Overview

The five chapters in Part II emphasize the national perspective that countries necessarily adopt when approaching integration issues. Economics is of course an important element in shaping this perspective, but strategic, political and even cultural considerations are also relevant. Depending on its particular situation and characteristics, each country will tend to stress some elements over others, thus leading to a national perspective that is unique to it. Four of the five chapters in this section deal with individual countries or groups of countries. These are by Manuel Agosíh, “The Role of Free Trade Agreements in Chile’s Development Strategy”; Maria Luiza Falcão Silva, Joaquim Pinto de Andradc and Thomas S. Torrance, “Macro-economic Coordination and Policy Problems of Regional Blocs: Reflections on the Mercosur Experiment,” Mahani Zainal Abidin, “Combining Integration and Development Strategies: The Malaysian Perspective,” and Zhou Jianming, “Economic Globalization, Regional Economic Integration and China’s Economic Development Strategy.” These four chapters discuss the national perspectives of Chile, Argentina and Brazil, Malaysia, and China respectively. The chapter by Neantro Saavedra-Rivano, “Developmental Affinities in Regional Integration,” attempts instead to develop a general conceptual framework for understanding the factors that lead countries to seek integration with others.