No. 36 (1999): Multilateral negotiations

Negotiations, understood as an exchange of interests and the rapprochement of two opposing parties towards a mutually acceptable position, have become a mechanism of fundamental importance for incorporating new practices, commitments and rules into the international system of flows of goods, capital services, technology, people and information.

For Central America, this is of vital importance because it implies learning the mechanisms that small countries have at their disposal to defend their interests in an increasingly competitive and, in many cases, increasingly protectionist international trade environment.

Thus, through unilateral initiatives, multilateral disciplines and the negotiation of bilateral and regional agreements, the countries of the hemisphere in general and the Central American countries in particular have made deliberate and systematic efforts to create conditions conducive to the negotiation of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). In short, major events have been recent examples of progress in integration and negotiation.

In this sense, the Central American Journal of Public Administration, published by ICAP, is pleased to include in this issue a selection of articles that provide a variety of approaches concerning the process of continental regionalization and the increase in cross-conditionality around these issues and policies at the Central American level, emphasizing the important variations in the conceptualization and operationalization of the negotiations.

The regional reflection in this volume addresses, on the one hand, the world economic phenomena that have an impact on the economies of the area, as well as the follow-up of the economic evolution, with emphasis on the multilateral negotiations that the Isthmus carries out within its strategy of development and external opening with deepening in the process of integration of the region.

The documented experiences, on the other hand, show the global visualization of the management of negotiations with important advances with respect to debt-for-environment agreements, or debt-for-development, or environment-for-economic growth, manifesting the diverse emergence in terms of understandings and enriching the possible options of alliance between the different actors and partners, at the level of countries, companies and organized groups.