Why have MERCOSUR and the Andean Community (CAN) been selected?
This chapter focuses on MERCOSUR (Southern Common Market) and the CAN. Both represent the most important regional integration agreements in Latin America. The agreements include countries with a long-standing history of bilateral conflicts that have come together voluntarily under an institutional arrangement that seeks to foster political and economic interdependence.The MERCOSUR is the world’s fourth largest integrated economic block. Representing 67 per cent of Latin America’s land area,4 47 per cent of its population and more than half of Latin America’s gross domestic product (GDP);5 it is the most progressive trade integration scheme in the developing world. MERCOSUR’s model of ‘open regionalism’6 aims to create a common market in the mid-term future. International relations scholars view the model as a crucial step to overcome the historic agenda of grievances, mutual distrust and diverging interests within the region (notably by linking the Southern Cone’s rival regional powers
