The European Union Mercosul And The New World Order

A critical insight into the politics and economics of relations between the EU and Latin America, particularly Mercosul, highlighting the significance of such relations for multilateralism and the international order.

This book provides critical insight into the politics and economics of relations between the EU and Latin America, particularly Mercosul, and on the significance of such relations for multilateralism and the international order.

Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt/M., New York, Wien. This collection of essays aims to contribute to our understanding of the process of regional integration currently underway in South America. Mercosur is a regional manifestation of a world-wide process of globalisation whose driving force is economic, but which is potentially much more than that. It involves a variety of political, social and cultural processes, some of them barely at an embryonic stage, though each advancing at its own rate of progress. Mercosur's neo-liberal matrix, however, has led to the economic decision-making process being taken outside the realm of politics, thus leaving large sections of the population with no mechanism to influence the integration process so that it addresses their urgent needs and demands. Contents: Francisco Dominguez: Introduction - Marcos Guedes de Oliveira: Limitations on Democratic Transitions in Latin America and the Fate of Mercosur - Francisco Dominguez: Democracy and Economic Integration: The Continental Context - Marcos Lima: Mercosur and the New Global Order: a Methodological Essay - Marcelo de Almeida Medeiros: Multi-Level Governance and the Problem of Balance within Mercosur - Tullo Vigevani/Karina Pasquariello Mariano/Marcelo Fernandes de Oliveira: Mercosur: Democracy and Political Actors - Oliver Dabene: Does Mercosur still Have a Project? - Peter Lambert: Paraguay in Mercosur: Para que? - Suranjit Saha: Core-Periphery in the Americas: Understanding the Political Economy of Mercosur and FTAA.

The collapse of the bipolar world sustained by the United States and the former Soviet Union led to a power vacuum in the 1990s that the European Union has only reluctantly begun to fill. It is under pressure to take over important international tasks and roles in order to develop a new equilibrium in the system of international relations. After 2000, reforms were undertaken so that the European Union could deal more efficiently with the tasks the new political system had acquired since the early 1990s. With respect to its international role, reorganization of the EU's external relations department was high on the list. The New World Architecture explores the contribution that the European Union is making to the emerging global governance system. It discusses the theoretical and historical aspects of European integration within the framework of the emerging regional EU and global governance systems. It explores three regimes of governance that are contributing to holding together the new emerging EU multilevel governance system. None of these is complete; all are partial. They include the political regime of governance; the socioeconomic regime of governance; and the territorial regime of governance. The author assesses the impact of the European Union on global politics. The Mediterranean and Latin America represent regions in which the European Union is investing considerable effort in order to create new forms of cooperation. Magone argues that within the next twenty-five years global governance may and should emerge as the new and reconfigured stable system of international relations. In this system, the European Union is and will remain the most advanced regional system. This volume will be of interest to specialists, scholars, and students of European Politics and the European Union.

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. This book provides a distinctive and empirically rich account of the European Union’s relationship with the Common Market of the South (Mercosur). It seeks to examine the motivations that determine the EU’s policy towards Mercosur; the most important relationship the EU has with another regional economic integration organization. In order to investigate these motivations (or lack thereof), this study examines the contribution of the main policy- and decision-makers, the European Commission and the Council of Ministers, as well as the different contributions of the two institutions. It analyses the development of EU policy towards Mercosur in relation to three key stages. Arana argues that the dominant explanations in the literature fail to adequately explain the EU’s policy, in particular, these accounts tend to infer the EU’s motives from its activity. Rather than the EU pursuing a strategy, as implied by most of the existing literature, the EU was largely responsive, which explains why the relationship is much less developed than the EU’s relations with other parts of the world.

A critical insight into the politics and economics of relations between the EU and Latin America, particularly Mercosul, highlighting the significance of such relations for multilateralism and the international order.

The book draws comparison between MERCOSUR and the European Union to explain variation of regionalism and to expose its limits. The project is based on the idea that contemporary examples of regionalism should be evaluated against several propositions of multiple integration theories rather than against a single theory. In order to systematically explain why and how integration outcomes in MERCOSUR differ from those in the EU, the author develops an analytical framework for the comparison of the two blocs. MERCOSUR is compared with the EU by the use of the various criteria of economic interdependence, economic convergence, intra-bloc size and interest asymmetries, cultural diversity and geostrategic motivations, which are identified as the salient parameters of integration theories.

In the post-Cold War New World Order, the European Union (EU) is among a growing number of regional regimes that are acquiring prominent roles in the process of global governance. The EU is the most advanced and influential regional regime by virtue of being constructed aroung the supranational European Community (EC). However, the evident competitive advantages of supranationalism will foster the consolidation and proliferation of supranational regional regimes in a manner consistent with the neo-functionalist understanding of such organisations.