Search

Both the Pacific Alliance (PA) and the Common Market of the South (Mercosur) are economic regional integration agreements whose constitutive principles conform to the so-called open regionalism. However, when the AP was launched in 2011, with the Declaration of Lima, Mercosur had distanced from economic liberalism, and its political agenda, which had acquired especial relevance, led it to clashes with the United States. Some analysts came to speak of a confrontation between the efficient liberalizers of the PA and the inefficient statists of Mercosur. In this paper, I analyze both regional agreements. The research, based on documentary sources and statistics, aims to evaluate the ability of these two bodies to promote economic development through regional integration, an objective proposed in its constituent documents. The main conclusion is that AP is better prepared to achieve the proposed objective because of its commitment to deep integration and trade of global value chains. Another concluding remark is that political and ideological confrontation have become a disturbing element in the performance of Mercosur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]