Regional organizations and durable domestic reforms?: The NAFTA, EU and competition laws in Mexico and Turkey.

Conditionality is a powerful motivator of reforms in countries seeking membership to regional organizations, yet once the country achieves membership, the fate of the reforms becomes uncertain. In practice, while some reforms are overturned, others survive and flourish. This paper explores why some reforms survive and become effective. I argue that the emergence of a pro-reform domestic constituency, and the support of other international organizations help ensure reforms' durability, while the strength of the domestic constituency explains the variation in effective implementation. I explore these arguments empirically in Mexico and Turkey, two countries that adopted competition laws under the conditionality of NAFTA and the EU-Turkey Customs Union. The empirical analysis supports the argument that competition laws were maintained thanks to the emergence of pro-competition constituencies and the support of organizations such as the OECD, while their effective implementation has depended on the strength of domestic constituencies in the two countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]