Few tasks are as complex and problematic as the assessment of how one or several states construct or constrain the power of another state. In fact, a complete subfield of study in political science has been devoted to this very issue. The titanic endeavour undertaken by Stephen Clarkson and Matto Mildenberger in Dependent America? How Canada and Mexico Construct U.S. Power is thus admirable, particularly if one considers that most analyses of North America—including Uncle Sam and Us: Globalization, Neoconservatism and the Canadian State and Does North America Exist? Governing the Continent after NAFTA and 9/11, Clarkson’s first two books of the trilogy that encompasses this last volume—are obsessively concerned with the opposite question of how the United States wields power over its much smaller neighbours.
The study of the United States as an object has produced a wealth of new and old data that clearly document the fact that Canada and Mexico...
Isabel Studer is the founding director of the Center for Dialogue and Analysis on North America at Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico. She has been assistant director general for Canada at the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs, director of research at the North American Commission for Labor Cooperation and director general for North America at Mexico’s Ministry for the Environment.
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