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This paper argues that since the completion of the NAFTA in the early 1990s, there has been too much focus on what governments in Ottawa, Washington, and Mexico City have or have not been doing to deepen North American integration. The NAFTA was an anomaly that obscures the larger history of incrementalism that has shaped North America's political economy. A focus on large, government-led integration projects like the NAFTA as a model for North American integration distracts from an examination of the many connections and processes taking place across borders every day. Security has become fully entrenched as a driving paradigm of North American relations. However, much of the activity in this domain and others is taking place at the bureaucratic, sub-state, and non-state levels rather than via active direction from national leadership. As scholars and analysts of North America, we would do well to move away from the NAFTA as a model for negotiating North America's future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The so-called new institutional economics (NIE) has generated important insights in a range of fields including transactions cost economics, property rights law, and economic development. However, the majority of the literature in this field has focused on microeconomic institutions and their impact on economic decision making. Very little of it has attempted to apply the lessons of NIE to broader macroeconomic contexts or to international relations generally. The purpose of this article is to try and apply some of the insights of the NIE to recent events in North American economic integration, and suggest how the NIE could be employed to better understand the impact institutional changes to security since September 11, 2001 are having on economic decision-makers and patterns of North American integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]