Senior Officials and Regional Organizations in Central America: The Informal Emergence of Supranationalism

This article deals with the institutionalization process of the Central American Integration System (SICA). Despite criticism of inefficiency and failed reforms, SICA has profoundly changed since its creation in 1991. To explain this process, we use a sociological approach of regional integration that borrows from political sociology and the sociology of change in international organizations. To understand the drivers of informal change, we consider institutional ambiguity and individual competencies. On the one hand, we study the organizational context in which actors are encouraged to act as well as their socio-professional trajectories. The data used in this article is the product of three fields of research carried out in Central America between September 2009 and July 2012.