Regulatory Cooperation in North America: Diplomacy Navigating Asymmetries

ABSTRACT

This article examines the processes, outcomes, and prospects for regulatory cooperation in North America based on the activity of the US–Canada Regulatory Cooperation Council. It explores regulatory cooperation as a series of two-level games embedded within broader multilevel governance processes of participating countries. It examines political, economic, and bureaucratic factors contributing to the development and evolution of cross-border and broader international regulatory cooperation and the practical limits of centralized political and regulatory oversight in these processes. Major requirements for success include shared or substantially overlapping national objectives (including those of relevant regulatory agencies), complementary coalitions of domestic interests in each country, and regulators’ capacity to work with (or around) potential veto holders within domestic institutions. Regulatory changes are often filtered and mitigated through national processes of bureaucratic politics and related institutional dynamics. In practice, effective regulatory cooperation depends on regulators’ perspectives of the national interest.

KEYWORDS:

• International regulatory cooperation
• North American integration
• Regulatory policies
• trans-governmental relations
• US–Canada Regulatory Cooperation Council

Acknowledgments

The author acknowledges with appreciation research assistance from Tannis Schick and helpful comments from Andrew Holman and anonymous reviewers for this journal.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

Research for this article was supported by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council related to the Borders in Globalization project [895-2012-1022].

Notes on contributors

Geoffrey Hale

Geoffrey Hale is a professor of political science at the University of Lethbridge, author of So Near and Yet So Far: The Public and Hidden Worlds of Canada-U.S. Relations (UBC Press 2012), co-editor (with Monica Gattinger) of Borders and Bridges: Canada’s Policy Relations in North America (Oxford University Press, 2010), and author of numerous articles on Canadian public policy and Canada–US relations.