Mercosur: a case of constitutional failure?

MERCOSUR is more that 15 years old. Despite high expectations early on and the political rhetoric that followed for many years thereafter, its outcomes remain limited especially when compared with the objectives of the Treaty of Asunción that envisaged the creation of a common market. The aim of this article is to take a closer look at the causes of the limited success of the process of integration into MERCOSUR by offering an economic assessment of the `constitutional quality´ of the Agreement, within the analytical framework of constitutional economics. Our main argument is that the poor results so far obtained can be attributed, at least in part, to the inadequate quality of MERCOSUR´s `economic constitution´. We can highlight a poor economic constitution, incapable of addressing two aspects: the theory (what is best for all) and the interests (what is mutually acceptable) that determine the capacity of a constitution to appropriately direct the choices of citizens.