Hybridization of the environmental regulatory framework in Mexico

This paper will explain and analyse how the Mexican state calls on private actors to ensure higher level of compliance with domestic environmental regulations and what are the outcomes of such dynamics in terms of environmental governance. The paper argues that it is in developing countries, where the state has little resources to ensure that business actors will comply with existing environmental regulations that voluntary regulations need to be assessed. In Mexico, the framework within which voluntary regulations take place is actually designed and shaped by the state but increasingly operated by private actors

Libre comercio y gobernanza del medio ambiente en México: ¿complementariedad o contradicción?

En este artículo se analizan los puntos de tensión existentes entre la regulación del medio ambiente por parte del Estado mexicano y el proceso de liberación económica de México. El análisis argumenta que como consecuencia de la integración económica de Norteamérica, las instituciones mexicanas están estableciendo normas y valores que estructuralmente dan prioridad a los intereses de los inversionistas extranjeros sobre el bienestar ambiental y social de México. Asimismo, en el artículo también se subraya la manera en cómo este proceso afecta a la soberanía mexicana en el sector ambiental. Finalmente y de manera más general, se explora la contradicción inherente que existe entre el régimen de libre comercio y el régimen ambiental de la gobernanza global.

The interplay of foreign multinational corporations and the state in environmental governance

This paper explores the mechanisms through which multinational corporations the environmental regulatory policies of states. Many countries in the majority world, because of international pressure or for domestic reasons, are in the process of establishing and strengthening their environmental regulatory framework. At the same time, foreign capital continues to be invested exponentially in these same countries mostly through the operations of multinational corporations (MNCs) seeking to secure access to raw material, penetrate new markets, or relocate their productive assets. These large economic entities, mostly domiciled in the global North, are political actors in environmental governance. They influence policies at the global level but also at the national level within each of the countries where they operate. This paper is concerned by the latter and explores the mechanisms through which this phenomenon takes place

Globalization, economic freedom, and human rights

Using the KOF Index of Globalization and two indices of economic freedom, the authors empirically analyze whether globalization and economic liberalization affect governments’ respect for human rights in a panel of 106 countries over the 1981–2004 period. According to their results, physical integrity rights significantly and robustly increase with globalization and economic freedom, while empowerment rights are not robustly affected. Due to the lack of consensus about the appropriate level of empowerment rights as compared to the outright rejection of any violation of physical integrity rights, the global community is presumably less effective in promoting empowerment rights