Regional banks emerged around the 1960s with the mission of contributing to the development and integration of Latin America, primarily through the financing of infrastructure projects, essential to the region's industrialization and trade flows.In 2000, the South American Regional Integration Initiative (IIRSA) was created, under whose Secretariat the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF), and FONPLATA -Development Bank -began working together to promote territorial planning and find financing solutions.Even with the dissolution of IIRSA, resulting from the paralysis of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) starting in 2017, the coordinated action of the three banks continued, through initiatives such as the Alliance for the Integration and Development of Latin America and the Caribbean (ILAT), the Sucre Declaration, and the "South American Integration Routes," demonstrating the resilience of infrastructure integration in the face of political change.Therefore, the overall objective of this thesis was to analyze the contribution of the development banks IDB, CAF, and FONPLATA to building regional infrastructure integration in South America.The methodology involved identifying integration models and operational concepts under which these banks operate; identifying the specific problems of Latin American regional infrastructure and its financing; and analyzing the performance of IDB, CAF, and FONPLATA both individually, focusing on documents, projects, and institutional structures focused on integration, and collectively, from the emergence of IIRSA to the Integration Routes.It was found that, despite the current general crisis in Latin American regionalism, both intellectual and institutional, the three banks are at the center of building a governance system for financing regional infrastructure in South America.However, they have shifted from a model centralized in IIRSA to one, after the end of this Initiative, focused on decentralized cooperation.
This article examines the convergence of two major initiatives of international cooperation: the European Union’s Global Gateway (GGE) and China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). At first glance, these projects appear to embody distinct paradigms. The GGE emerged within the framework of North-South Cooperation (NSC), traditionally associated with the Global North’s approach to development assistance, emphasizing aid conditionality, institutional reforms, and adherence to liberal democratic norms. In contrast, the BRI is rooted in South-South Cooperation (SSC), which stresses solidarity among developing countries, mutual respect, and non-interference. Despite these different origins, both frameworks have increasingly adopted convergent strategies, driven by shared geopolitical ambitions and the pressing need to frame global development within the narrative of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The analysis proceeds from a critical theory perspective within International Relations, questioning whether these initiatives genuinely transform the global order or, rather, reproduce existing power asymmetries. Building on the insights of Robert Cox, the article emphasizes that international cooperation is not a neutral or purely humanitarian exercise. Instead, it constitutes a political mechanism that sustains hegemonic structures. Aid, investment, and connectivity projects often reinforce the interests of donor states, embedding them in development agendas that appear universal but remain shaped by particular geopolitical priorities. This theoretical framing provides the basis for interrogating the practices of both the GGE and BRI. From this critical lens, the article argues that cooperation should not be understood simply in terms of poverty alleviation or technical assistance. Rather, it is part of a broader struggle over global governance, legitimacy, and influence. Discourses around sustainability, inclusion, and “win-win” partnerships often obscure the underlying reality: cooperation serves to project power, secure strategic resources, and expand spheres of influence. The EU and China, though employing different narratives, both use development as a foreign policy instrument, reinforcing their global standing at a time when multipolarity and competition over leadership in the Global South are intensifying. Both the GGE and the BRI claim to tackle urgent global challenges. The EU highlights infrastructure deficits, climate change, and digital divides, framing its response in terms of values such as transparency, democracy, and rules-based governance. Conversely, China emphasizes its commitment to mutual benefit, shared prosperity, and non-interference, presenting the BRI as an inclusive framework that accommodates partner countries’ priorities without imposing political conditions. These discourses reveal important ideological differences but also converge on the goal of legitimacy: both seek to present themselves as reliable partners to the Global South and as leaders in shaping a post-Western order. Institutionally, the two models diverge significantly. The Global Gateway operates through a complex, multilayered governance structure involving the European Commission, EU Member States, development banks such as the EIB, private sector actors, and civil society organizations. This decentralized architecture is coordinated through the “Team Europe” approach, designed to promote coherence and visibility of European external action. By contrast, the BRI remains a highly centralized initiative. Strategic direction is set by Chinese ministries, while state-owned enterprises play a central role in implementation, supported primarily by financing from state-owned development banks such as the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China. This centralized and state-led model reflects China’s preference for bilateralism and flexibility, allowing Beijing to negotiate directly with partner governments on a case-by-case basis. Yet, despite these structural differences, both models demonstrate a growing convergence in financial logic. Traditional concessional aid has declined in importance, giving way to investment-driven cooperation that blends public and private capital. This shift emphasizes risk mitigation, return on investment, and the mobilization of large-scale funding for infrastructure and connectivity projects. The EU’s EFSD+ mechanism, for instance, offers €40 billion in guarantees and €13.5 billion in grants, designed to catalyze up to €135 billion in private investment across strategic sectors. China’s BRI, meanwhile, had mobilized over $1.17 trillion in cumulative investments by 2024, with more than $11 billion allocated to renewable energy alone in that year. Such figures underscore how development cooperation has become increasingly financialized, subordinating aid to logics of profitability and visibility. This financialization also reveals a deeper ideological shift. Earlier models of cooperation often invoked moral obligations or humanitarian imperatives. By contrast, the contemporary discourse stresses mutual benefit and partnership—rhetoric that often conceals underlying asymmetries. “Win-win” outcomes are frequently skewed toward donor states, whose strategic and economic priorities dominate project design. Moreover, the growing reliance on repayable instruments raises concerns about debt sustainability in recipient countries, particularly those with weak governance structures or limited fiscal capacity. The danger is that development cooperation, instead of fostering autonomy, may deepen dependency and vulnerability. These trends highlight a broader transformation in the global aid architecture. While the vocabulary of the 2030 Agenda emphasizes inclusivity, equality, and sustainability, the actual practices of cooperation remain subordinated to geopolitical imperatives. Far from redistributing resources equitably or enabling independent development trajectories in the Global South, cooperation increasingly functions as a means of securing access to markets, strategic corridors, and political alignment. The EU and China thus represent two different pathways to the same end: the use of development as an instrument of geopolitical positioning. The article further considers the role of recipient states and non-state actors in this dynamic. Officially, both the GGE and the BRI advocate for local ownership, context-sensitive implementation, and participatory governance. In practice, however, the influence of local actors remains limited. The GGE incorporates civil society organizations to a greater degree, particularly in monitoring and advocacy, but final decision-making is driven by institutional and financial imperatives at the EU level. In the BRI, local participation is even more constrained, with negotiations conducted primarily between Chinese officials and partner governments, often behind closed doors. This imbalance reflects the structural challenge of ensuring genuine agency for recipient states in a context where power asymmetries remain pronounced. Ultimately, the article concludes that both the GGE and the BRI are not transformative frameworks but rather mechanisms that reconfigure existing hierarchies of global governance. While their instruments, discourses, and institutional arrangements differ, their substantive impact converges: reinforcing rather than challenging the dominant structures of international order. This convergence underscores the limitations of the 2030 Agenda, which, despite its universal aspirations, has become deeply entangled with the foreign policy agendas of major powers. As international cooperation becomes increasingly subordinated to strategic competition in a multipolar world, the scope for building genuinely solidarity-based frameworks narrows. The article calls for renewed debate on the purpose, governance, and political economy of development cooperation. It argues for moving beyond the adaptation of existing frameworks toward the envisioning of new paradigms rooted in equity, pluralism, and democratic governance. Such paradigms would not treat the Global South merely as a beneficiary but as a co-architect of global development, capable of shaping agendas, institutions, and norms on equal footing. Only in this way can cooperation transcend its role as a vehicle of power projection and become a tool for genuine transformation.
LUCIO DOMÍNGUEZ NÁREZ, Yazmín Isolda Álvarez García
The figure of the Autonomous Constitutional Organizations (OCA), emerged in Mexico, within the framework of the establishment of the neoliberal model at the beginning of the eighties of the twentieth century. Although the emergence of the OCA is due to a decentralization and deconcentration of the Federal Public Administration, however, its origin protected in the constitutional text, endows it with the necessary elements that equates it to the same level of supremacy of the traditional powers, establishing itself as authentic counterweights, which pay for democracy, transparency and accountability. Based on the foregoing, it is proposed that OCA be recognized as a fourth atypical power, which has particularities such as being fragmented into various organisms.
The article focuses on ways to assess the origin and development of the first national currency in the world which was introduced into circulation in Venezuela in 2018.Besides, it sets the goal to find out specific features of Petro (PTR) and its operation as Venezuelan national cryptocurrency.The methodological basis consists of general scientific methods of cognition to include analysis, synthesis, and comparison.The special methods such as content analysis of official documents as well as economic analysis are also applied in the article.The research produced some key findings: recent surveys confirm its new function of becoming a convenient means of payment in the environment of the cash absence, and a means of survival for many families living in the environment of a deepening economic crisis and sanctions introduce by the USA.The main outcomes imply that the national cryptocurrency PRT has some advantages over other cryptocurrencies, one of them being the fact that unlike Bitcoin and other currencies it is issued by the Venezuelan government and has a state guarantee of reliability and stability when operating in the country.However, it is not without disadvantages, the main one being the possibility of its anonymous usage which has resulted in an increased flow of illegal transactions and a larger shadow economy which has grown significantly in Venezuela.The main conclusions drawn from the research are that the introduction of the national cryptocurrency had produced a positive impact on the economic development of the country.In fact, it resulted in an increase in the number of financial transactions within the country; it led to additional opportunities concerning exchanges with other countries and international financing of Venezuela by third parties; the cryptocurrency contributed to the integration of Venezuela into a new type of the world market.