The Performance of the Mexico-U.S. Environmental Regime

There is a long standing regime of border co-
operation between Mexico and the U.S. that was
transformed during the twentieth century into a
regime of international environmental management.
This analysis reviewed the Mexico-U.S. Environmental
Regime with particular focus on water resources.
This regime does not conform to realist accounts of
international relations when we look at the regime s
performance in the Rio Grande and the Colorado
River. First, there is no clear separation of
international and domestic as would be implied by
sovereignty thesis of neorealism. Instead there is a
system of multilevel governance combined with an
interactive decision-making process. Second, there
is not the successful assertion of self-interest
that neorealism would predict when we look at the
performance of the regime in terms of the
distribution of the water supplies between Mexican
and U.S. citizens. However, the regime is not
successful in environmental terms, that is, not
successful in addressing the underlying problems
related to water quality. Despite this performance,
the regime has largely performed well during the
period from 1960 to 1990.