to and does comply with unfavourable rulings. One result has been that Canada has had to take many disputes that, in theory should be settled within NAFTA, to the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The response of the United States to WTO rulings unfavourable to them is much the same as their response to unfavourable NAFTA rulings, although the WTO has somewhat more success than does NAFTA in enforcing its rulings (Martin, 2005).
The WTO, which in effect is the legal embodiment of the globalisation of economic activity, however, poses its own dangers to state sovereignty. Globalisation, thus, likely will continue the erosion of Canadian state sovereignty.
The Globalisation of Trade and Finance
Globalisation · the spread of economic innovations and activity around the world, together with the political and cultural adjustments that accompany such diffusion · is not a new phenomenon or even a 20th century phenomenon. Rather, globalisation has been occurring in one form or another for 3,000 years. The Phoenicians
a spread innovations almost entirely through the movement of products (trade) to small centers of development scattered around the Mediterranean. The diffusion of process technology followed after · sometimes centuries later. (Lewis & Harris, 1992, p. 114)
The principal differences between earlier globalisation activities and those occurring in the early years of the 21st century are (a) the relative speed that characterizes the diffusion process and (b) the difficulties encountered by those sovereign states that, for whatever reason, want to resist some of the invasive aspects of globalisation. For some sovereign states, the externalities accompanying strengthened global linkages in trade and finance are either unacceptable or simply undesirable from their perspectives (Heilbronner & Milberg, 2002).
Some observers view globalisation as a benign process because, according to their perception, it is not a...