Benefiting from a truly Pan-American perspective, these essays evaluate the economics and politics of the new patterns of North-South integration in the particular context of the Americas, questioning if regional and bilateral trade agreements like NAFTA, CAFTA or the FTAA are appropriate mechanisms to promote economic development.
Benefiting from a truly Pan-American perspective, these essays evaluate the economics and politics of the new patterns of North-South integration in the particular context of the Americas, questioning if regional and bilateral trade agreements like NAFTA, CAFTA or the FTAA are appropriate mechanisms to promote economic development.
Exploring art made in Latin America during the 1930s and 1940s, Hemispheric Integration argues that Latin America’s position within a global economic order was crucial to how art from that region was produced, collected, and understood. Niko Vicario analyzes art’s relation to shifting trade patterns, geopolitical realignments, and industrialization to suggest that it was in this specific era that the category of Latin American art developed its current definition. Focusing on artworks by iconic Latin American modernists such as David Alfaro Siqueiros, Joaquín Torres-García, Cândido Portinari, and Mario Carreño, Vicario emphasizes the materiality and mobility of art and their connection to commerce, namely the exchange of raw materials for manufactured goods from Europe and the United States. An exceptional examination of transnational culture, this book provides a new model for the study of Latin American art.
This book assesses South America’s most ambitious attempt at economic integration, Mercosur. It explains the main—and inherent—weaknesses of the integration effort, through explicit comparison with the European experience with integration. Jeffrey Cason argues that the three main reasons for Mercosur’s limited success are weak domestic political institutions in the member countries, vulnerability in the global political economy, and a serious imbalance in the economic and political weight of the member countries. In addition to providing this overarching explanation for Mercosur’s limitations, the book tells the story of Mercosur’s genesis, development, and frustrations. This book provides both an explanatory framework for understanding Mercosur and a story. It considers how Mercosur emerged, why it was greeted with great enthusiasm (and huge trade growth), and how it hit stumbling blocks as it sought to be more than it was capable of being. The book also focuses on how and why developing countries are inherently limited in any economic integration project.
The first part of the volume addresses the changing nature and interaction of the state and the market in Latin American countries, as well as the principal challenges of consolidating political and economic reform in a period of profound change. The second part of the book examines a variety of traditional and non-traditional political roles, ranging from the military to women, and from the environmental lobby to human rights. It explores the ways in which the changing composition of the political debate is shaping the political arena. Forward looking in its approach, to volume provides readers with an indication of factors which will be of key significance in the immediate future, the tensions which have yet to be resolved and the prospects ahead.
This book provides an accessible introduction to diverse political economy perspectives on different aspects of European integration. It presents a critical appraisal of how scholars in the EU and US use theory to understand European integration.
Exploring regionalism from a political economic perspective, this text investigates why regional arrangements are formed, the conditions under which these arrangements solidify, and why they take on different institutional forms.
In recent years, it has become apparent that South-South economic relations are increasing, and will continue to do so. There will be more trade agreements and more trade, more economic alliances and more political alliances with economic goals, more investment flows and an increasing acknowledgement that the Global South has more to offer than it has in the past. These new economics relations have great potential, both for harm and for good. In the absence of directed policies and intentional actors, imbalances of power and growing gaps in development will persist. With the right policies in place, however, these relationships could forge a new global order with greater economic and political equality. Covering a wide range of topics, including regional trade integration in Africa, the environmental impact of increased South-South trade, the changing patterns of South-South investment, and the effect of conflict on trade in South Asia, this ground-breaking volume presents an analysis of South-South economic relations, and how they might impact and be impacted by the rest of the world.
