CODESUL / CRECENEA-LITORAL: Aspects of a Paradiplomacy Project in MERCOSUR

Abstract

This article deals with CODESUL / CRECENEA-LITORAL, a subnational integration project involving the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso do Sul, Paraná, Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul and the provinces of the Argentine northeast of Corrientes, Chaco, Entre Ríos, Formosa, Misiones and Santa Fe. This initiative dates back to the period of rapprochement between Brasília and Buenos Aires in the 1980s, and consolidates from the institute of the Permanent Forum of Governors, semi-annual meetings that since 1995 have been dedicated to deepening cooperation between the regions. The article proposes the historical rescue of a pioneering project, whose progress has been obstructed by the formal limits of paradiplomacia argentina and mainly brazilian. This concept is recent in the field of international relations and refers to the power granted by the central governments, traditional monopolists in the conduct of foreign policy, to their federated entities, to establish contacts with similar units of other countries. The problem is that paradiplomacy, in Brazil and Argentina, continues to be developed in the margin of an express recognition of the State; and such omissive conduct, in this sense, has made it difficult to advance in CODESUL / CRECENEA-LITORAL negotiations. However, it is undeniable that the Project has produced more active cooperation among its members.