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9 J. Common Mkt. Stud. 1 (1970)

handle is hein.journals/jcmks9 and id is 1 raw text is: CENTRAL AMERICAN INTEGRATION: SPILL-OVER, SPILL-AROUND OR ENCAPSULATION? By PHILIPPE C. SCHMITTERI THE history of Central America has been punctuated by a succession of attempts at regional re-integration. Following the post-indepen- dence disintegration of the former Captaincy General of Guatemala into the five sovereign units of Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, 'on at least twenty-five different occasions formal and official steps were taken to reconstitute the states into some single form of government.'2 Whether by force of arms or by power of ideological persuasion, none was successful. That minimal integra- tive threshold, the establishment of some permanent institutional nexus for joint decision-making, was not crossed-at least not for any duration3-until 1951. In that year two regional forums for consulta- tion and negotiation were established, both at a very modest level and scope of commitment. The first institution was the Central American Committee for Economic Cooperation (CCE) created under the aegis of the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA). Blessed with an ambiguous mandate and the firm intellectual guidance of ECLA's Mexico City office, the CCE spent its first four years (1952-56) laboring unobtru- sively in the fields of regional economic cooperation, especially in the study and promotion of infrastructure projects and in the encourage- ment of a network of bilateral trade treaties. It did not manifestly seek to advance the cause of economic integration or even multilateral trade liberalization during this period.4 It did, however, sponsor a IA preliminary and expanded version of this paper, entitled, 'The Process of Central American Integration: Spill-Over or Spill-Around?' was presented at the American Political Science Association meetings, September 1967 in Chicago. I have recently discussed some of the con- ceptual and theoretical issues raised by this case-study in 'Three Neo-Functional Hypotheses about International Integration', International Organization, Vol. XXIII, No. x (1969), pp. 161--6. This work was sponsored by the Studies in International Integration Project, University of California (Berkeley). Its director, Ernst B. Haas, offered extensive criticisms of earlier drafts. but I alone am responsible for the errors of fact and evaluation it may still contain. 2 Thomas L. Karnes, The Failure of Union: Central America, 1824-1960 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1961), p. 243. 3 From 1824 until 1838 the five were linked by a very loose and ineffectual federation. Ibid., pp. 92-5. 4 At the first meeting of the CCE, the five assembled Ministers of Economy resolved that 'integration should be adopted gradually and in a limited manner on the basis of mutual coopera- tion'. UN, ECLA, Preliminary Report of the Executive Secretary of ECLA on Economic Integration I

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