Negotiations between the European Union and MERCOSUR aim to establish the first free trade agreement ever between two customs unions. Among the potential obstacles are compliance with World Trade Organization rules, treatment of “sensitive” products, and competition from the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas. This analysis reviews the economic background on both sides, the motivation, and the prospects for success, along with the agreement’s potential impact on the largest third party, the United States.

Chile today is experiencing a new sociopolitical compromise no less significant than the so-called “compromise state” of the 1930s and 1940s. A central feature of the new arrangement has been the performance of Chile’s party system. This role should be understood in terms of how it reflects, and helps to mitigate or aggravate, the tension between capital accumulation and the struggles over sociopolitical inclusion and distribution.

The integration process as developed in MERCOSUR has been largely a success, albeit led (and often aggravated) by Brazil. Three cases illustrate Brazil’s dominant role: the dispute over the automobile regime that began in 1995, the import-financing conflict of 1997, and the recent negotiations over the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Brazil’s behavior pattern does not threaten MERCOSUR’s stability, however, or the all-but-irreversible progress of regional integration.

Taking the 1997-98 electoral season as its case study, this article seeks to determine whether Colombia’s party system is undergoing deinstitutionalization. The resilience of the Liberal Party and the lack of an organized alternative to the traditional parties may mean that Colombia is in the process of party system transformation.

MERCOSUR’s success as an economic bloc suggests that it could serve as a stimulus or even a model for security integration. Improved military ties among the MERCOSUR nations have grown out of a sequence of developments, from political rapprochement to economic convergence and improved civilian state control. Yet increased cooperation has not led to a regional defense system. Case studies reveal that national considerations have inhibited most MERCOSUR members from accepting the idea of a regional security alliance.

The results of a survey of 311 members of voluntary associations in São Paulo and Belo Horizonte suggest that members of voluntary associations incorporate the values introduced by social movements during the democratization process: they claim organizational autonomy from the state, and they defend more participatory forms of decisionmaking. These findings are important for the debate between democratic consolidation and delegative democracy. Democratization might benefit from the incorporation of these actors into new participatory designs.

The Guatemalan peace process provides an excellent opportunity to revisit a number of discussions about political democratization and social justice in Latin America. It is the premise of this article that fulfillment of the peace accords, particularly on demilitarization, is the necessary precondition for full development of political democracy in Guatemala. The article first summarizes how, beyond ending the war, the peace process has contributed to Guatemala’s democratization, and then analyzes the Guatemalan experience since the early 1980s as a means to address some of the broad theoretical debates.

In the wake of the 1999 Rio Summit and its focus on biregional cooperation, this article reviews the background and development of European-Latin American relations over the past two decades, the political and economic context, the current state of transatlantic links, and the shortterm prospects for the relationship. Among its several premises is that the EU and Latin America constitute the bulk of the West, and the ways they work together will therefore condition the role of each of them on the international stage.