Regional Integration Under Fire? A Discourse Network Analysis of NAFTA and Mercosur Legitimation Discourse in the US, Canadian, Brazilian, and Argentine Quality Press

Are the regional integration projects established in the post-war decades or in the “new wave” of the 1990s faced with a legitimacy crisis in today’s climate of populism? Has the “permissive consensus” on regional integration turned into the “constraining dissent” diagnosed by Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks for the European Union? The growing or recurrent politicization of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and Mercosur in recent years suggests as much. The paper is based on the notion that the legitimacy of (inter-)national political regimes – including regional integration projects such as NAFTA and Mercosur – is constructed and reproduced, transformed, or withdrawn in national public spheres and discourse. It examines the politicization and (de-)legitimation of NAFTA and Mercosur in US, Canadian, Brazilian, and Argentine media discourse since 1994. The method of discourse network analysis is used to identify structures and trends in the public (de)legitimation of NAFTA and Mercosur in the quality press, and to probe the evolution of discourse coalitions and of the repertoires of normative arguments on which their support or criticism is based. The study draws on an original text corpus and data set of several thousand legitimation statements – positive or critical assessments of NAFTA’s and Mercosur’s legitimacy – made by journalists themselves and other types of speakers – such as political and civil society actors – in eight US, Canadian, Brazilian, and Argentine newspapers. Two-mode networks of discourse participants and their statements are examined in the four national public spheres and over time. The comparative analysis of these actor-statement networks shows that while legitimation discourse in all four countries and mediated public spheres is characterized by an ebb and flow of attention to the legitimacy issue and support levels, there are important differences in the structures and trajectories of NAFTA- and Mercosur-related legitimation discourse on the one hand, and between discourse in non-hegemonic member states (Canada, Argentina) and hegemonic ones (the US, Brazil) on the other. The frequency, scope, and nature as well as the drivers and moderators of discursive legitimacy crises vary between national public spheres and therefore prove more or less consequential for the institutional development, functioning, and survival of regional integration projects.