133; Connolly 1999). Environmentalists in turn accused Mercosur officials of dealing with environmental matters only as obstacles for the completion of a single market (Hochstetler 2003, pp. 12-16). The EU, too, worried environmentalists (Skjaerseth and Wettestad 2002; McCormick 2001) but also those concerned with matters of national sovereignty, the evolution of national administrations, civic and popular representation, public health, and much more. Of course, not all agreed with this barrage of criticisms against RTAs. Many scholars and politicians called for a more balanced perspective (Krugman 1993, p. 14; Serra and Espinosa 2002; Malaysia General News 2002), while others simply praised the virtues of integration (Blum 2000; McCormick 2001; Griswold 2003). All of these studies produced valuable insights into the turn to regional integration in the last decades of the twentieth century. Yet, they also shared a tendency to view all RTAs as fundamentally similar projects. A comparative analysis of RTAs is therefore needed: it can shed much light on the nature of RTAs and, in the process, generate findings of relevance for our understanding of three topics of current debate: globalization, market building, and the spread of neoliberalism across geographies. THE ARGUMENT This section puts forth two claims about variation across RTAs. The first claim concerns regional law. All market activity depends on participants sharing certain basic views about the world. We may call these views definitional and normative. On the definitional front, market participants must agree on the basic characteristics of many aspects of the world (Zuniga 1999). These include the products being exchanged (e.g. what an apple or a television are), the services being offered (e.g. what property insurance or a legal consultation entail), and the actors involved in transactions (e.g. what a doctor or a teacher are). On the normative side, market participants must agree on an ideal vision of the world, at least in those areas directly or indirectly related to economic activity. Those areas include the terms of exchanges and the desirability of certain practices, behaviors, situations, procedures, conditions, and so on. Faced with the task of uniting populations from different cultures, RTA planners have chosen to articulate those definitional and normative notions publicly and formally through law. A cursory review of the laws of the EU, NAFTA, and Mercosur indicates the presence of hundreds of definitional and normative notions affecting agricultural goods, industrial goods, financial and other services, professional roles, and much more (Duina 2004; Fligstein and Stone Sweet 2002). Yet, while in pursuit of similar integrationist objectives, RTA officials have produced legal systems with fundamentally different definitional and normative principles. Those principles are different in two respects: their targets and content. In one RTA, for instance, there may be laws on advertising (i.e., what 'advertising' is and how it should be conducted) but not on beer (i.e., what 'ale beer' is and how it should be labeled). The opposite may be true for a second RTA. If planners in two RTAs target the identical subject matter, the actual content of their definitional and normative principles may vary. Hence, a 'retiree' in one RTA may be someone of at least 60 years of age while, in a second, the figure might be 55. Laws in the two RTAs may then endow those retirees with remarkably different healthcare rights. The second claim concerns the responses of societal organizations to regional integration. Many interest groups, businesses, and state administrative units have responded to integration by expanding their structures and programs at the regional level. Yet, which groups, businesses, and units have done so varies across RTAs. In one RTA, for example, we may observe the rise of environmental groups with transnational membership bases and objectives. In the same RTA, we may also observe that computer manufacturers have expanded their production infrastructures across national borders, while state labor departments participate in new regional-level coordinating bodies and have developed specialized domestic units to deal with the movement of medical professionals. In another RTA, we observe different dynamics. There, we may note the rise of regional associations of wildlife hunters, the expansion of furniture manufacturers, and the internationalization of transportation departments. In some cases, of course, analogous organizations develop regional structures and programs across different RTAs. In those cases, there will still be important differences across organizations in terms of the specific structures and programs that they develop. If, for instance, farmers' lobbying groups emerge at the regional level in two RTAs, their membership bases and their objectives are likely to vary. Similarly, if textile companies expand internationally in two given RTAs, what exactly they set up and what they produce are likely to differ. RTAs, then, exhibit significantly different legal and organizational landscapes. What can explain such variance? Regional market building - much like national market building - is a social process (Fligstein and Stone Sweet 2002). In particular, it occurs in thick institutional contexts. Historical institutionalist theorists emphasize the influence of pre- existing institutions on actors' choices and actions (Thelen 1999, p. 388; Pierson 2000). Various institutions are deemed important (Campbell and Pedersen 2001, p. 9; Torfing 2001, pp. 283-84). For some scholars, key institutions include informal factors such as practices, traditions, habits, and so on. For others, they include more formal factors such as legal codes, official organizational structures, the distribution of resources among players, and so on. Regardless of their particular position, all proponents agree that institutions work by constraining, channeling, or enabling actors and their choices. Change, in this school of thought, seldom represents an abrupt departure from the past. In line with these insights, this paper claims that, when crafting regional laws, RTA officials have tended not to produce definitional and normative definitions that challenge national legal traditions and the preferences of power societal players that have thrived in - and often driven - those traditions. Behaving otherwise would, if repeated over time, undermine the legitimacy and usefulness of the particular RTA in question (Duina 1999). Officials have instead produced regional laws that 'build' upon legal principles that most, if not all, member states already share. Those laws typically target aspects of the world that are regulated in most, if not all, member states, and they articulate definitional and normative principles that reassert, or only mildly depart from, existing national principles. Organizational changes also reflect existing institutional realities. Resourceful organizations with an international outlook are the most likely to become active at the regional level as integration progresses. Organizations with limited resources and a historical tendency to operate within national borders are the least likely to do so. At the same time, the very presence of regional law in certain areas of social life creates a space and incentives for any given organization to become transnational. This is especially so for state administrations: responsible for enforcing regional law, they are often ordered to establish permanent transnational forums for cooperation and to set up domestic units to oversee the implementation of regional principles (Mény, Muller, and Quermonne, 1996). Regional law also encourages, however, interest groups active in a given realm to develop transnational lobbying agendas and structures (Imig and Tarrow 2001; Mazey and Richardson, 2001). Businesses, as well, respond to regional law: the standardization of selected objects and processes in an industry lowers the costs of setting up new plants and operations in other member states. Given these links between regional law and organizations, we are likely to see, in a given RTA, the parallel evolution of law and societal organizations in certain spheres of social life. As regional law takes shape and offers the underpinnings for an economically integrated area, resourceful and internationally minded organizations adapt by expanding their operations in tandem with such law. This process particularizes each RTAs, with important implications for our understanding not only of integration itself but also of broader topics of current debate. METHODS The empirical analysis of this paper focuses on three RTAs: the EU, NAFTA, and Mercosur. By most standards, the EU, NAFTA, and Mercosur represent the most important and successful efforts toward economic integration. The EU has twenty-five countries spanning from Ireland and Estonia to Italy and Malta. The major push for market integration took place with the Single European Act of 1986, when leaders agreed to complete the vision of a common market: a space where goods, services, capital, and labor could circulate free from tariff as well as non-tariff barriers (Articles 3 and 23 of TEC). In 2003, the EU was the second largest RTA, with a combined GDP of around US$8 trillion. A good measure of integration success is the increase in one member state's exports to the other member states as a percentage of that country's total exports since joining the bloc. For 1958-1995, with the exception of Ireland and Greece, member states show an average increase of 25 percentage points from the time of entry to 1995 (Cameron 1998). NAFTA, launched in 1994, brings together Canada, Mexico and the United States. It is a free trade area: a space where goods, services, and some capital but no labor are to circulate freely (Article 101 of NAFTA). It is the largest RTA in the world, with a combined GDP in 2003 of US$11 trillion. For 1994-2000, member states saw an average increase of 3 percentage points in their intra-regional trade as a percentage of all exports. Mercosur, with the Treaty of Asunción of 1991 and Protocol of Ouro Preto of 1995, brings together Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. Like the EU, Mercosur aims to become a common market (Article 1 of the Treaty of Asunción). Mercosur had a GDP of around US$700 billion in 2003, making it the third largest RTA in existence. Intra-trade as a percentage of all exports increased by a dramatic 33 percentage points during the period 1991-2000. The empirical analysis concerns legal and organizational developments in these three RTAs. Regional law constitutes the architectural core of each RTA. Organizations - and in particular interest groups, businesses, and national administrations - are central actors in society. Evidence of variation in both areas points, therefore, to crucial and important differences across RTAs. Attention turns to law and organizations in three subject areas: working women, dairy products, and labor rights. These are three very important policy areas covering both economic and social issues. They also offer some of the clearest and most remarkable evidence of systematic legal and organizational variation across RTAs. In the case of law, attention turns to the legal instruments used by market officials to build regional markets. These are EU directives and regulations (Article 249 of The Treaty of the European Communities), the NAFTA text plus its corollary agreement on labor (the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation, or NAALC), and Mercosur decisions and resolutions (Article 40 of the Protocol of Ouro Preto). The EU's own categorization of laws into topics (such as agriculture, social policy, etc.) helps us identify relevant laws in the three subject areas in question. A keyword search in the EU's legal database allows us to identify additional laws. For Mercosur, keyword searches of databases, secondary legal sources, and a comprehensive review of all laws can lead to the identification of the relevant laws. In the case of organization, attention turns to three representative types: interest groups, businesses, and national administrations. The article examines first the rise of women's groups with regional membership bases and their objective of advancing the position of working women in their given region. Data is collected from reports and other publications, official Internet sites, interviews with group officials, and secondary sources. The article then considers the transformation of companies in the dairy industry. Data is collected on the location of plants (within the member state only or in other member states) for the five largest dairy companies in each of the most important dairy producing countries in Mercosur and the EU, and in all three NAFTA member states. The two countries considered for Mercosur are, in order of dairy output, Argentina and Brazil. The countries considered for the EU are, in order of dairy output, Germany, France, and Great Britain (European Commission 1997, Table 7). Data on plant locations can be gathered by analyzing company annual reports, interviews with company officials, industry reports, and media articles. Finally, attention turns to the regional structures and programs that departments of labor and employment in the three RTAs have developed in the realm of labor rights. Data is collected from official publications, governmental publications, interviews with state officials, government Internet sites, and secondary sources. THE EVIDENCE Women in the Workplace In the EU, NAFTA, and Mercosur women have increased their participation in the labor force (Doorne-Huiskes et al. 1995; Ulshoefer 1998; Gabriel and Macdonald 1994, p. 537). Yet, only in the EU have officials developed an extensive legal system rich with definitional and normative notions about women. Table 1 identifies the key EU legislation on women: Table 1: EU Law on Women in the Workplace General Area Specific Issues Pay Equal pay for equal work or work of equal value (D. 75/117) Workplace treatment Equal treatment in employment, occupation, vocational training, promotion, and working conditions (D. 76/207, D. 2000/78) Social Security Benefits Women's ability to contribute and benefit from social security schemes at the workplace (D. 79/7) Occupational Security schemes Equal treatment with regards to scope, obligations and benefits vis-à-vis social security schemes (D. 86/378) Pregnancy and Motherhood Pregnant women's rights at the workplace (D. 86/613), parental leave benefits for men and women (D. 96/34), safety and wellbeing of pregnant or breast-feeding mothers at the workplace (D. 92/85) Mainstreaming Gender perspective for EU international development policies and interventions (R. 2836/1998), and for EU regional development programs (R. 2836/98) Note. - Numbers in parentheses refer to EU directives (if preceded by D) and regulations (if preceded by R). Scholars have described two fundamental phases in the evolution of EU law on women. In the first phase, during the 1970s and 1980s, planners focused on promoting equal pay between the genders: defining and regulating of wages, benefits, and so on. In the second phase, during the 1990s, planners focused on granting women equality of treatment and opportunities (Pollack and Hafner Burton 2001). NAFTA has by contrast produced only one major normative principle in favor of working women. NAFTA's labor agreement is known as the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC). It was adopted as part of the Free Trade Agreement in 1994, and committed Canada, Mexico and the United States to the promotion of eleven "Labor Principles". Its eighth principle requires member states to commit themselves to equal pay for men and women. Member states are to ensure "equal wages for women and men by applying the principle of equal pay for equal work in the same establishment" (NAALC, Annex 1). With this principle, NAFTA has taken a first step towards the development of regional-level laws about women. Mercosur's approach to women has been even more limited than that of NAFTA. On various occasions, officials have stated their commitment to pursue policies on behalf of women and to ensure the right institutional environment to that end (Espino 2000, p. 21). For instance, in Article 3 of the 1998 Social and Labor Declaration - a document that, unlike any other joint declaration, became legally binding - the governments asserted their general support for equality of opportunity and treatment at the workplace. Yet, by the end of 2002, the only concrete measure in place was Resolution 84/2000, which asked Mercosur working forums and groups to incorporate a gender perspective into their deliberations. Organizational developments have paralleled legal developments in the three RTAs. Interest groups representing the interests of working women at a regional level have mushroomed across Europe. Members include individuals and organizations from every member state. Table 2 lists the major European women's groups: Table 2: Major European-Level Women's Interest Groups Group & Year of Birth Program Membership Base European Women's Lobby (EWL) - 1990 ? Lobby EU to promote equality, rights at work and in society ? Coordinate activities of national and European women's groups ? Ensure implementation of EU gender laws ? 3,000 national and EU-wide groups ? Individuals who are members of national groups ? Dutch President, French and Portuguese Vice Presidents ? Board members from every member state European Women Lawyers Association (EWLA) - 2000 ? Improve public understanding of EU laws on work and women ? Defend women's interests in the EU ? Strengthen links and understanding among female lawyers in the EU ? National women lawyers' associations ? Individual lawyers from member states ? One board official from each member state European Federation of Women Working in the Home (FEFAF) - 1983 ? Lobby EU Parliament and Commission to recognize worth of domestic work ? Ease transition from domestic work to workplace for European women ? Organizations from EU member states and Switzerland Business and Professional Women / Europe (BPWE) - 1985 ? Equal opportunity and status for women in economic, civil and political life ? Promote the number of women in decision- making positions ? Individuals and groups from EU but also Switzerland, Iceland and other countries ? Officers from all EU countries European Institute of Women's Health (EIWH) - 1996 ? Promote health and well being of women (both at work and beyond) as a priority for the European Commission ? Research on women's health issues on a European level ? Promote equality in healthcare treatment and options for women in the EU ? Present recommendations to European Parliament ? Individuals from member states ? Health care professionals from member states ? Women's interest groups ? Patient organizations Note. - Internet addresses of these groups are as follows: EWL: www.womenslobby.org; EWLA: www.ewla.org; FEFAF: www.fefaf.org; BPWE: www.bpw-europe.org; EIWH: www.eurohealth.ie. The most prominent European group is the EWL. Founded in 1990, the EWL has over 3,000 national and EU-wide member organizations, and close links with national women's groups that are not formal members (European Women's Lobby 2000, p. 14; Sperling and Bretherton 1996; Mazey 1998). Based in Brussels, its primary mission is to interact with the European Commission to evaluate and influence the development of EU laws, most of which concern working women. The EWL also strives to inform working women of their rights under EU law through extensive campaigns and press releases. The EWLA is a second major group. Founded in 2000, it is above all a networking body, linking thousands of female lawyers across member states. It too lobbies the Commission but perhaps focuses mostly on research and education on the rights of working women in the EU. To that end, the ELWA organizes a yearly congress and conferences, sponsors research projects, disseminates publications and information, and comments on EU policies. A third noteworthy organization is FEFAF, with its focus on promoting EU recognition of domestic work and helping women transition from domestic work to the workplace. This impressive regional mobilization on the part of European women has had no parallel in NAFTA. Mujer a Mujer was one exception: the group was responsible for organizing the 1992 Tri-national Working Women's Conference on Free Trade and Continental Integration but ceased operations in the mid-1990s because of lack of funding. It was a genuine regional organization, formed in the late 1980s by women in the United States, Canada, and Mexico to respond to economic integration, and with offices in Mexico City and San Antonio, Texas. Other examples of transnational cooperation exist, but they are ad-hoc and without formal character (Domínguez, 2002, p. 230). Otherwise, all sustained activism in relation to NAFTA has taken place within the confines of purely national-level groups, such as the Coalition for Women's Economic Development and Global Equality in the United States (Liebowitz 2002, p. 187; White, Salas and Gammage 2003, p. iii), or NAC in Canada (Carlyle 2002; Gabriel and Macdonald 1994, pp. 549-554). Additional, but less noteworthy, examples come from Mexico, where women have relied on existing labor and other organizations to express their concerns about economic integration (Macdonald 2002, p. 557). In Mercosur, there is only one major regional-level interest groups representing working women, and women more generally: the Reunión Especializada de la Mujer (REM). REM was established in Buenos Aires in 1995 as Mercosur's Foro de la Mujer and quickly opened official chapters in all four of the member states. With Resolution 20/98, Mercosur officials granted the group a permanent place in its consultative body Foro Consultive Económico y Social and assigned to it the name REM. In its position, the REM is in regular contact with national trade unions and workers' organizations (Ulshoefer 1998), and has offered the Common Market Group a gender perspective as it produces laws that affect women. Yet, REM is alone in its activities and has thus far enjoyed a very limited impact over Mercosur law, prompting various observers to note that "the Mercosur process" has so far failed to "encourag[e] the creation of a women's movement that is regional in nature" (Jelin, Valdés and Bareiro 1998, p. 9). Dairy Products Contrary to their approach to the world of women, EU officials have hesitated to develop definitional and normative laws on dairy products. They have instead relied on Regulation 2081/92 to claim that much of dairy production cannot be subject to standardization. Often applied to cheeses but also to creams and butters, the regulation recognizes small geographical regions (typically areas with a radius of 30 or fewer miles) as having the exclusive right to manufacture certain products. As a result, in a country such as Italy, the EU recognizes that over 30 cheeses have been protected from standardization. In France, over 40 cheeses but also butters and creams enjoy protection. Other countries, such as Spain, Ireland, and Germany, have followed suit, also with butters, cheeses, and other products. The few EU laws with definitional and normative content focus on milk and milk derivatives. The most important is Regulation 2597/97, which defines various types of drinking milk (raw, whole, skimmed, etc.) on the basis of content, weight, and production processes. Caseins and caseinates are targeted with normative principles only regarding their use in cheeses. The remaining 80 or so regulations and directives categorized in the EU's legal database as related to Milk Products (3.60.56) concern themselves with financial aid to farmers, setting production quotas, granting licenses and other administrative matters of no definitional relevance and of very limited, if any, normative relevance. As is the case with the EU, NAFTA officials have produced no significant pronouncements about dairy products. In the area of agricultural products, Article 713 of NAFTA simply asks that member states use relevant international standards, guidelines, or recommendations for sanitary purposes. Without a single definition or vision, NAFTA goes even further than the EU in avoiding regional standardization. In South America, by contrast, officials have embarked on quite a different approach. They have undertaken a comprehensive effort to standardize at the regional level the essential characteristics of dairy products. In the short period between 1993 and 1998, officials produced a rich set of laws. Table 3 identifies the major laws: Table 3: Mercosur Laws on Dairy Products General Area Target Milk Powdered milk (31/93, 82/93), fluid milk (78/94), milk for industrial use (80/94) Cheese Products Processed cheese and pasteurized cheese (134/96), powder cheese (136/96) Specific Cheeses Minas Frescal (44/98, 145/96), Parmesan, Reggiano, Reggianito, Srbinz (1/97), Azul (48/97), Tybo (42/96), Pategrás Sandwich (30/96), Tilsit (32/96), Danbo (29/96), Tandil (31/96), Mozzarella (34/96, 78/96) Creams and Fats Butter (70/93), butter oil fat (63/94), milk fat (71/93, 72/93), milk cream for industrial use (76/94) Milk Derivatives Caseinates (16/94), caseins (43/94) Desserts Doce de Leite (137/96) Note. - Numbers in parentheses refer to Mercosur Resolutions. All laws in Table 3 are rich with definitional and normative principles. They typically state that their objective is to "fix the identity and quality characteristics" of the product at hand. For instance, when addressing Tybo cheese with Resoultion 42/96, Mercosur specifies in Article 5 requirements for ingredients, senses (texture, color, flavor, smell), shape and weight, physical and chemical composition, and production process. On the normative side, the law specifies in Article 7 handling, hygienic, and other requirements. Organizational developments have paralleled events in the legal sphere. European dairy companies have retained a fairly national character, as Table 4 shows. Germany is the EU's biggest producer of dairy products. Nonetheless, its two largest companies (Nordmilch and Humana) only produce in Germany. The third company, Campina, is Dutch and has plants in The Netherlands and beyond. Hochwald and BMI (both tied for fifth place) are however also purely national. Great Britain's companies exhibit an even stronger national character. The two largest dairy companies have all of their production plants in Great Britain. Only the third company has transnational capacity. It is a Danish company with an extensive network of plants. Only in France do the major dairy companies have transnational production capacity. As Table 4 shows, the five largest companies all have international capacity. The French instance, however, is fairly unusual in Europe: Table 4: Major Dairy Companies in the European Union Company Revenues in US$ (millions) Plants in Home Country (2002) Plants in Other EU Countries (2002) G E R M A N Y Nordmilch 2000 (2000) a 15 a 0 d Humana Milchunion 1608 (2000) 11 a 0 d Campina - Germany 1266 (2000) a 6 a, d 22 e (18 Netherlands, 3 Belgium, 1 France) Molkerei A. Müller 1335 (2000) a 2 d 1 d (Great Britain) Hochwald 572 (2000) a 5 a 0 e BMI 486 (2000) a 7 d 0 d G R E A T B RI T A I N Dairy Crest 2077 (2001) c 15 d 0 a, d Express Dairies 1282 (2001) 10 d 0 d Arla 712 (2000) b 6 b, d 62 b, d (36 Denmark; 25 Sweden; 1 Greece) Robert Wiseman Dairies 434 (1999) c 5 c, d 0 c, d The Milk Group 187 (2001) b 2 b 0 b ACC-Manufacturing n.a. 8 b, d 0 b, d F R A N C E Danone 6597 (2001) b 7 e 13 e (6 Spain; 3 Germany; 1 Belgium; 1 Greece; 1 Italy; 1 Portugal) Groupe Lactalis 5000 (2000) 65 e 7 to 9 e (Belgium, England, Germany, Luxembourg, Italy, Portugal, Spain) Bongrain S. A. 3500 (2000) c over 12 b, g 4 b, f (Spain) Sodiaal 2563 (2000) a 28 a 4 d, e (1 Ireland; 1 UK; 2 Finland) Fromageries Bel 1557 (2000) a 8 b 9 b (1 Belgium; 1 Germany; 2 Italy; 2 Portugal; 3 Spain) Sources: a = European Dairy Magazine (Special Report: The Leading Dairy Companies in Germany and Mainland Europe 2001); b = Company Website; c = Company Annual Report; d = Telephone Interview with Company Officials (July 2002); e = E-mail Exchange with Company Officials (July 2002); f = Bongrain Financial Report 2001. If no source is given, figures are from media releases and articles. Note: In terms of daily kilos of milk processed, BMI ranks fifth in Germany, with 2.8 million kilos (vs. 2.3 for Hochwald). Given their similar revenues, both BMI and Hochwald are included in the table. The situation in NAFTA is similar to that in the EU. The three largest dairies in the United States have no plants in either Canada or Mexico. The fifth largest also has no such plants. Only Schreiber Foods - the fourth largest company - has a single plant in Mexico. Mexican companies have also not expanded in the NAFTA regions. The two largest companies - Alpura and the Lala Group - have no plants in the United States or Canada. Nor does GILSA, the fifth largest company. The only two companies with plants are multinationals from Europe: Danone and Nestlé. In the case of Nestlé, moreover, expansion in the three member states preceded the arrival of NAFTA. Canadian companies alone in North America have expanded their operations across borders. The largest companies in Canada all have a presence in the United States and some in Mexico as well. Important phases of the expansion happened in the 1990s, with Saput - the country's largest dairy company - aggressively moving into the United States in the second half of the decade. "It started in 1997 with our acquisition of Stella [Foods Inc]," observed a company official in an interview with the author; "from then on, we have been expanding and looking to expand even more" (Hamilton Spectator 1997). Table 5 reports the NAFTA findings: Table 5: Major Dairy Companies in NAFTA U N IT E D S T A T E S Company Revenues in US$ (millions) Plants in Home Country (2004) Plants in other NAFTA countries (2004) Dean Dairy Group 8120 (2002) a 95 a,b,c 0 a,b,c Kraft 4100 (2002) a 18 a 0 a Land O'Lakes 2899 (2002) a 12 a,c 0 a,c Schreiber Foods 2300 (2002) a 16 a 1 a,b,d (Mexico) National Dairy Holdings 2148 (2002) a 32 a,c 0 a,c M E X IC O Ganaderos Productores de Leche Pura (Alpura) 1328 (2001) f 2 c 0 c Lala Group (including Evaproadora Mexicana) 1152 (2001) f 14 b 0 b Nestlé - Mexico 462 (2001) f 6 f, c, d 13 f, b (2 Canada, 11 USA) Danone 251 (2001) f 14 d 25 d (5 Canada, 20 USA) Grupo Industrial de la Leche S.A (GILSA) 234 (2001) f 1 e 0 e C A N A D A Saputo 2503 (2002) a 35 a 15 a (United States) Parmalat - Canada 1800 (2002) a 20 a 6 c (5 United States, 1 Mexico) Agropur Coop 1327 (2002) a 20 a, c 1 a, c (United States) Kraft - Canada n.a. 2 d 19 a, d (18 United States, 1 Mexico) Nestlé - Canada n.a. 2 d 17 d (11 United States, 6 Mexico) Sources; a = Dairy Foods Magazine (Annual Report on Top 100 Dairy Companies in North America, 2003); b = Company Website; c = Telephone Interview with Company Officials (February - March 2004); d = E-mail Exchange with Company Officials (Feburary - April 2004); e = Telephone Interview with Alpura official; f = Figures estimated from data assembled from Datamonitor Industry Market Research reports from January 2002 ("Mexico: Liquid Milk"; "Mexico: Powdered Milk"; "Mexico: Concentrated Milk"; "Mexico: Yogurt"; "Mexico: Processed Cheese"). Matters followed quite a different course in Mercosur. Until the early 1990s, the major dairy companies in the region had only national production infrastructures. By 2003, all of Argentina's five largest producers possessed plants in Brazil. In 1990, only one (Nestlé) did. Expansion was rapid. In 2001, Sancor - Argentina's largest dairy company - signed an agreement with Mococa of Brazil to have branded products produced directly in Brazil. In 1998, Mastellano (Argentina's second largest firm) bought Leitesol of Brazil, a powder milk facility to be used for the breakdown of large powder milk shipments, packaging and labeling of Mastellano products. And in 1998 Milkaut (Argentina's fourth largest dairy company) bought Ivoti Plan in Rio Grande del Sul (Brazil) to produce milk products there. Danone (today the country's third largest dairy producer) established its production capacity in Argentina in 1997, after being in Brazil since 1970. By 2003, three of Brazil's five largest dairy companies had manufacturing operations in Argentina. Two of the three expanded their operations into Argentina in the 1990s. Parmalat, in Brazil since 1977, entered Argentina in 1992 with the purchase of La Vascongada. It then established plants in Uruguay in 1992 and Paraguay in 1994. Danone, as already noted, expanded into Argentina in 1997 after being in Brazil since 1970. Table 6 reports data on the largest dairy companies in Brazil and Argentina: Table 6: Major Dairy Companies in Mercosur A R G E N TI N A Company Revenues in US$ (millions) Plants in Home Country (2002) Plants in Other Mercosur Countries (2002) Sancor 870 (2000) 18 b 1 d (Brazil) Mastellone/La Serenísima 700 (2000) 6 1 d (Brazil) Danone – Argentina 288 (2000) c 1 e 2 e (Brazil) Milkaut 240 (1999) 17 d 1 d (Brazil) Nestlé – Argentina n.a. 5 b, e 10 b, e (Brazil) B R A ZI L Nestlé –Brazil n.a. 10 b, e 5 (Argentina) b, e Parmalat – Brazil 963 (2000) d 17 b 20 b (8 Argentina, 12 Paraguay and Uruguay) Itambé 550 (1996) a 14 e 0 b, e Danone – Brazil 179 (2000) c 2 e 1 b, e (Argentina) Grupo Vigor n.a. 3 d 0 d Sources: a = Taccone and Garay (1999: 259); b = Company Website; c = Company Annual Report; d = Telephone Interview with Company Officials (July 2002); e = E-mail Exchange with Company Officials (July 2002). A general source of information for the Brazilian case was Ministério da Fazenda (Parecer N.172/COPGA/SEAE/MF, 22 May 2002, Brasila, Brazil). If no source is given, figures are from media releases and articles. Notes: An alternative method for identifying the most important companies is to consider daily kilos of milk processed. Nestlé – Argentina matches Milkaut, with 1.6 and 1.5 million each during 1999, and can thus be considered the country's fourth or fifth largest dairy company. Media sources and figures for daily kilos of milk processed unquestionably point to Nestlé –Brazil as the biggest dairy company, and Grupo Vigor as either the fourth or fifth largest company. See, for instance, the statistics section of the Internet Homepage of the Associação Brasileira dos Produtores de Leite (http://www.leitebrasil.org.br/). Labor Rights Officials in the EU, NAFTA, and Mercosur have agreed on the need to endow workers with rights. But they have articulated different ideas about what those rights should be. In the areas of social security, only in the EU do those rights include migrant workers' unemployment benefits. Only in Mercosur and NAFTA, on the other hand, do they include the rights to association and strike. EU Regulation 1408/71 of June 1971 grants migrant workers, originating from one of the member states, and their families social security benefits identical to those enjoyed by native workers. Chapters 1 through 6 identify those benefits: sickness and maternity, invalidity, old age and death, work accidents, occupational diseases, death grants, and unemployment. With Decision 19/97 (still in need of ratification by Paraguay and thus not in force yet), Mercosur officials recognize that migrant workers should be entitled to the same rights as native workers. However, they offer a significantly less comprehensive list of what those rights include. Unemployment rights (along with maternity rights, work accidents, occupational diseases) are missing. NAFTA officials have similarly avoided taking any steps in the direction of unemployment rights, choosing instead to focus on working conditions (NAALC, Annex 1). EU officials have, on the other hand, hesitated to grant workers the rights to form labor associations and to strike. Indeed, the TEC excludes both rights explicitly from the domain of EU activities (Article 137). The 2000 Treaty of Niece presented an opportunity to amend the TEC with the introduction of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, which recognizes the right to form trade unions and strike (Articles 12 and 28). But the European Council recognized but refused to adopt the charter as legal or binding (Declaration No.23 of the Treaty of Niece). The current constitution of the European Union (still in need of ratification by all the member states and therefore not valid) recognizes the right to form unions and strike, but the relevant charter comes with highly ambiguous language. Its application seems to be limited to the institutions of the EU and not to workers elsewhere. Moreover, its principles must be applied within the context of national customs and laws, which implies that countries without the rights to form unions and strikes will not be expected to comply. By contrast, the first principle of NAFTA's NAALC is the "freedom of association and protection of the right to organize"; the third principle is "the right of workers to strike in order to defend their interests" (Annex 1). Such impressive rights are subject to the particular stipulations of each member state, but they are nonetheless considered unalienable. Mercosur officials have, in turn, recognized the rights to form unions and strike in the Social and Labor Declaration of December 10, 1998, which became a binding and legal text with immediate application upon promulgation. In a key passage, the declaration states: "All workers and trade union organizations are guaranteed the right to strike" (Article 11). The right must be exercised in conformity with existing national laws (Articles 10 and 11), but it cannot be denied by member states. The right of association is stated in Article 8. On the organizational front, we observe that national labor and employment departments in all three RTAs have become active in permanent transnational bodies dedicated to the promotion of selected labor rights. They have also developed domestic units charged with overseeing the enforcement of those rights. Yet, important differences set these departments apart. In the EU, a key area of activity concerns the unemployment rights of migrant workers as articulated in Regulation 1408/71. Composed exclusively of national representatives, and attached organizationally to the European Commission, the Administrative Commission on Social Security for Migrant Workers (ACSSMW) strives to ensure that those rights are respected. With a budget, in 2002, of €1.6 million, it meets several times a year. Its meetings and activities regularly concern unemployment benefits. Aiding the ACSSMW is a second transnational administrative body: the Advisory Committee on Social Security for Migrant Workers. It serves as a forum for representatives from national labor and employment departments to meet with representatives of trade unions and employer organizations. Domestically, European labor and employment departments have developed institutional capacity to process and oversee unemployment claims by migrant workers. The management of Form E-303 offers an example. Form E-303 allows citizens of one EU country to receive unemployment payments for three months as they search for work in a second country. The host country is to process the request, but workers are required to complete the form before leaving their home country (the home country must then reimburse the host country for its payments). Thus, in Sweden for instance, offices of the Labor Market Administration manage Form E-303. In Denmark, the Public Employment Office handles those forms. In Belgium, a more decentralized country, regions have a branch of the Department of Employment charged with the task: VDAB for Flanders, FOREM for Wallonia and BGDA/ORBEM for Brussels. In the case of NAFTA, labor and employment departments are not concerned with helping migrant workers receive unemployment benefits. Instead, they have developed structures and programs to protect the rights of workers to strike and form unions - along with the other rights set out by the NAALC. At the transnational level, representatives from the labor and employment departments have a permanent structure for interaction: the Commission for Labor Cooperation. At the heart of the commission is the Council of Ministers. This is a body composed of the Secretary of Labor from the United States, the Secretarío del Trabajo y Previsión Social from Mexico, and the Minister of Labor from Canada. The council conducts research and proposes policies on topics related to the rights to strike and form unions (as well as the other rights stated in the NAALC), participates in the process of dispute resolution, and keeps the public abreast of relevant legal and policy developments. Thus, in February 2001 for instance, representatives from Canada and the United States held in Toronto a "one-and-a-half day cooperative activity . . . to examine the general scope of protection of the right to organize" in the two countries (Commission for Labor Cooperation 2001, p. 11). The internal structure of national labor departments has also changed. There now exist National Administrative Offices (NAOs) in the labor departments of the three member states, each charged with developing and receiving complaints about alleged violations of labor principles, publishing reports, exchanging information, and much more. As of January 1, 2001, nearly 25 complaints had been filed with the three NAOs (Compa, 2001, p. 454), all of which were closely monitored by the council. Thirteen involved the right of workers to associate. One involved the right to strike. In Mercosur, the Social and Labor Commission of Mercosur (Comisión Sociolaboral del Mercosur) is designed to promote the rights of workers covered by the Social and Labor Declaration of December 10, 1998. These include both the rights to form unions and strike. National departments have a permanent representative in the commission (national employer and labor unions also have one representative each). The commission inspects yearly reports on member states' formal and practical compliance with workers' rights (Article 9 of Resolution 12/2000), and formulates action programs and recommendations. To aid the Social and Labor Commission of Mercosur, member states have, in turn, set up National Commissions (Comisiones Nacionales). These commissions collaborate with the departments of labor or employment in each country to gather information on all issue areas covered by the declaration. Each year, the commissions are asked to place special focus on selected rights. In 2002 attention was on Article 8, which states the right to form unions (2002 Program of the Social and Labor Commission). The right to strike is certain to be on future programs, most likely in 2005 or 2006. INTEGRATION AND CONTINUITY How are we to account for these remarkable differences across RTAs? As historical institutionalists would predict, RTA officials, partly in response to pressure from powerful societal players, have crafted regional laws that offer continuity with the legal traditions of the member states. Organizations that have developed regional capacities have typically thrived in their domestic environments and have already shown a propensity for activism at the international level. In the case of national administrations especially, they have also responded to the arrival of regional law. Women in the Workplace The articulation of a rich system of EU laws on women reflected legal and political developments in European countries from the 1960s on. By the 1970s the member states had developed extensive national legal frameworks that would attract, and maximize the contribution of, women to the workforce. The most impressive advances were made in northern countries such as the Netherlands and Denmark (Outshoorn and Swiebel 1998; Walter 2001). But non-discrimination, pay, and equal opportunities laws were also passed in France, Germany and Great Britain during the 1960s and later years (Duina 1999). As integration progressed in the 1970s, the position and rights of working women at the regional level became increasingly important issues. EU officials responded by crafting laws that broadly stated, at the regional level, core principles found in most, if not all, the member states. Aggressive proposals that forced member states to accept new values and principles were strongly opposed by national representatives. Those that fell "within the range" of existing member states' approaches were instead adopted (Ostner and Lewis 1995, p.159). Thus, as Cécile Greboval, Policy Coordinator for the EWL, put it in a conversation with the author, "EU officials translated or otherwise expanded upon concepts and visions that were already in place across much of Europe." At the same time, women's groups from various member states exerted "intense" pressure on those officials to act (Rossilli 1999, p. 173). After scoring victories on the domestic front, they sought to play a "catalytic role in the development of EC [European Community] equal opportunities legislation" (Mazey 1995, p. 592; Warner 1984). In some cases, Commission officials engaged in close and sustained "interactions with leading feminists and women's movements" (Liebert 1999, p. 198). In other cases, women mobilized in the streets to force the officials' hands. When, for instance, the social affairs ministers met in 1975 to discuss the fate of an anti-discrimination proposal, activists stood nearby, pressuring officials to adopt the text. "Approval" of Directive 76/207, a journalist noted, "came quickly, perhaps accelerated by a women's rights demonstration to greet the ministers' arrival" (The Economist 1975). If women had the resources to push for regional law, they also had the resources to establish EU-level organizations. "By 1969," an observer noted "women's groups were forming all over Western Europe" (Warner 1984, p. 147) "The late 1960s and early 1970s," a second observer wrote, "were characterized by the growth of women's movements throughout Western Europe" (Mazey 1995, p. 597). These were strong and active groups, which would naturally seek transnational cooperation as integration progressed. "By the 1990s, women," as Cécile Greboval of the EWL explained, "were perfectly poised for transnational activism: they had the resources, skills, and membership bases." Yet, there was a second critical stimulant for the formation of the EWL, EWLA, and the other EU-level groups: the very rapid growth of EU law on women. The central mission – indeed raison d'être - of all of these groups has been to influence the development of EU law on women as well as ensure the implementation of favorable legislation. As an expert observer put it, EU law on women and the "transnational European women's lobby" live in a close relationship, each influencing the other in fundamental ways (Mazey 1998, p. 142; 1995: p. 592; 2000). The EWL, for instance, focuses almost exclusively on pressuring the EU to "promote equality between women and men and to ensure that gender equality and women's rights are taken into consideration" in all of its policies (European Women's Lobby 2000, p. 2). In the words of Cécile Greboval, the organization "lives in a close symbiotic relationship with EU law . . . since the legislative and policy agenda of the EU shape directly what we do." Similarly, the EWLA aims "to improve the understanding of European legislation in relation to equal opportunities, with particular reference to women" (European Women Lawyers Association 2002). Much the same can be said for the FEFAF, BPWE, and EIWH. In NAFTA, the legal preconditions for regional law on women existed: all three member states had significant legislation on women. What was missing was a lack of interest, on the part of key groups, to shape the course of international affairs: During the NAFTA debate, women's groups failed to make the gendered dimension of regionalization visible in public debate and have had virtually no impact on either the NAFTA text or on broader public policy related to integration. This failure to influence the policy outcome can be contrasted with the greater success of other social movements, like labour and the environmental movements . . . only the Canadian women's movement organized widely at the national level in response to NAFTA (MacDonald 2002, p. 152). The absence of pressure from women's groups from the United States was especially conspicuous. "US-based women's organizations were virtually absent from transnational organizing around the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement" (Liebowitz 2002, p. 145). Two key organizations - the National Organization for Women and the Fund for the Feminist Majority (now the Feminist Majority Foundation) "showed little interest" in influencing the course that NAFTA would take (Liebowitz 2002, p. 177). Much of their behavior was the result of a longstanding disinterest in international events and, especially, international trade (Liebowitz 2002; MadDonald 2002). Mexican women too proved fairly uninterested in NAFTA: accustomed to a marginal role in their societies, many actually viewed integration as a promising step towards better employment opportunities (Gabriel and MacDonald 1994, pp. 539-540). The same lack of interest in international matters on the part of groups from the United States largely explains why regional-level women's groups have failed to form at the NAFTA level. As Macdonald recently reasoned, "the nature of the women's movements in the three countries foreclosed the possibilities of greater contestation of the form of economic liberalization at . . . the transnational levels (Macdonald 2002, p.152, italics added). At the same time, the absence of a rich system of regional law that could offer a tangible and realistic target for regional mobilization, surely played a role. In Mercosur, the institutional preconditions for regional law and organizations were altogether missing. Women in the Mercosur member states have only recently begun to organize effectively and score some legislative victories. Long dictatorships championing conservative values precluded any progress in all four member states well until the early 1980s. For instance, Brazil's most important organization - the National Council for Women's Rights - was born in 1985. Argentina's Women's Cabinet was established in 1989. Their objectives were basic. In Brazil, the council lobbied legislators to ensure that the new 1988 constitution would state that men and women were equal citizens (Pitanguy 1998, p.104). They succeeded, but were then effectively silenced until 1995 by the conservative and powerful Ministry of Justice (Pitanguy 1998, p. 108). In Argentina, the struggle concerned equality within the family. The most important advances in the workplace, in all four Mercosur countries, was the repeal of paternalistic laws safeguarding women from various hardships rather than the adoption of progressive laws (Navarro 2001, p. 12). Thus, in the words of Beatriz Etchechury Mazza, an official from Uruguay's administration and a participant in Mercosur policymaking, "by choosing not to produce regional laws on behalf of women, Mercosur officials simply recognized the legal and political realities in the member states". In this type of environment, she then added, few have expected any women's group to become active at the regional level: "Just now women have begun to assert themselves as important players in their countries . . . it is too early for them to really play a role in Mercosur; all that will take time." Dairy Products Standardizing dairy products and procedures in the EU would have challenged longstanding traditions of granting farmers and companies the exclusive right to manufacture specific types of cheeses, butters, and creams. Those traditions, Mauro Poinelli - a representative of Coldiretti (Italy's largest agricultural lobbying groups) active in Brussels - explained to the author, "served the dual purpose of protecting a way of doing things and guaranteeing a high level of quality." Thus, Beginning in the early 1900s, Italian, French, and Spanish farmers had fought for, and obtained, protected denominations for a large variety of products. In 1954, the Italian government passed Law 125/1954 authorizing such denominations. In 1955, it recognized four cheeses as protected (de Roest and Menghi 2000, pp. 440-441). Tens and tens of denominations became eventually protected (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations 1997, Chapter IX). In France, the early battles centered on wine. Later, they concerned dairy products. In the late 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, a large number of cheeses, butters, and creams became protected. Administrative building to process requests and ensure compliance followed. In Italy, the Comitato Nazionale per la Tutela della Denominazione di Origine e Tipiche dei Formaggi was set up in the 1950s within the Ministero delle Risorse Agricole, Alimentari e Forestali. In 1947, the French government founded by legal decree the Institut National des Appellations d'Origine (INAO). Within INAO, it established the Comité National des Produits Laitiers exclusively for the protection of dairy products (Echikson 1998). The Spanish government followed in 1970 with the establishment of the Instituto Nacional de Denominaciones de Origen. These offices joined forces with farmers and national politicians to establish a powerful lobbying presence in Brussels. Over time, they have systematically, and successfully, pressured EU officials not to subject the dairy world to definitional and normative standardization. French agriculture minister Hervé Gaymard, along with six other agriculture ministers, recently sent a letter to several European newspapers that concisely captured the spirit of years of pleas: For us, agricultural products are more than marketable goods; they are the fruit of a love of an occupation and of the land, which has been developed over many generations . . . For us, farmers must not become the 'variable adjustment' of a dehumanised and standardised world. (Economist 2002, pp.18-20) National protectionism of local producers and, equally importantly, an EU legal system that recognized a monopoly of local producers over a wide array of products, in turn, heavily shaped the strategies of dairy producers. Expansion into a different country became a challenge: it required significant knowledge of local traditions and processes, and access to the required raw materials. As Pierluigi Londero, of the Directorate General on Agriculture of the European Commission, explained to the author, this environment discouraged but the most aggressive companies from seeking international expansion: In theory, a Germany company can therefore set up shop in, say, France. In practice, this is actually quite difficult. There is a tremendous variety of products across countries: the required knowledge and familiarity is simply not there for foreigners. I have a hard time imagining a German company setting up shop in France to sell a certain type of Brie to the French . . . Then, there is the supply side of things. There exist negotiated deals between suppliers and buyers of milk. This makes it very difficult for anyone to arrive in a given market and have access to the local raw material. The only choice would be to acquire a local company, but that is rather difficult to do. There is, Londero continued, an "artificial stability to the market, one that has prevented financial problems from occurring and has thus deprived the marketplace of a certain dynamism". Such stability is reflected in the modest growth rates of intra-regional trade. European Commission data shows a mere 50% increase in the period 1989-2002. Interviews with officials of large dairy companies in Germany and Great Britain revealed a frame of mind that is highly focused on the national dimension. A representative from Britian's Dairy Crest thus explained his company's domestic focus as follows: "We have a healthy market here in the UK, and really see no need to set up shop elsewhere". A second representative from Germany's BMI stressed her company's attachment to domestic standards and traditions. "How," she asked, "could we set up a plant in, say, France? We would need to bring our German milk all the way there . . . that would be impractical". Matters followed quite a different course in NAFTA. Canada, in line with a long tradition of protectionism for its farmers (Bailey 2002, pp. 5-7; Doyon and Novakovic 1996, pp. 1-3), resisted from the very start all efforts to liberalize the market for dairy products. Its representatives worked hard to ensure that Chapter 7 of the agreement would explicitly exempt their country from having to reduce its barriers in dairy (along with other agricultural sectors) (Scollay 2001, p. 1141). Without a single market for dairy products in the making, officials logically did not engage in any standardization of those products. The natural result was to keep the marketplace rather fragmented. Consider, for example, that in the decade 1991-2001, only 6% of all dairy imports into Canada came from NAFTA countries (Brunke 2002, p. 3). For the United States, in turn, Canada has represented a minor trading partner at best, taking in only 11% of its dairy exports and accounting for only 2.5% of its dairy imports. All this has obviously not prevented Canadian companies from expanding into the United States, for whom the country is an important trading destination. It has prevented, however, companies from the United States from considering expansion into Canada or Mexico. A representative from Land O'Lakes summarized aptly the implications of Canada's position for the behavior of companies from the United States: "Canada is a very difficult country to enter: the regulatory environment is tough, the country is closed . . . with all those difficulties, I cannot imagine a company that would be willing to enter the country." David Phillips, Chief of Dairy Foods Magazine (a publication based in the United States) and an industry expert, reflected on this possibility in an interview with the author: Certainly, had Canada and Mexico been willing to adopt, say, to agree that all dairy companies use USDA [United States Department of Agriculture] standards, that would have really stimulated the industry in unprecedented ways. It would have made it a lot easier for US companies to think of Canada as part of their market and playing field. By contrast, none of the Mercosur member states have a history of protected denominations, state activism or direct lobbying in Montevideo. Indeed, these countries all witnessed a policy shift during the 1980s and 1990s away from decades of discrimination against agricultural producers (and in favor of heavier industries) and towards a more market-friendly approach (Helfand 2000; Nofal and Wilkinson 1999). Large dairy manufacturers, in turn, eager to expand production capacities and sales through the Mercosur areas, expressed a strong interest in rapid regional standardization. In such an environment, as Maximiliano Moreno - a participant in Mercosur's legislative activities on dairy - explained to the author, "differences in production norms and sanitary requirements naturally came to be seen as hindering the development of the dairy industry." Officials thus embarked rather aggressively on a process of technical harmonization (Spanish Newswire Services 2000; Spanish Newswire Services 1999). Regulatory harmonization stimulated intra-regional trade. Truly astonishing data is available for the period 1986-1988 to 1994-1996. Argentina's dairy exports to Mercosur countries increased by a factor of 25 during that period, those of Brazil by 160, those of Uruguay by 4, and those of Paraguay by over 22. Total Mercosur intra-trade increased by over 900%. By comparison, total dairy exports to the rest of the world increased by only 50% in the same period (Nofal and Wilkinson 1999, p. 168). It was this combination of national and regional export-friendly policies, and the resulting widening of company's markets, that made direct infrastructure investments across national borders attractive. As Maximilano Moreno explained: "It was that environment above all which prompted regional expansion . . . the removal of technical barriers made it a single-level playing field, stimulating companies to expand." His views are widely shared by other officials as well as policymakers and business experts alike. Two such experts described, for instance, how "the impact of Mercosur on alliances, joint-ventures, mergers and acquisitions has been very significant" (Nofal and Wilkinson 1999, p. 156). They continued: Mercosur's impact can be seen at different levels: it has had an effect on market competition for finished products (long life milk, butter), on shaping investment decisions in the powdered milk and cheese sectors, and on prompting a greater level of organization of the actors in the chain. (Nofal and Wilkinson 1999, p. 156) Because of Mercosur, foreign companies invested heavily in the region, penetrating "the sector through mergers and associations with companies already established in the domestic markets of the member countries" (Nofal and Wilkinson 1999, p. 156; Presidents and Prime Ministers 1997). Labor Rights EU laws on labor rights reflect legal and political realities in the member states. The absence of a recognition of the rights to strike and form association is the direct result of relentless opposition from the British, for whom those rights were not enshrined in any legal document (Roberts 2003). A succession of British governments, backed by the Confederation of British Industry, thus opposed any EU initiative. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher "single-handedly blocked the approval" of the Community Charter of Fundamental Social Rights for Workers of 1989 (The Economist 1989; Dowdy 1990). Referring to it as a "socialist charter," (Meade 1989) she asserted that she would not tolerate "attempts by Brussels to impose worker participation and other sensitive issues on Britain" (Xinhua General News Service 1989). From 2000 on, Prime Minister Tony Blair insisted that the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, whether as part of the Treaty of Niece or a European constitution, "should not be legally binding" (Castle 2000). British government officials pointed out that they would work assiduously to ensure " that the finished product will not create new rights or be in conflict with the law in any member state" (Castle 2000), and that it would ultimately be "subject to national law and practice" (Meade 2000). All the EU member states have offered for some time, on the other hand, impressive but also very different unemployment benefits (Gallie and Paugam 2000). The Acting Secretary-General of the ACSSMW described the member states as offering every possible variant of programs (Coëffard 1982). The range extends from Denmark, where benefits are granted regardless of contributions, to Italy, where benefits are fully determined by contributions. EU law does not seek to harmonize these systems; instead, it intelligently asks member states to extend their current benefits to migrant workers. The transformation of national administrations in the EU, much like that of administrations in the other RTAs, can be directly explained in terms of the demands of regional law – demands which, as discussed, did not in any event impose tremendous departures from existing practices. In the case of the EU, Regulation 1408/71 asked that each national administration collaborate at the transnational level by creating the ACSSMW. Along with implementing Regulation 574/72, it also specified the role that national administrations had to play to ensure implementation of the key labor principles. In the case of NAFTA, all three member states already granted workers the rights to form unions and strike in their national legal systems. With the NAALC, officials simply asked the member states to commit to enforcing existing national legislation. At the same time, they also responded to pressure from powerful trade unions from the United States and Canada, who wished to prevent Mexican employers from enjoying cost advantages derived from illegal abuses of their workers (Phelps 2001, p. 24). President Clinton in particular, in his role as a NAFTA representative, seems to have pushed for the NAALC as a way to address the concerns of the unions (Morton 1993). Clinton, wrote an observer, "hopes to steer a middle ground. He supports the basic concept of NAFTA, but at the same time promises to negotiate side agreements that will mollify the critics" (Hall 1993). It is by contrast clear that the same unions but also national politicians from the United States and Canada would have never supported a NAFTA clause on migrant workers and unemployment. At the organizational level, the NAALC specified explicitly the structure and activities of the Commission for Labor Cooperation. It did the same in the case of NAOs. In Mercosur, matters followed a similar course. As Ruben Cortina, a senior official from Argentina deeply involved in Mercosur's labor legislation, explained to the author, "the right to strike is very much in the regulatory history of the member states, a history that is shaped by intensive collective bargaining." Indeed, trade unions made spectacular gains in Argentina and Brazil during the turbulent period of the 1980s. The Confederación General de Trabajadores in Argentina struggled bitterly with the Aflonsín government for a broad sanctioning of the rights to strike and form unions (Cook 2002, p. 6). In 1988 they won those rights. In Brazil, the Central Unica dos Trabalhadores fought successfully to ensure that those same rights be recognized in the new 1988 Constitution (Cook 2002, p. 9). Hence, as Cortina explained, the "Ministries of Labor from the four member states themselves were very active from the very beginning of Mercosur in representing labor's interests . . . and especially those related to principles such as the right to strike and form unions." By contrast, the same Mercosur member states have had far more modest unemployment systems, mostly because of Argentina and Uruguay's histories of very high employment policies and Brazil's high unemployment problems but lack of resources. Understandably, Mercosur officials thus quite naturally did not consider acting in this area. The transformation of national labor and employment departments has, again, followed directly the demands of regional law. Mercosur Resolution 12/2000 spelled out the structure and role of the Social and Labor Commission. Resolution 85/2000, in turn, set up the national commissions charged with overseeing the implementation of regional labor rights. GLOBALIZATION, MARKET BUILDING, AND NEOLIBERALISM The previous section depicts a world of regions: integration areas characterized by very particular legal and organizational dimensions, each representing an effort to establish transnational markets. In particular, we saw striking differences across the EU, NAFTA, and Mercosur in the areas of working women, dairy, and labor rights. This fragmented view of the world challenges current notions of globalization while it confirms theories of economic sociology about market building as a social processes and contributes to a growing literature on the uneven spread of neoliberalism across the globe. The most aggressive globalization theories were put forth in the late 1980s and early 1990s, following the collapse of Communism as a viable option for organizing human societies (Zakaria 2000). The extensive and sophisticated literature on the topic (Lechner and Boli 2000; O'Meara, Mehlinger and Krain 2000; Berger and Huntington 2002), all points to a decreasing relevance of the local as a place of difference. Two versions of the globalization thesis became especially important. The first suggests that the world is becoming an increasingly homogenous place. Observers describe the impending arrival of single models for political, cultural, economic, legal and other types of systems (Fukuyama 1992). Central to their view is the end of variety. In the political realm, for instance, they note that democracy is becoming the only acceptable and sustainable form of governance for any community (Diamond 2000). Market capitalism is instead the only form of economic life, as the examples of the Soviet Union, China, and India show (Arrighi 2000; Burtless et al. 2000). The second version points to the rise of a 'global village' where the boundaries of the local are being eroded in favor of global structures of international cooperation. These include the United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank, and other non-governmental entities (World Commission on Environment and Development 2000; Amnesty International 2000). RTAs, with their unique legal and organizational landscapes, challenge these visions of a global world. They represent enduring heterogeneity. They undermine the idea of convergence, and point us to world where the local still matters and where change occurs, but only gradually and in a manner that ensures continuity with the past. With regard to global cooperation, the existence of distinct RTAs represent either an admission that efforts to forge a global economic system have so far failed or a recognition that societies are not ready to fuse themselves into a single economic system. Either way, RTAs represent smaller, and rather unique, arenas for economic cooperation suggesting, even if indirectly, that the vision of global institutions may either be untenable or still quite far into the future. This paper thus naturally aligns itself with critics of the globalization thesis, though many sought to 'rescue' the 'national', rather than the regional, from the 'global'. This paper confirms the insights of economic sociologists about markets: they are 'constructed' in the midst of rich local contexts and variables. Abolafia's criticism of the neo-classical economic view of markets applies to RTAs. Markets are not "spontaneously generated by the exchange activity of buyers and sellers" (Abolafia, 1996, p. 9) but instead require "rules, roles, and relationships" (Abolafia 1996, p. 9; Spillman 1999; Zelizer 1992) as well as "social structures, social relations, and institutions" (Fligstein 2001, p. 4). All these supporting factors are locally 'produced' and, therefore, bound to reflect their specific environments. Yet, most of the traditional case studies considered by economic sociologists are national-level markets that have formed slowly over time, with the direct and indirect participation of numerous players only on occasion conscious of their contributions (Zelizer 1992). By contrast, RTAs represent deliberate, explicit attempts to create regional markets in very short periods of time. This amounts to a very different kind of market creation: intentional, faster, and programmatic. Fligstein and McNichol (1998) have analyzed market building at the regional level, but only in the context of the EU. This paper extends that analysis by considering multiple regional efforts. Comparative evidence on legal and organizational variation in RTAs addresses a third topic of recent debate: how a particular economic ideology - in this case neoliberalism in the 1980s and 1990s - has led to remarkably different outcomes in different places, most often because of mediating institutional mechanisms. A number of scholars have noted that policymakers everywhere turned to the free market as the potential solution to economic stagnation and declining standards of living. Initiatives included the deregulation of domestic industries, bureaucratic downsizing, the privatization of state enterprises, the reduction of subsidies, and welfare reforms. The same scholars have then noted that the pursuit of broadly similar economic principles led to different outcomes (Fourcade- Gourinchas and Babb 2002; Campbell and Pedersen 2001; Guillén 2001; Hall and Soskice 2001a; Schmidt 2002). The following passage from Campbell and Pedersen is representative: Insofar as labor market institutions are concerned substantial variation remains among the OECD countries in terms of the degree to which they approximate the neoliberal model and, in fact, some clearly do not . . . [there is no] race to lower corporate tax rates . . . nor [is there] a convergence in government subsidies to business . . . this is not to say that convergence is an illusion . . . [there] is evidence for convergence, but with an engaging twist (2001, p. 271). In a similar passage, Fourcade-Gourinchas and Babb compare the "the neoliberal transitions" of Chile, Mexico, Britain, and France (2002, p.536) and note "that important differences remain in the way each of these nations came to liberalize its economy" (2002, p. 536). To account for national-level differences, Campbell and Pedersen observed that "a variety of historically given factors - many of them institutional, such as formal political institutions and discourse institutions . . . limited the range of solutions that were either politically available or discursively imaginable to policy makers" (2001, p. 257). Fourcade- Gourinchas and Babb explained divergence in terms of the "mediation of national institutions and culture" (2002, p. 536). The evidence from RTAs confirms these insights, but does so at the regional, rather than national, level. The pursuit of broadly similar economic objectives at the regional level did not happen in identical fashion everywhere, but was instead shaped by local contexts. Neoliberal ideas of free trade represented a starting - rather than finishing - point. They functioned as broad objectives in need of further articulation and practical pursuit. CAUSALITY AND FUTURE RESEARCH A historical institutional explanation was given to account for the differences across RTAs - one emphasizing continuity with legal and power realities in the member states. Regional market building is a complex process, however. This section discusses the importance of additional variables shaping the course of RTAs and venues for future research. Institutional contexts can explain much, but certainly not all, of the observable variation across RTAs. Culture and rationality also hold significant explanatory power, at least in the case of women, dairy, and labor rights. Both combined with institutions to shape outcomes across RTAs: specifically, culture heavily shaped some of the institutional environments deemed responsible for variation, while rationality provided critical links between certain institutions and outcomes. Though often pitted against each other, then, (Lochart 1999), institutions, culture, and rationality should be seen as complementary and closely related factors shaping the evolution of RTAs. A number of examples illustrate this point. Consider the protectionist legal and political legacies surrounding dairy products in Italy, France, and Spain. They belong to broader cultural contexts that celebrate the farming life and food: in all three countries, a close bond between agriculture - and especially small-scale farming - and life has existed for centuries. Legal and political legacies certainly shaped the protectionist character of EU law; yet, the choice of EU officials not to standardize the world of dairy products can only be understood in light of the broader societal values in which EU officials operated. As Henriette Christensen, Secretary General of the powerful European Council of Young Farmers in Brussels, put it, "the bottom line is that for the French and other southern Europeans farming is a way of life … it is less about economics and more about living, being close to the earth." Similar arguments can probably be made for Canada and its resistance to the liberalization of trade. In South America, by contrast, that heritage was largely missing and governments had felt free to discourage farming in the 1980s and later. The move in the 1990s towards standardization by Mercosur officials was simply welcomed by industry leaders. The discriminatory national legal traditions against women in the Mercosur member states were also the direct expressions of very conservative and patriarchal cultural contexts. "We live," Uruguay's Beatriz Etchechury Mazza explained to the author, "in male-dominated societies . . . women are only now beginning to really have a voice; Europeans are much ahead of us in this regard; the mentality and values are just not there for us." The dearth of progressive Mercosur laws on women reflects the endurance of those cultural contexts, which national laws simply embody. The same cultural contexts explain as well the lack of strong women's organizations at the Mercosur level: the absence of strong national organizations certainly preempted regional organizing, but that domestic situation can only be understood in light of the general position of women in those societies. Culture can also help us understand the adamant objections of successive British governments to any EU-level recognition of the rights to form unions and strike. British legislators have hesitated for centuries to codify rights - of any type - into law. This tendency lies at the heart of their common law approach to the regulation of society: a system based on precedent-setting and case-by-case resolutions rather than universal principles established a priori (as in the case of civil law). The British position against the EU concerning labor rights can thus be regarded as fundamentally cultural, though of course it manifested itself mostly as a legal question. If culture has provided the contexts for the development of national legal and political institutions, the strategic and self-maximizing behavior of key actors has often functioned as the link between those institutions and regional events. Consider, for instance, NAFTA's recognition of the rights to form unions and strike in the NAALC. Certainly, the NAALC merely stated principles already in place in all three of the member states. Unions from Canada and the United States also pressured officials for a labor document. Yet, ultimately, it was President Bill Clinton who provided much of the impetus behind its creation. Clinton had invested enormous political capital in the success of the project. He was also preparing himself for reelection to a second term. Keenly aware that the adoption of NAFTA without labor support would prove disastrous for his political future, Clinton personally mobilized to see the drafting of the NAALC. "It is widely agreed," wrote one observer at the time, "that the labor side agreement was included in NAFTA to provide then-U.S. President Bill Clinton with 'political cover' to support the deal and mollify his labor union constituency" (MacDonald 2003, p. 181). The NAALC was as much the result of a person's calculations and deliberation as of institutional realities. Self-advancement and calculations also figured prominently in the expansionist behavior of South American dairy companies during the 1990s. The domestic liberalization policies of the 1980s certainly prepared them for international competition. Yet, industry leaders could have reacted quite differently to Mercosur. Expansion represented significant risks, such as exposure to currency fluctuations, drastic changes in market demand, and a turn to domestic favoritism. Indeed, Argentina's economic and political crisis of 2001 and 2002 threatened the operations of Brazil's companies in that country. The expansionistic tendencies of those companies, represented "a newly found entrepreneurial spirit, aggressiveness, and an optimism in the promises of Mercosur", as Maximiliano Moreno, a participant in Mercosur dairy activities and Argentine government official, explained to the author. Matters could have clearly gone quite differently, with industry leaders choosing a more cautious response to integration. Calculations and interpretations played a role in a number of additional cases. Perhaps a third instructive case was the choice of the major women's groups from the United States not to mobilize and pressure NAFTA officials, and not to seek transnational links with other women. While that choice was highly consistent with those groups' historical tendencies not to meddle with international affairs, it also reflected recognition that NAFTA would have a very limited impact of the lives of their members, most of whom were middle and upper-middle class women (Liebowitz 2002, p. 182; MadDonald 2002, p. 162). By contrast, Canadian groups mobilized mostly because they feared NAFTA's impact on their working class constituents. In turn, Mexican women saw NAFTA quite differently: many viewed it as a job-generating venture, and logically chose to support it. This paper was not only limited in its explanatory perspective but also in scope. The door is now open for stimulating and rewarding comparative analyses of RTAs. The empirical focus, for instance, was on only three important policy areas: dairy products, women, and labor rights. These were selected in part because they demonstrate clearly variation in legal and organization developments in the EU, NAFTA, and Mercosur. Future studies could select several policy areas and examine patterns of both variation and similarities. There is evidence, for example, that officials from different RTAs not only communicate with, but also copy from, each other. As María Juana Rivera from Argentina's Mininstero de Economía and Producción and a direct participant in Mercosur legislation on products put it, "we very much check on what the EU and others are doing; we use the Internet all the time to keep abreast of developments, and often copy whatever is being done." EU Directive 88/378 of May 1988 and Mercosur Resolution 54/92 of December 1992 offer an interesting case of replication in the area of product safety for toys. Definitional passages for types of toys and safety hazards are copied verbatim. Normative solutions, in the forms of very detailed safety requirements, are also duplicated. Entire paragraphs are simply reproduced. Divergence in law across RTAs raises the question of 'best practice'. One wonders whether the choice to standardize a given aspect of the world at the regional level is necessary and desirable. What are the advantages of having regional (as opposed to only national) laws on dairy or women, for instance? Are those advantages relevant in all cases of RTAs or only when certain conditions are met? Moreover, what scale should one use when determining best practices? Efficiency and economic wellbeing could certainly be one yardstick, but tradition and the preservation of culture (as might be the case for dairy) might be another. There are then questions of how to standardize. Any given aspect of the world can be standardized in countless ways, some certainly more desirable than others. Much work must still be done to identify options, guidelines, parameters, and so on. Finally, research should also consider the impact of increasing trade among RTAs on the legal and organizational uniqueness of each RTA. Cross-regional trade is likely to pressure RTAs towards convergence. Initial evidence suggests that officials working on major agreements have in fact already addressed some legal differences. The Interregional Framework Cooperation Agreement of 1995 between the European Community and Mercosur is a good example. Article 6(1) states that "the Parties agree to cooperate in promoting the approximation of quality standards for agri-food products and industrial goods and certification." 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I benefited especially from onsite conversations with Ruben Cortina, Maximiliano Moreno, and María Juana Rivera (from Argentina's government), Maricela Viera and Beatriz Etchechury Mazza (from Uruguay's government), Manuel Olarreanga (Mercosur's Secretariat), Cécile Greboval (European Women's Lobby), Mauro Poinelli (Coldiretti in Brussels), Henriette Christensen (Secretary General of the European Council of Young Farmers in Brussels), and Pierluigi Londero (European Commission). Telephone interviews with an anonymous lawyer from the United States Trade Representative Office and David Phillips (Chief Editor of Dairy Foods Magazine) about NAFTA were also particularly helpful. On these topics, there has been a deluge of writings. Some representative works would include Costa (2003), Duina and Kurzer (2004), Knill (2001), Moravcsik (1998), Thatcher (1998), and Zweifel (2002). See for instance Polanyi (1944), who, as DiMaggio notes (1994, p. 36), argued that land and labor had to become labeled as commodities in Europe before a genuine capitalist market could flourish. Davis and North (1971) have argued that capitalist markets can only emerge when notions of private property are present. More recently, Douglas and Wildavski (1983) have noted that shared agreements over the nature of risk had to precede the birth of the insurance industry. Zelizer (1992) has argued that life insurance could only exist when certain understandings of death and family responsibility came about. See Spillman (1999) for an initial general theoretical formulation of shared understandings of reality in economic life. Cross-cultural trade has created problems throughout history well before the formation of RTAs. The preferred solutions in the past was the use of emissaries who, after years of residence in a foreign culture, could act as trusted interpreters for the participants in the exchange (see Curtin 1984, p. 2). Much has been written on the general topic of how law influences organizations in society. This article sides with those scholars who view law as 'generating' organizational changes, rather than law as obstructing and constraining organizational behavior. See Edelman and Suchman (1997) for a conceptual overview of key approaches. Launched with the Treaty of the European Community (TEC) of 1957 and subsequent revisions and additions. The EU has in fact three 'pillars': the common market itself, the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), and Cooperation on Justice and Home Affairs (CJHA). This article concerns only the common market. Estimates for NAFTA and Mercosur are calculated from data available in International Monetary Fund (1995, 2000). Several keywords were used. Examples include: 'women', 'cheese', 'dairy, and 'labor rights'. Note that plants located beyond national boundaries are not considered part of a company's transnational network if 95% or more of their products are imported for domestic consumption. The EU has more recently adopted two additional approaches to gender equality with only limited impact on legislative production for the workplace: 'positive action programs' and 'mainstreaming'. The former includes practical initiatives to advance those equality concepts already found in the law (Mazey 1998, p.141). The latter approach is an attempt to ensure that women's issues and female representatives are shaping policymaking in a variety of areas, including the workplace (European Commission 1996, Chapter 5). To date, a total of over 600 products (dairy and other types) enjoy special denomination status (European Report 2003). For exact figures on cheeses, see the EU's Internet site: http://europa.eu.int/comm/agriculture/qual/en/1bbab_en.htm. For milk, laws target drinking milk (Regulation 2597/97), partly or wholly dehydrated milk (Directive 2001/114), and production hygienic measures (Directive 89/362). For milk derivatives, laws target butter (Regulation 577/97) and use of caseins and caseinates in cheeses (Directive 2204/90). Dairy Crest has a cheese manufacturing plant on the coast of Ireland. However, 98% of its products are intended for the British market (telephone interview with Company Official, July 2002). As discussed in the methods section, such a plant is not categorized as part of a transnational production infrastructure. For this study, data was also collected for companies in The Netherlands and Denmark, given the presence of Dutch and Danish companies in Germany and Great Britain. The three largest companies in the Netherlands (Friesland, Campina and Nestlé) had international presence in other member states, making the Netherlands somewhat similar to France; only one company in Denmark (Arla), however, had international productive capacity. Irish, Spanish and Italian companies are known to have little production capabilities in other EU member states. E-mail exchange with company officials, April 2004. Data on the timing of Danone's expansion is not available. Telephone interview with company official, March 2004. The Community Charter of Fundamental Social Rights for Workers of 1989 did include the right to strike but was only a 'solemn commitment' by the member states to a set of fundamental rights. For instance, in Canada strikes are prohibited during the term of a collective bargaining agreement, in Mexico workers may be forced to return to work or lose their jobs if certain legal requirements are not fulfilled, and in the United States employers are allowed to replace striking workers permanently. See, for instance, the 1996 informational guide (ACSSMW 1996, Section 5.8), Decision 96/172/EC, and Recommendation No.21 of 28 November 1996. Interview with the author, Brussels, April 2004. Interview with the author, Brussels, Belgium, April 2004. See Stetson (1997), Women's International Network News (1996), Gabriel and Macdonald (1994: 540), and Women's International Network News (2003). Assessor in Uruguay's Instituto Nacional de la Familia y de la Mujer, Ministerio de Educacion y Cultura. Interview with the author, Montevideo, Uruguay, August 2003. Interview with the author, Brussels, Belgium, April 2004. These were Fontina, Grana Padano, Pecorino Siciliano, and Parmigiano Reggiano. See Decree 93-1239 of 15 November 1993 for a list of cheeses. Interview with the author, Brussels, Belgium, April 2002. The figure comes from Londero's database. Note that it refers to the 12 member states that the EU had in 1990 (i.e., not Finland, Sweden, and Austria - countries with little weight in this sector). Figures for the EU 15 for 1996-2002 point to an increase in intra-regional trade of about 20%. Telephone interview with company official, July 2002 Telephone interview with company official, July 2002. Telephone interview with company official, February 2004. Telephone interview, February 2004. Legal Advisor in Argentina's Ministerio de Economía and Producción, Coordinación de Legislación Internacional, Dirección Nacional de Mercados Agroalimentarios (Secretaría de Agricultura, Ganadería, Pesca y Alimentos). Interview with the author, Buenos Aires, Argentina, August 2003. Interview with the author, Buenos Aires, Argentina, August 2003. For Canada, see the Public Service Staff Relations Act of 1967 and the Canada Labor Code of 1971 (Taylor 1997). For Mexico, see Article 123 of the Constitution of 1917 and the 1931 Ley Federal de Trabajo (Patroni 1998). For the United States, see the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. Coordinator of International Affairs at Argentina's Ministerio de Trabajo, Empleo y Seguridad Social and member of Mercosur's Subgrupo No.10 (Work, Employment and Social Security) and of the national commission for the implementation of Mercosur's Social and Labor Declaration. Interview with the author, Buenos Aires, Argentina, August 2003. For an excellent review, see Guillén (2001). Those few who emphasize the regional include Ohmae (1993), Hirst (2000), and Huntington (1997). Interview with the author, Brussels, Belgium, April 2004. Interview with the author, Montevideo, Uruguay, August 2003. Interview with the author, Buenos Aires, Argentina, August 2003. Interview with author, Buenos Aires, Argentina, August 2003. Duina – The Social Construction of Free Trade 1 40