Free traders: elites, democracy, and the rise of globalization

This text is about the political events and decisions in the 1980s and 1990s that established the global economy we have today. Different social scientists and other commentators have described the foundations of globalization very differently. Some have linked the rise of free trade and multinational enterprises to the democratic expression of ordinary people's hopes and desires; others have said they were a top-down project requiring, if anything, the circumvention of democracy. This work shows that politicians did not decide to embrace globalization because of the preferences of the mass public. Instead, using comparative-historical case studies of Canada, Mexico, and the United States, this text shows that politicians' decisions reflected the agendas and outlooks of various kinds of elites.

In Free Traders, Malcolm Fairbrother argues that politicians' embrace of globalization was much less impacted by public preferences than the agendas of various firms and elites. Drawing on over one hundred interviews with decision-makers, and analyses of archival materials from United States, Mexico, and Canada, Fairbrother uses both NAFTA and individual cases from each country to tell the story of how they negotiated and ratified agreements that substantially opened and integrated their economies.