Varieties of Regional Integration: The European Union, NAFTA and Mercosur
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The closing of the twentieth century witnessed the proliferation of regional trade areas: a reinvigorated EU became one of almost 170 integration efforts. The first comparative analyses have suggested that these RTAs, despite sharing broadly similar objectives, are remarkably different projects. This article contributes to these works by examining two under-explored dimensions of variation: the laws of RTAs and how organizations - in particular interest groups, businesses and national administrations - have adjusted to their new legal environments. The article then suggests that the observable variation is likely to endure: the legal systems of RTAs reflect institutional realities in the member states, especially local legal traditions and power arrangements. The analysis focuses on the EU, NAFTA and Mercosur, using evidence from three realms: working women, dairy products and labour rights. The article concludes with some reflections on cross-RTA trade and the possibility of future convergence, competitiveness and the function of regulation in RTAs.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".