The environmental and democratic consequences of liberal hegemonic discourse: A case study of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

摘要

The purpose of this study is to theorize about the linkages between pluralist, elitist and Marxist schools of thought on representation, then test this theory on the policy debate over the Environmental Side Agreement of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The theory of dynamic hegemony posits that some policy domains will be a dominated by a single ideology over time. However, to sustain that ideology in the face of opposing ideologies and interests, parts of the opposing ideologies will be co-opted into the hegemonic ideology, resulting in a synthesis ideology, though with the primary tenets of the hegemonic discourse intact. This synthesizing process will repeat itself over time, thus the hegemonic ideology is never static, but changes as it absorbs opposition. Within a particular policy debate, this synthesis process can be seen by examining the discourse of the policy debate and comparing it with the content of the policy output. The policy debate over time will reflect the simultaneous process of co-optation of the opposition and subversion of the hegemonic interests. In studying the history of environmental and trade policy domains, we find a constant struggle between ideas of private property and capitalism and equity and environmental values. In both domains, in the post-World War II era, there have been attempts to synthesize these struggles into a single embedded liberal ideology. In the NAFTA analysis, a variety of groups had access to the debate and that the environmental treaty was most similar to moderate environmental group demands. Environmental groups and business groups both changed their language over the course of the debate, thus further synthesizing Liberal trade and environmental ideologies. In keeping with the dynamic hegemony theory, those environmental ideas included in the treaty were those that did not undermine embedded liberal ideas. Environmental values counter to embedded liberalism were either not included in the treaty or not even represented in the debate.