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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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