Regimes of Cooperation in the Western Hemisphere: Power, Interests, and Intellectual Traditions

Abstract

The 1994 Summit of the Americas marked a high point in hemispherism-our label for the active attempt by the nations of the Western Hemisphere to form regimes of cooperation with one another. To explain why hemispherism has not been a more powerful trend in the last 200 years, structural, interest, and cultural variables are relevant but insufficient factors. An important and often overlooked obstacle to hemispherism has been contrarian ideas. Specifically, constellations of intellectual traditions that question the value of hemispheric cooperation have dampened both the demand for and supply of such regimes. Only when these antihemispheric intellectual traditions were in retreat-the late nineteenth century, the mid twentieth century, and the early 1990s-has hemispherism flourished. We posit three mechanisms through which intellectual traditions can decline, thus generating a modified cognitivist argument that can supplement power-based and interest-based explanations of regime formation and robustness. In 1990, Mexico made a daring proposal to the United States: the establishment of a free trade zone between both nations. Historically, this was not the first time that a Latin American nation approached the United States with a request for securing a special bilateral relationship or economic alliance. What was new, however, was that the U.S. accepted. First, President George Bush embraced Mexico's proposal to negotiate'a free trade agreement, and in his Enterprise for the Americas Initiative (EAI), envisioned expanding free trade throughout the hemisphere. Then, President Bill Clinton completed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and obtained congressional ratification. Clinton went further: in 1994 he invited the democratically elected presidents and heads of governments of the Americas to a summit to discuss ways of deepening hemispheric cooperation. Latin Americans accepted the invitation with one condition: that free trade should be the centerpiece