Regionalism in North America: Differences and Incompatibilities

Regionalism is a process that began from Western European and with the passage of time, it witnessed some developments. Therefore, the starting point of regionalism studies, reviews and theorization have been mainly the Western European region. This fact has led to a situation where actions and efforts of theoretical and practical regionalism in Europe is a criterion and standard for recognition and evaluation of regionalism in other regions of the world. Accordingly, since the establishment of integration agreements between North American countries, namely, Canada-US Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA) in 1989, North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 among US, Mexico and Canada and then security and prosperity partnership of North America (SPP) in 2005 among US, Canada and Mexico from North American region, being termed “a region where the states have regional integration links”. However, the above mentioned regionalism agreements differ from the regionalism present in other parts of the world both in practice and regarding the concepts being used. It seems that above mentioned agreements in North America have created regionalization which much differ from regionalism. So the question of the present paper is why North American states welcome regionalization but show resistance to regionalism?