Transnationalism: The fifth element of the Pacific Alliance's deep integration process

Abstract

Since the governments of Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru inaugurated a new Latin American integration mechanism, the Pacific Alliance, in 2011, the bloc has recorded both encouraging and disappointing results, depending on the evolution of the Alliance's main five aspects-political, economic, institutional, cooperative, and societal linkages. Although economic integration did not advance at the expected pace, owing to the abolition of a Mexican visa for Peru and Colombia, between 2011 and 2019, there has been a significant increase in social exchanges of nationals of the four countries, which included activities such as tourism, education, business trips, and others of similar nature (the Pacific Alliance's fifth element). Yet, despite these developments, scholars did not attempt to examine the societal linkage within the bloc, referred to in this article as the "fifth element" of the Pacific Alliance. To narrow the gap, this article examines the path of the Alliance toward deep integration by identifying the effect of strengthening social interactions, using a transnationalist framework and paying particular attention to the changing patterns of individual trips over more than 10 years of the Alliance's existence.

Institutional pragmatism of the Pacific Alliance: Does it favor a deep integration?

“…To paraphrase the title of a joint academic effort (Pastrana Buelvas & Gehring, 2014) between the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, and the Universidad Santiago de Cali—in which we participate—it can be seen more as a myth than a reality 29 . Prado Lallande and Velázquez Flores (2016) are correct in their evaluation that, having generated so many expectations, the Pacific Alliance's main challenge is to establish a greater link and political commitment between its parties. Then, it must in effect form an established trade and cooperation space in favor of its citizens.…”

Regional Value Chains for Processed Foods in The Pacific Alliance

“…La Alianza del Pacífico (AP) es un acuerdo de integración regional establecido entre Chile, Colombia, México y Perú, desde el año 2011 (Prado Lallande y Rouvinski, 2023;Blanco-Jiménez et al, 2019), en la búsqueda de fortalecimientos en la circulación de bienes, personas, servicios, capitales y de integración comercial con proyección al Asia-Pacífico (Heller Ledgard et al, 2018) para, conjuntamente, aumentar las oportunidades de comercio extrarregional (Chaves García, 2018).…”