Padilla ’21 [Luis-Alberto; 2021; president of the board of the Guatemalan International Relations & Peace Research Institute (IRIPAZ), member of the International Peace Research Association (IPRA), former Secretary General of the Latin American Council on Peace Research (CLAIP), Director of the Diplomatic Academy, Former Vice Minister, former ambassador in Chile, former permanent representative to the United Nations at the Vienna International Centre, former ambassador to Austria, former ambassador to the Russian Federation, former ambassador to the Netherlands, permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, and professor of the Seminar of World Geopolitics at the Faculty of Political Sciences of the Catholic University Rafael Landivar (URL) of Guatemala; Sustainable Development in the Anthropocene, “Transnational Citizenship in the European Union,” Ch. 6.3, p. 293-294] SPark
Unfortunately and in contrast, other regions of the world like Latin America have not yet succeeded in gaining the impetus for a social integration process comparable to the EU. Indeed, MERCOSUR, the Andean Pact and the Central American Integration System (SICA) have all failed to establish supranational institutions, so those initiatives consist of regionalization and multilateral cooperation, not integration. However, the absence of social integration doesnotmean that discussions concerning transnational citizenship are not possible in the context of regionalization, because the interconnectedness brought about by the internet and smartphones in thisinformation era (Castells 1997) has facilitated the creation of links and networksbetween all kind of actors, including individuals and social movements involving religious, cultural and non-governmental organizations. For that reason it is indisputable that not just a regional but a global civil society exists, as pointed out at the beginning of this century by Kaldor et al. (2003). In Global Civil Society they refer to the concept as ‘normative’ but also as a useful way to describe what was then considered an emerging new social reality as a result of the connectivity of global civic action as a counterweight to the narrow notion relating globalization to strictly economic phenomena (Kaldor et al. 2003: 3-4).