Introduction: The Pacific Alliance—Deep integration, marketing, achievements, and failures

Abstract

announced the creation of the Pacific Alliance (PA), a regional integration scheme that aimed to promote the deep integration of their countries as well as their international insertion into the world economy. A year later, representatives of the four countries signed the Free Trade Framework Agreement of the PA, the main normative instrument of the trade bloc.Since its creation, the PA has found a warm reception in global economic and financial circles. Born in a context of predominance of the so-called postliberal or posthegemonic regionalism in Latin America, which contested the policies of liberalization and deregulation as the core of economic integration, the Alliance was perceived as a stronghold of the ideas of an open regionalism, favorable to free trade and foreign investment. The Alliance even radicalized this idea by proposing a model of deep integration. For these reasons, in a 2013 article in the Financial Times, the PA was described as "the most exciting thing going on in LatAm these days" (Financial Times, 2013). The pundit Moises Naim (2014) referred to the Alliance as "The Most Important Alliance You've Never Heard Of."In this context of a clear marketing campaign, the PA began to be described as a successful model for regional integration, adapted to the times of globalization. Newspapers such as the Financial Times (2014), The Economist (2014), and the Wall Street Journal (2014) began to spread a narrative of a Latin America divided between the Pacific and the Atlantic. The Southern Common Market (Mercosur) countries represented the Latin America of the Atlantic, which was characterized by its economic stagnation and low international economic insertion, and the PA symbolized the Latin America of the Pacific, more dynamic, modern, and inserted into the world. In this scenario, the PA became a brand of what would be a successful economic bloc. Detlef Nolte (2016) notes that "The four PA member countries 'marked' themselves as gateways to Asia and as 'good economies' compared to the 'bad economies' of other, more state-oriented economies in Latin America" (p. 1). Thus, as Nolte (2021, p. 151) points out, the Alliance was the "poster child" of Latin American regionalism.Yet, this narrative was soon challenged, especially due to the limited progress in specific issues such as trade integration and the formation of value chains, two central goals of the bloc (Briceño-Ruiz, Legler & Prado Lallande, 2021;Nolte, 2016;Tremolada Álvarez, 2019). The narrative of an Atlantic-Pacific divide was questioned in academic studies (see Briceño-Ruiz, 2017;Sanahuja, 2017). In the political world, it was also rejected, and former presidents Luis Inácio Lula da Silva and Ricardo Lagos published an article in the Spanish newspaper El País in which they highlighted the unity of the region despite their ideological differences (Lula da Silva & Lagos, 2014). Moreover, due to the political impetus given by Michelle Bachelet, negotiations to achieve convergence between the PA and Mercosur began in 2014, with technical ass...