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Review of Francesco Duina’s "The Social Construction of Free Trade: The European Union, NAFTA, and Mercosur" Print E-mail

Princeton University Press, 2006

bridges vol. 12, December 2006 / Book Review

by John K. Glenn

 

Duina_book_cover_small Explaining the European Union can be challenging. It's not a federation like the United States, but it's not just a free trade zone. It has a court but the member states enforce the laws, and so on. In the face of these complexities, people often fall back on the claim that the European Union is unique, sui generis. While this may be true, it is also unsatisfying because it ignores how the European Union is responding in part to the challenges of globalization faced by other parts of the world as well. To help address this dilemma, let me recommend Francesco Duina's new book, The Social Construction of Free Trade.


Duina analyzes the European Union as a regional trade agreement that is markedly different but not unique from other regional trade agreements that sprang up in North America, South America, Africa, and Asia in the late 1990s in response to globalization. He disputes the common wisdom that these agreements represented the triumph of neoliberalism or free trade by offering one of the first comparative analyses of the European Union in light of NAFTA and Mercosur. By showing that regional trade agreements differ significantly in the crafting of their legal frameworks, he illuminates what is similar and what is unique about the EU.

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