Search

The contemporary dynamics of states, borders, and markets suggest the need for non-traditional methods of regulation and international cooperation in areas such as border inspections and management. The emerging literature on cross-border regions and multi-level governance suggests a framework to understand this development within the general transformation of states under globalisation. To explore these ideas, in this article we focus on the arena of health regulation and the international agricultural and food trade. Multilateral bodies such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), and the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) have endorsed the policy concept of 'regionalisation' as a means by which states can preserve trade relations when sanitary (human or animal health) or phytosanitary (plant health) hazards threaten a country's trading status. In this paper, two cases - one historical and one contemporary - illustrate that regionalisation offers a largely functional application of multi-level governance to enhance regulatory and trade capacity. We conclude that governance changes indicated by regionalisation may provide further evidence for the transformation of borders, regions, and states in an era of globalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite making modest progress on challenging management and security issues common to their shared border, the United States and Canada have, in recent years, slipped behind on advancing a progressive border agenda. The momentum unleashed under the 30-point Smart Border Action Plan, signed in late 2001, has slowed in the face of new regulations at the border, many of which were initiated by the United States. These include significant changes in US admission procedures under the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI), new border policing resources and protocols, as well as new customs and inspection fees. The much-heralded Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP), designed to facilitate both trade and security between the two countries, has also lost momentum, with the last trilateral meeting of leaders resulting in little more than a press release. As a result of these and other developments, it appears that rather than “thinning,” the US-Canada border is “thickening” at precisely the time when greater economic and security cooperation is necessary to bolster North American competitiveness in an increasingly globalized economy and complex security environment. This article will investigate some of the key reasons behind these policy developments, exploring some of the early positions that frame approaches to border management in the Obama administration. It will also offer some thoughts on opportunities for improved border management policies by providing some specific recommendations, which may help advance solutions to pressing - and festering - bilateral security and trade issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information about the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP), jointly established by U.S. President George W. Bush, former Mexican President Vicente Fox and former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, for strengthening cooperation in North America. The two important agendas of SPP are national security and economic prosperity which prepare the nations for global competition.

The Bush administration's“Smart Border” accords with Mexico and Canada present a number of important implications for North America's border communities and regions. As part of the plans, new security technologies have emerged as the preferred policy solution to the difficult problem of screening for weapons and terrorist incursions into the United States through its international boundaries while maintaining flows of goods and individuals, key drivers of globalization and hallmarks of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) era. These new technological systems have various capabilities, ranging from prescreening cargo to identifying problematic travelers to detecting nuclear material in trucks. Deploying these systems in border communities, however, invokes a range of important economic, social, and political challenges, all of which are under examination in this work. Using a risk-centered approach to United States border security, this article explores several technologically oriented border control systems: screening, biometrics, and information technology. The research is based on regional field research and a public policy analysis method that uses Birkland's“focusing event” framework, a model that provides insights into the postcrisis policy formation process. The article concludes by offering an initial appraisal of these policies within the context of risk, interdependent border communities, and an open democratic society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the preliminary cross-disciplinary research into the technological and policy dimensions of the U.S. border security regime in the post-September 11th era. Emergence of complex advances in security and surveillance technologies; Analysis of the defined threats and solutions to border security; Role of epistemic communities and private-public partnerships in policy formulation.

This article analyses recent ‘border control’ policies implemented in the US-Mexico borderlands specifically ‘Operation Hold the Line’, an initiative designed to seal the boundary from unofficial incursions of undocumented workers into the US. Through an interpretative, qualitative, and critical ‘border analysis’ that reads the relationships between borders, territoriality, and collective identity in an increasingly transnational and ‘turbulent’ moment of late modernity, the piece examines both the policy manifestations of the ‘hardening’ of the borderlands and the discourses which support it. The analysis is informed by new thinking about borders, widely defined, in International Relations as well as other disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]