Organized Business Interests in the Mercosur: Setting the Scene

Abstract

The idea to study the evolution and the role of organized business in the Mercado Común del Sur (Mercosur) came as a result of my initial interest in the study of processes of regionalisation and regionalism in Latin America and East Asia. The focus on Latin America and in particular the Mercosur, as one of the most advanced forms of regional cooperation and integration outside the European Union (EU) emerged as a result of the limited amount of literature that exists not only in English but also in Spanish and Portuguese on the subject, in comparison to the large amount of work that has been done on business and business interests in the context of East Asian regionalisation and regionalism.