THE STATE, ORGANIZED INTERESTS AND CANADIAN AGRICULTURAL TRADE-POLICY - THE IMPACT OF INSTITUTIONS

This article examines the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the objective of explaining the inclusion of agriculture in the FTA, the negotiation process surrounding the FTA and the outcomes with respect to agricultural commodities. It departs from both the systemic and state-centred models which have dominated Canadian foreign economic policy to argue that, while developments in the international trading system are important factors in explaining Canada's decision to pursue the FTA, the negotiation process and outcomes of the FTA are importantly accounted for in terms of domestic institutions: specifically, state-societal linkages in combination with federal structures. Evidence that the autonomy and capacity of national trade officials was constrained throughout the negotiation process and in terms of the FTA provisions regarding agricultural commodities requires a re-formulation of foreign economic policy-making that links it to the domestic institutional context. Within the latter, the sub-national governments, in combination with durable state-group policy networks, are important factors.