The Pacific Alliance closes the year with a busy last week. A couple of significant events took place and deserve some consideration. First the meeting of the technical groups in Bogota from the 11 to the 13 December. Second the presidential election in Chile.

The meeting in Bogota gathered more than a dozen technical groups and subcommittees on issues regarding tourism, gender, institutional matters, digital agenda, education,  regulatory cooperation, innovation, external relations and SMEs. Around 160 government officials from the four countries attended the meeting to discuss progress in the different areas and the action plans for 2018.

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Abstract:
The more recent waves of regionalism in Latin America have been associated, respectively, with structuralist, neoliberal and post-liberal economic and political experiments in the region.

Structuralist regionalism was launched in the 1950s and somehow survived until the 1970s; open regionalism followed in the 1980s and 1990s and was replaced, to a certain extent, during the next decade by post-liberal regionalism.

However, the limits, if not demise, of post-liberal experiments in the most important economies of Latin America pose the question of the future of regionalism. In this changing situation, this paper explores several questions about the future of regionalism in Latin America. Will regionalism hold sway over Latin America? Will present integration schemes continue in the region? Will new entities arise? Will there be a convergence in diversity between integration projects in Latin America? Will the new context of global uncertainties lead to a revival of regionalism?

Author: Alberto van Klaveren
Full document: 2017, Klaveren, Regionalism in Latin America -Navigating in the Fog

Abstract:
This paper analyses the current scenario of regional economic integration in Latin America. Thus, it is argued that economic integration in this region is currently developing in three axes: an open integration axis (represented by the Pacific Alliance); a revisionist axis (symbolized by the Southern Common Market –Mercosur-) and an anti-systemic axis (represented by the Bolivarian Alliance for the People of our America –ALBA-). In each of these initiatives, diverse models of regional economic integration have been adopted. The relation between the current regionalist axes and the diverse models of economic integration in Latin America is discussed in the paper. Similarly, the paper evaluates the extent to which extra-regional initiatives, such as the European Union, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) have also influenced on the models of economic integration in Latin America.

Author: José Briceño-Ruiz
Full document: 2014, Briceño, Regional Dynamics and External Influences in the Discussions about the Model of Economic Integration in Latin America

Abstract:
Not available

Resumen:
En resumen, tanto por las exigencias del entorno mundial como por las propias dinámicas del acontecer regional, se tiende a privilegiar la construcción de espacios amplios y unificados de cooperación. Un proceso de integración de características regionales parece, pues, más adecuado a los signos de los tiempos y a las exigencias del cambio estructural en pro de la igualdad en América Latina.
La gradual convergencia entre la Alianza del Pacífico y el MERCOSUR podría constituir un catalizador decisivo de ese proceso. Con el presente documento, la CEPAL busca contribuir a la elaboración de una posible agenda de trabajo que dé expresión concreta a esa convergencia.

Institutional Author: ECLAC
Spanish Title: La Alianza del Pacífico y el MERCOSUR /Hacia la convergencia en la diversidad
Full document: 2014, CEPAL, La Alianza del Pacífico y el MERCOSUR Hacia la Convergencia en la Diversidad

Abstract:
The Pacific Alliance was established as a project of deep integration between Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru. The question raised in this paper is which of the Latin American regionalism approaches is better suited for the theoretical characterisation of the Pacific Alliance initiative? The concepts of open regionalism and strategic regionalism are explained for the characterisation of this initiative, and their limits are highlighted by empirical evidence. The paper concludes that regionalism concepts that give greater emphasis to commercial dynamics are not sufficient to understand the current operation and performance of the Pacific Alliance. As such, a complementary analytical approach is introduced responding to the long-term global dynamics.

Resumen:
La Alianza del Pacífico se instituyó como una propuesta de integración profunda entre Chile, Colombia, México y Perú. La pregunta que se plantea en este trabajo es ¿cuál de los enfoques del regionalismo en América Latina es el más idóneo para caracterizar teóricamente la iniciativa de la Alianza del Pacífico? En este sentido, se exponen los conceptos de regionalismo abierto y regionalismo estratégico para caracterizar esta iniciativa, y se resaltan sus límites a partir de evidencia empírica. El trabajo concluye que los conceptos de regionalismo que dan mayor énfasis a las dinámicas comerciales no son suficientes para comprender el funcionamiento y desempeño actual de la Alianza del Pacífico, por lo que se introduce un enfoque analítico complementario, el cual responde a dinámicas globales de largo plazo.

Authors: Daniel Rojas and José Miguel Terán
Spanish Title: La Alianza del Pacífico: Nueva Muestra del Regionalismo en América Latina
Full document: 2016, Rojas & Terán, La Alianza del Pacífico- Nueva Muestra del Regionalismo en América Latina

Abstract:
The Pacific Alliance (PA) presents itself as a sui generis ‘mechanism for regional integration’ comprising Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru. In this thesis, I examine the main institutional features of the PA, the factors that explain these institutional choices and to what extent its institutional framework is suitable to support the objectives of the PA in the long-term. The scope of the thesis is threefold: descriptive, explanatory and normative.

I take an interdisciplinary and eclectic approach to study the institutional dimension of the PA. I base my analysis on insights from new institutionalisms — constructivist and rational institutionalisms — while following a legal orientation when reading and applying new institutionalisms. I also employ international institutional law to assess the international legal status of the PA. At the methodological level, the thesis uses qualitative methods — doctrinal and empirical analysis — to address the research questions.

The core argument I develop in this thesis is that rational factors, such as cooperation problems and characteristics of the PA members in the aggregate, and ideational factors explain the PA’s institutional design. External institutional environments also contribute to explain PA’s institutional architecture. Institutional entrepreneurs have carefully crafted organisational and task-related decentralisation, the scope of issues covered, the rules for control, and the array of adjustability devices in its institutional rules. PA’s institutional design is also the result of the revisited neoliberal program amplified at the regional level through the open regionalism and deep integration programs and the frames of flexibility and pragmatism.

I contest, based on empirical evidence, claims about the sui generis nature of the PA’s institutional model of economic regionalism. I also challenge established views about its non-political and non-ideological foundations.

I demonstrate that the PA represents an informal intergovernmental institution (IIG). The PA is not an international organisation invested with international and domestic legal personality. Organisational structures in the PA follow a spectrum of formal and informal arrangements. These structures have, in many instances, responded to what I call demand-based or problem-based approaches in their establishment. Growth and specialisation of organisational structures take place through informal means, which evidences the effects of the ideas of flexibility and pragmatism that frame the PA and its regional integration process.

The thesis shows that the PA relies heavily on soft-law reinforcing its political basis. Mandatory commitments or hard-law approaches refer primarily to the construction of a free trade area as of today while soft-law is predominant in several areas that comprise its large economic and non-economic cooperation pillar.

I maintain that the PA’s current institutional framework does not equip it to respond to the needs for policy coordination and harmonisation, and the development of other regional public goods associated with the goals of its economic regionalism project.

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