1North American Integration and the Scope for Domestic Choice: Canada and Policy Sovereignty in a Globalized World

This paper assesses the tension between economic integration and domestic policy autonomy. We focus on the implications of North American integration for Canada’s capacity to make distinctive policy choices in the social and environmental policy sectors. We also survey other comparative literature on a broader range of cases and countries. The paper develops a framework for assessing the pressures for convergence and divergence. Harmonization or convergence can emerge from three separate dynamics: i) International constraints, either legal or economic; ii) Emulation, where nations adopt policies implemented elsewhere as a result of an international learning process; and iii) Parallel domestic pressures. But working against these tendencies towards harmonization, convergence and a narrower field of policy choice is another set of factors that sustain continuity and continued differences among countries: policy legacies, political culture and values, and political institutions. In terms of the pressure resulting from international economic integration, they vary from sector to sector, depending on the international mobility of the factors in question. Cross-nationa