Abstract:
The Pacific Alliance was created as an effort to integrate its members into global supply chains and connect them to the world’s fastest-growing economies in East Asia. All four participating countries—Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru—are known for their confessed openness to free trade and investment liberalization.

Against the backdrop of the unremarkable performance of the region’s previous initiatives for cooperation and regional integration much depends on external recognition and engagement. Given the Alliance’s emphasis on trade, finance, and the geographic region of the Asia-Pacific, the recognition most vital to success is that of the People’s Republic of China: while Japan and South Korea play a dynamic role as well, particularly in the manufacturing sector, China is by far the largest and fastest-growing catalyst for Latin America’s trade, loans, and investment.

China has evidenced its eagerness to engage the Latin American region in many ways, most notably through its two policy papers in 2008 and 2016 a stream of loans and investment initiatives, and top leadership visits to the region on an annual basis. It has also thrown its weight behind CELAC, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, often described as a regional grouping that excludes Canada and the United States. But does the Alliance command a special “sweet spot” in China’s strategy for Latin America? Is Beijing responding as eagerly to the Alliance’s initiatives as some news reports suggest?
A series of interviews with academics, policy advisors, and executives in China and a review of Chinese print and online media and journal articles suggest that Beijing and China’s business community observe the Alliance with polite interest but see limited benefits for either side.

Resumen: No disponible

Author: Benjamin Creutzfeldt
Institutional Author: Wilson Center, Latin American Program
Full document: 2018, Creutzfeldt, China Engagement with regional Actors The Pacific Alliance

Abstract:
The aim of this report is to assess the performance, key challenges and policy implications of enhancing the service economy, including the collaborative economy, within the members of the Pacific Alliance and at the regional level.

The report explores the role that services are playing in the PA’s evolving economic landscape, both at the level of individual member countries and regionally between them.

The report is organized as follows. Section II proposes a conceptual framework to understand the strategic role that services play in underpinning four key dimensions of the growth process: (i) boosting competitiveness and allocative efficiency; (ii) promoting inclusiveness and inequality reduction; (iii) contributing to SME growth and enhancing their access to international markets; and (iv) a source of product and process innovation.

Section III of the report maps the services landscape in the Pacific Alliance from an economic and regulatory stance. The section depicts salient trends in services trade and investment at the intra-regional level and for individual PA members. It subsequently explores the regulatory regimes governing trade and investment in services in the PA through the lens of two key region-wide legal instruments: the Framework Agreement and in particular the Commercial Protocol. The section closes with an examination of various soft law initiatives that PA members are undertaking in the services realm.

Section IV attempts a conceptualization of the collaborative economy and advances a number of conjectures on what the growth of the collaborative economy portends for policy initiatives in the PA region. The report’s closing section recalls core findings and puts forward a number of recommendations to move the PA services agenda forward.

The report includes an annex section that deepens the analysis of service sectors performance for individual PA members by considering two core issues. It first assesses the performance of backbone services and the regulatory environments in place within the individual PA members. It describes the domestic liberalization patterns through (unilateral) regulatory reforms and their contribution to region-wide regulatory convergence and growth. Second, it examines current national strategies to support export diversification opportunities for PA members in the services field and the degree to which they converge or overlap.

Resumen: No disponible

Authors: Ana María Palacio Valencia & Pierre Sauvè
Full document: 2017, Palacio & Sauve, A New Growth Paradigm. The Services Economy in the Pacific Alliance

Abstract:
From the establishment of the Pacific Alliance initiative in 2012, the scheme of regional integration in Latin America has taken a different turn. We are in a situation where neighbouring countries should share, in the same territorial space, two international organisations, Mercosur and the Pacific Alliance. These organisations guide their way to integration and joint development in parallel paths and have been oriented towards the growth of cooperation and policy coordination in ways that conflict with each other.
While they have points in common in their foundation, Mercosur and the Pacific Alliance have aspects that distinguish one from another. The paths followed by each of them has temporary differences. These distinctions have also invited for reconsideration of the problems they faced, they are facing and will face in the future, to achieve the goal, elusive over time, of comprehensive and effective integration in the Latin American region.

Resumen:
A partir de la creación de la iniciativa Alianza del Pacífico en el año 2012, el esquema de la integración regional en América Latina ha tomado un viraje distinto. Nos encontramos ante una situación donde países vecinos deben compartir, en un mismo un espacio territorial, dos organizaciones internacionales, el Mercosur y la Alianza del Pacífico, que guían sus vías de integración y desarrollo conjunto en caminos paralelos, y que han sido creadas para orientar el crecimiento de la cooperación y coordinación de políticas en sentidos que las oponen entre sí.
Si bien tienen puntos en común en su conformación, el Mercosur y la Alianza del Pacífico poseen aspectos que los distinguen uno del otro. Los caminos recorridos por ambos también poseen diferencias temporales que invitan a una reconsideración de los problemas que enfrentaron, enfrentan y van a enfrentar en un futuro, para lograr el objetivo, esquivo a lo largo del tiempo, de una integración amplia y efectiva en la región latinoamericana.

Author: Juan Pablo Sierra
Full document:  2015, Sierra,El proceso de Integración Regional de América Latina desde la creación de la Alianza del Pacífico, una Comparación con el Mercosur

Abstract:
Not available

Resumen:
Este trabajo tiene como objetivo principal identificar la existencia de un nuevo escenario geopolítico en la región latinoamericana a través del análisis de la creación de la Alianza del Pacífico y su relación con otros procesos de integración en la región –UNASUR, MERCOSUR y ALBA.
Es así que desde el marco teórico del realismo y de la interdependencia compleja, se explica la creación de la Alianza del Pacífico- cuyos miembros son Colombia, Chile, Perú y México- con el fin de consolidar nuevas relaciones que ayuden su desarrollo. Esta necesidad de cooperación responde al interés común de los estados por una nueva estrategia que incluya la explotación óptima de sus recursos entorno al pacífico y de cooperación favorable a la expansión de una red de comercio que incluya a todos los estados. En ese contexto, la consolidación de estos objetivos puede influenciar directamente e indirectamente en toda la región latinoamericana.

Author: Giulliana Reggiardo
Spanish Title: Un Nuevo Escenario Geopolítico en la Región Latinoamericana: La Creación de la Alianza
del Pacífico (2011-2015) (Master Thesis)
Full document: 2015, Reggiardo, Un Nuevo Escenario Geopolítico en la Región Latinoamericana- la Creación de la Alianza del Pacífico