Obstacles to Regional Integration in Latin America and the Caribbean: Compliance and Implementation Problems. Jean Monnet/Robert Schuman Paper Series Vol. 7 No. 8 April 2007

Mera, Laura Gomez. (2007) Obstacles to Regional Integration in Latin America and the Caribbean: Compliance and Implementation Problems. Jean Monnet/Robert Schuman Paper Series Vol. 7 No. 8 April 2007. [Working Paper]

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Abstract

[From the introduction]. The paper draws on International Relations (IR) and International Political Economy (IPE) theoretical perspectives to account for these variations. It argues that the two main perspectives in the debate on compliance with international agreements, the enforcement and management approaches, are useful to account for patterns of cross-national implementation and compliance in Latin America and the Caribbean. Yet, the tendency of these approaches to neglect the role of external influences could prove misleading when examining implementation and compliance gaps in regional trade agreements among developing countries. The paper thus argues that greater attention needs to be paid to external constraints, and in particular, to the role of globalization. The empirical findings presented here suggest that international interdependence and vulnerability have had an impact on the ability and willingness of LAC countries to honor their regional commitments. The paper is structured as follows. The next section begins with a general discussion of the concepts of commitment, compliance and implementation in the IR literature, and then presents the main theoretical perspectives on the sources of non-compliance with international agreements. The third section assesses whether such problems are in fact present in LAC regional agreements by examining different indicators of compliance and implementation. It then examines the sources of commitment problems in LAC regional organizations, focusing specifically on the determinants of practical implementation. The final section summarizes the main empirical results and their theoretical implications and discusses avenues for future research.

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