Olivier Dabène

The Politics of Regional Integration in Latin America

PART I: ONE HISTORICAL AND THEORETICAL GUIDELINE PART II: POLITICAL INSTRUMENTALIZATION OF REGIONAL ECONOMIC INTEGRATION Resolving Regional Crises Crisis and Regional Integration Building a Collective Defense of Democracy PART III: DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF INSTITUTIONS Institutional Isomorphism Scope and Level of Integration. Explaining a Mismatch PART IV: DEMOCRATIZING REGIONAL INTEGRATION The Parliamentary Option Integration from Below Integration and Common Goods PART V: THE CONTENTIOUS POLITICS OF INTEGRATION Regional Multilevel Governance in the Americas?

Consistency and Resilience through Cycles of Repoliticization

Is it theoretically and analytically misleading to analyze regionalism in terms of success or failures? This chapter explores this question by analyzing cycles of politicization in regional political economy. It is argued that despite many crises and setbacks during the last 50 years, Latin American governments have been consistent in their commitment to regional integration and the institutional arrangements have proven to be remarkably resilient. The chapter claims that trajectories of regionalism must be seen as manifestation of a repoliticization of the region that despite stop-and-go dynamics is resilient in the understanding of common interests and a sense of Latin Americanness.

Integration from Below

The Parliamentary option does not seem to have silenced the critics of the democratic deficits.

Historical and Theoretical Guideline

Uncertainty and indeterminacy seem to be the names of the game. Latin American experiences with regional integration and regionalism have been unstable and, according to “Europeanized” common sense, unsuccessful. Yet without a doubt, Latin America is the “other” continent with a long tradition of modern regional integration, dating back to the post-World War II era. As early as 1948, the Central Americans organized a functional cooperation in the realm of higher education, with the creation of the Central American Council for Higher Education (CSUCA). Then in 1951 they formed the Organization of Central American States (ODECA), and in 1958 they went on to sign a multilateral treaty of economic integration. In the rest of the continent, the 1960s witnessed a first wave of agreements, with the Latin American Free Trade Association (ALALC, 1960), the Caribbean Free Trade Association (CARIFTA, 1965), and later the Andean Pact (GRAN, 1969). In 1973, CARIFTAbecame the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) but elsewhere the 1970s were a decade of crisis and stalemate. A second wave of agreements built up in the 1990s, most notably with the Common Market of the South (MERCOSUR, 1991) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA, 1994).

L'Amérique latine à l'époque contemporaine

L’etude des difficultes qu’ont rencontrees les differents pays d’Amerique latine a trouver un ordre politique stable, compatible avec un developpement economique harmonieux, de la fin du 19e siecle a nos jours, constitue le fil conducteur de cet ouvrage. Ni etude thematique, ni strict suivi chronologique, il s’organise autour de quelques periodes historiques dont les caracteristiques politiques, economiques, sociales et culturelles scandent l’evolution du continent. Ainsi sont examines l’entree de l’Amerique latine dans l’ere moderne (1870-1914), les annees de prosperite (1914-1930), le temps du populisme (1930-1950), le seisme de la revolution cubaine (1950-1970), les annees sombres (1968-1979), les transformations politiques et economiques des annees 1980 et 1990, les caracteristiques contradictoires du tournant du siecle et, enfin, l’instabilite et la radicalisation politiques actuelles. A travers de constants va-et-vient entre les descriptions s’appliquant a l’ensemble des pays du continent et les illustrations de cas particuliers confirmant ou infirmant la tendance generale, il prend en compte dans l’explication de l’evolution des societes les facteurs tant internes qu’externes, sans omettre les contraintes du systeme inter-americain et le poids des Etats-Unis. Son originalite tient a cette demarche plurielle, au service d’une problematique qui s’appuie sur de nombreux chiffres et documents tires des meilleures sources. Le site de l’OPALC (www.sciencespo.fr/opalc) complete l’ouvrage en mettant a disposition de nombreuses sources primaires.

Resolving Regional Crises

Trade has long been considered a core dimension of international relations. Whether it is a factor of peace or war, favoring or affecting the “Wealth of Nations,” is a question that has been debated for centuries, ever since the mercantilists put in place a protectionist, interventionist, and colonial economic system in the sixteenth century. Adam Smith criticized the mercantilist theory in the eighteenth century, and ever since, classical economics favoring free markets has been dominant. So too has the idea that trade contributes to the pacification of international relations, except for the Marxist tradition that points out the contradictions generated by the expansion of capitalism, and in its modern Latin American version, the dependency of the periphery.

Integration and Common Goods

The parliamentary option and the participation of non-state actors are two palliative treatments for the regional integration processes’ democratic deficit that are far from providing a perfect and permanent cure. True, there is no such thing as a yardstick to measure democratic deficit, and therefore it is not easy to evaluate the seriousness of the illness. The bottom line though is that much depends on the actors’ perceptions and as two previous chapters demonstrated, they are not satisfied with the level of representative or participatory democracy applied to regional integration in Latin America. This chapter raises a quite provocative question, and explores another way of studying the democratization of regional integration processes.

The Parliamentary Option

Surely because the dominant and most legitimate model of democracy in the world is the representative one, there is a widespread belief that the best way to democratize a regional integration process is to create a regional parliament and grant it important prerogatives. This parliamentary option, needless to say, raises many questions. Does it make sense to create a parliament when the regional institutional arrangements are deprived of the other traditional components of a democratic polity, such as governments or political parties? Does it make sense to do it in Latin America where there is no tradition of parliamentarianism, and where parliaments are traditionally considered weak?

Regional Multilevel Governance in the Americas

As previously mentioned, the 1990s have witnessed an amazing reactivation of regional integration in the Americas. In addition to the relaunching of older processes in Central America and in the Andes, and the initiation of new ones in North America (NAFTA) and the Southern Cone (MERCOSUR), the overall panoramabecame increasingly complex following the 1994 Summit of the Americas and the subsequent opening of hemispherical negotiations. At that time, conventional wisdom was that all the different existing integration processes would converge. A decade later, the project of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) was stalemated, but the Summit of the Americas Process was alive, tentatively addressing a growing number of issues. In parallel, reacting to the frustration caused by the failed FTAA, the United States started to negotiate bilateral Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). Venezuela, on its side, chose to oppose the FTAA, offering the Latin Americans a “Bolivarian Alternative” (ALBAN).

Building a Collective Defense of Democracy

As noted in the introduction, the processes of regional integration and democratization have been unfolding simultaneously during the 1980s and 1990s in Latin America. Between 1979 and 1990, thirteen Latin American countries went through transitions to democracy and at the same time managed to resuscitate regional agreements or launch new ones.