CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE MODERNIZATION PROCESS OF THE SOUTHERN COMMON MARKET (MERCOSUR) INTEGRATION MODEL

This article aims to critically analyze the process of modernization of the integration model of the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR). The accumulated literature on MERCOSUR has addressed the different facets of this integration process – economic, political, social and legal – and has contributed to a reasonable understanding of what the bloc was in its origin, how it evolved over the first two decades and what are its main problems and paradigm shifts in Brazil's foreign policy. As for the theoretical options (reference and conceptual framework), methodological and excerpts, this work, being eminently bibliographic, has as its fulcrum the explanatory studies, which can be used to investigate some themes based on new perspectives and expand the existing studies, as well as the legal diplomas of MERCOSUR, which help the theoretical construction and at the same time the critical reconstruction of its foundations. From these options it is inferred the reference and conceptual framework, in which there are at least five interpretations with strong explanatory power of the causes of the crisis, with a view to the formulation and implementation of a set of measures of various orders to accelerate the process of modernization of the MERCOSUR integration model. The results of this article corroborate the hypothesis according to which MERCOSUR is in the stage of a (imperfect) Customs Union, and there is a need for adjustments to the reality in which it lives, with a view to rescuing the initial project and encouraging agreements with other states and blocs.