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Media Legitimation of NAFTA and Mercosur: A Discourse Network Analysis

Integration
Regionalism
Trade
Communication
Political Regime
Steffen Schneider
Independent Researcher
Steffen Schneider
Independent Researcher

Abstract

Are regional integration projects faced with a legitimacy crisis in today’s climate of populism? Has a “permissive consensus” on regional integration turned into the “constraining dissent” diagnosed by Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks for the European Union? The apparent politicization and contestation of the North American Free Trade Agreement and Mercosur in recent years suggests as much. My paper is based on the premise that the legitimacy of international political regimes is constructed and reproduced, transformed, or withdrawn in national public spheres and discourse. It examines the (de)legitimation of NAFTA and Mercosur in US, Canadian, Brazilian and Argentine media discourse between 1994 and 2020. Methods of discourse network analysis are used to visualize, describe and model trends in the public (de)legitimation of NAFTA and Mercosur, and to probe the discourse coalitions and repertoires of normative arguments on which support for these regional integration projects or their contestation is based. The study draws on an original data set of several thousand legitimation statements in eight newspapers. Two-mode networks of discourse participants from the center and periphery of national public spheres and their respective statements are examined over time. I show that discursive trajectories are characterized by the alternation of phases of “normal” legitimation and legitimacy crises. There are important differences in the trajectories of NAFTA- and Mercosur-related legitimation communication, between discourse in non-hegemonic member states (Argentina, Canada) and hegemonic ones (Brazil, the US), and in the arguments of prominent discourse coalitions. The frequency, scope and nature of discursive legitimacy crises vary.