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Rita Giacalone, Los Empresarios frente al Grupo de los Tres: integracion, intereses e ideas, Nueva Sociedad, 1999 (190 pages). ISBN 980-317-159-3.
The book aims at a theoretical and comparative analysis of the role of national business actors as representatives of, and the articulated voice for, business' demands and interests, concerning the trilateral attempt at regional integration and co-operation called Group of Three (G-3) among Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela. Since January 1995, the G-3 is not only a free trade area but also a customs union in progress. The author's approach draws from several theoretical streams and case studies, but in particular from neo-functionalism (with Haas as its most representative author), with the aim of explaining the link between (1) the predominant economic ideas and interests of both business and governments in each country, and (2) the origin, negotiations, approval and implementation of the treaty that established the G-3 in June 1994. Primary sources consist of business actors' discourses on RI and a few personal interviews, supported by a rich bibliographical research as secondary source. Specifically, the book concentrates on business associations of national scope and their relationship with the national governments, and on their overall support or rejection of the various regional integration (RI) alternatives, all embedded in the history of each country's economic development.
The author's concern seems placed, above all, on the political effects of the RI policy as well as on the issue of leadership in national policy formation and implementation. In this sense, RI is considered by the author as a state-led foreign economic policy. In so far as the field of international relations is involved, the author's concern relates to the institutionalization of the G-3, as a 'process of internationalization of new identities and interests... that reaches the cognitive [level] through socialization' (page 31).
In the 1990s economic model, RI arrangements lock in the changing relationship between State and business by supplying certainty and permanence through the inclusion of the new model into a regional system of alliances. In such a manner, the new 'open regionalism' role would be to actively insert the RIA into the world markets, with the expectation of bringing it closer to technological progress.
Chapter 1 revises the theoretical developments on RI within the field...