León Lindberg defines integration as "the processes by which nations put forward the desire and ability to conduct key foreign and domestic policies independently of each other, instead seeking to make joint decisions or delegate their decision-making process to new central organs.
For his part, Jorge Mariño says "the regional integration process is understood as the converging, deliberate (voluntary) process -based on solidarity-, gradual and progressive, between two or more States, on a common action plan in economic, social , cultural, political, etc" (Mariño, 1999: 112).
- It is worth asking -before delving deeper into what an integration process contemplates-, how the desire or the will of the States to become part of a broader community is constituted, even going so far as to cede part of their sovereignty.
- "The formation of political communities is fundamentally due to the accumulation of shared values and interests, a situation that is reached through the interaction between its different units, and by consensual procedures" (Wilhelmy, 1988: 56).