International economic relations in Latin America: a study on the perceptions of parliamentary elites

Abstract

This article analyzes the perceptions of parliamentarians from 17 countries in Latin America about economic and international relations. The central issue is to identify the determinants of parliamentarians’ preferences. The article seeks to identify which are the determinants that influence the options expressed by parliamentarians, putting in contrast their options for political and economic relations between countries in the region vs. their options for other countries and the main economic powers. The analysis is divided into two parts. The first one is comparative, with descriptive statistics and network analysis. After this analysis, legislatures/countries are compared at the aggregate level. The second part goes down to the level of individual
parliamentary behavior, seeking to estimate, with the application of linear regression models (OLS), the weight of different predictors for the formation of their preference structures. The article concludes that parliamentarians' preferences are strongly determined by contextual (structural) variables and a high degree of economic pragmatism, but political ideas continue to have some relevance. Although to a lesser extent, the ideology and preferences for state-regulated economies also help to understand why some parliamentarians defend more political and economic regionalism than others.