ABSTRACT
Since the 1990s economic policy debates in less developed countries (LDCs) have been characterized by a renewed interest in regional integration as a means of stimulating economic growth. That led to the revitalization of the already existing integration schemes, adapting them to the new context of increasing economic globalization. This new integration approach—so-called new regionalism or open regionalism—aims at making economic integration policies compatible with and complementary to policies designed to achieve a competitive insertion into international markets. Since the Guatemala Protocol signed in 1993 to modify the 1960 General Treaty of Central American Economic Integration, the Governments of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua have reactivated the process of economic integration of which they were part—the Central American Common Market (CACM)—under this new approach (Bulmer-Thomas 1998; Rueda-Junquera 1999; SGSICA-CEPAL 2004; Rueda-Junquera and Sánchez-Ancochea 2009; BCIE 2010).
