The Role of Epistemic Communities in the "Makability" of Mercosur

DE LOMBARDE,P. SCHULTZ, M., PIETRANGELLI,G, ZALESCKY, CLIVE,G, DAVID, M.BOTTO, M, SHAW, T.

The European Union and World Regionalism. The makability of Regions in the 21st Century

Ashgate

Lugar: Surrey; Año: 2009; p. 171 - 186

Extensive literature on the origins and shape of the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR) tends to focus on the economic and geopolitical explanations (Gomez Mera, 2005). Most researchers attribute the decision to create a common union to the need of protecting trade and providing better incentives for foreign direct investment, especially for automobile industries and its commodities. Instead, others focus on geopolitical reasons, such as the need to strengthen the fragile and emerging democracies by preventing any potential cross-border conflict in the region and to enhance their voice in international negotiations in an increasingly globalized world. All these reasons turn out to be of use to fully understand why these countries committed to coming together, but fail to explain why they decided to deepen the integration process through the creation of a common market if a free trade area would have done just as well. This paper intends to shed some light on the role of ideas and knowledge in the decision to create a common market in a context where a completely different hegemonic paradigm prevailed. We will make a case that during this period there was intense debate about the goals, scope and institutionalization of integration, where two integration models or paradigms collided. While one of them imitated the European experience at its inception, the other one limited its scope to financial and trade liberalization, following the model of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), executed by Mexico, the United States and Canada in 1993.  Due to the powerful influence exerted by the European Union (EU) through technical cooperation, the creation of forums and widespread public debate, the scale finally tilted in favor of a deep integration model.