The Andean Community

Abstract

This chapter analyses international parliamentarization in the Andean region. Andean integration has seen, first, the creation of the Andean Pact without an international parliamentary institution (IPI) in 1969, followed by the establishment of the Andean Parliament in 1979 and a slight IPI empowerment in conjunction with the foundation of the Andean Community in 1996. The Andean Parliament was created in the context of democratization in the region and a shift of the Andean Pact from a task-specific to a general-purpose organization. Whereas the conditions of parliamentarization continued to be favourable during the reform process leading to the Andean Community, none of them improved strongly enough to give a boost to parliamentary empowerment. Rather, institutional entrepreneurship was able to secure modest authority gains.