Regional institutions in global South": the rationale of regional institutionalization in South America since the 21st century (original) (raw)
Related papers
Theorizing Latin American Regionalism in the 21st Century
2016
This short article takes the new developments in Latin American regionalism in the 21 st century and the academic production which is derived from them as a starting point. The article reflects on some methodological aspects of this recent literature and explores possible pathways that could guide the research agenda in this area. It is argued that (i) the debate on Latin American regionalism could be better connected to the debates on the future of IR, (ii) a pragmatic and nuanced approach is needed with respect to the comparability of cases and to the location of Latin America and the EU in comparative regionalism, and (iii) the rich empirical material that is generated (or could be generated) by Latin American regionalisms is underutilized in analytical work that speaks to the global community of comparative regionalists.
Latin American regional governance today represents a conglomerate of commercial, political and trans-societal welfarist integration projects. In this overlapping and sometimes conflicting scenario what Latin Americanness should mean, and how integration projects should respond to current challenges of global political economy are being redefined. The focus of the paper is twofold: to better understand current regional transformations and to discuss what new developments mean for how we theorise non-European regionalism. Looking at the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas and the Union of South American Nations we ask: How are we to understand regional agreements that are grounded in different systems of rules, alternative ideas and motivations that contest ‘open regionalism’? We argue that Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) represent different pathways to regional building, creating foundations for post-hegemonic and post-trade regional governance. We thus challenge New Regionalist approaches that assume regionalism as taking place within and modelled by neoliberal economics, establishing the debate around ‘old’ vs. ‘new’ regionalism. As these categories are limited in grasping the full meaning and implications of post-hegemonic regional orders, we discuss UNASUR and ALBA as ‘arenas for action’ to understand divergent practices, outcomes and types of regionness emerging in alternative regional spaces in South America.
The events and processes taken place in the last decade in South America has given way to one of the most interesting regional phenomena under a global crisis and within a changing world order. From the traditional status of Washington´s backyard and reign of economic and political stability, South America has increasingly turned into a region marked by a heterodox development in the light of other dominant regional tendencies of development -the Europe Union, NAFTA and the Asia Pacific. The new South American regionalism (NSAR) is far from the dominant academic and official interpretations of the major dominant regional projects.
Reviewing South America Institutionalism and the Failure of Regional Integration Process
Sentris Journal , 2018
Revolusi Amerika Selatan secara massif pada awal abad 19, berdampak terhadap terbentuknya negara independen dan proses dekolonisasi oleh Kekaisaran Spanyol dan Portugal. Gaungan unifikasi atas dasar persamaan kultural dan linguistik berusaha diimplementasikan di wilayah ini secara terus-menerus, tetapi nyatanya proses integrasi regional ini selalu menemui kegagalan. Lemahnya proses industrialisasi, terbatasnya konsolidasi kedaulatan, serta banyaknya konflik internal turut serta berkontribusi dalam gagalnya usaha ini. Permasalahan ini terus berlanjut secara periodik hingga pada masa pembentukan regionalisme global pasca PD2. Disaat integrasi regional telah berhasil terbentuk di Afrika dan Eropa semisalnya, Amerika Selatan belum juga berhasil menegakkan suatu institusi regionalisme yang terpadu dan berdaya kompetisi tinggi di pasar dunia. Dari implikasi tersebut, karya ilmiah ini akan mencari interkoneksi antara pengaruh geopolitik kawasan dengan pembentukan institusi domestik untuk menemukan akar permasalahan gagalnya pembentukan regionalisme di Amerika Selatan, faktor historis semenjak dekolonisasi hingga gelombang revolusi sosialis abad 21 didalam dinamika Amerika Selatan akan digunakan sebagai fondasi analisis karya ilmiah ini. Kemudian, paradigma konstruktivis akan digunakan sebagai pengampu, disertai teori dan konsep regionalisme praktis oleh pakar Hubungan Internasional Jeffrey Checkel. -- The massive South American revolution during the Spanish and Portuguese Empires early 19th century affected the formation of an independent state and process of regional decolonization. Unification movement on the basis of cultural and linguistic similarity strives always echoed continuously between each century, however, the so-called regional integration process always deemed as fails and ineffective. The pithless industrialization process, combined with strong sovereignty dilemma that caused limited consolidation as well as much internal conflicts were all contribute to the failure of this motion. The problem were not taking considerable highlight until during the formation of global regionalism post-World War 2. For instance, while regional integration has been successfully formed in Africa and Europe, however, South America has not yet succeeded in establishing an integrated regionalism institution that is effective as well as highly competitive in the global market. From those implications, this paper will solicit for interconnections between regional geopolitical influences and the formation of domestic institutions to seek the root causes of regionalism failure in South America. Time periodization for historical factors since decolonization until the wave of 21st-century socialist revolution (Pink Tide) will be used as the foundation for analyzing the dynamics of South America. Ultimately, this paper would use the constructivist paradigm as a basic principle, accompanied by the theory and concept of practical regionalism by International Relations scholar Jeffrey Checkel.
Region, regionness and regionalism in Latin America: Towards a new synthesis (NPE)
New Political Economy, 2012
regional governance today represents a conglomerate of commercial, political and trans-societal welfarist integration projects. In this overlapping and sometimes conflicting scenario what Latin Americanness should mean, and how integration projects should respond to current challenges of global political economy are being redefined. The focus of the paper is twofold: to better understand current regional transformations and to discuss what new developments mean for how we theorise non-European regionalism. Looking at the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas and the Union of South American Nations we ask: How are we to understand regional agreements that are grounded in different systems of rules, alternative ideas and motivations that contest 'open regionalism'? We argue that Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) represent different pathways to regional building, creating foundations for post-hegemonic and post-trade regional governance. We thus challenge New Regionalist approaches that assume regionalism as taking place within and modelled by neoliberal economics, establishing the debate around 'old' vs. 'new' regionalism. As these categories are limited in grasping the full meaning and implications of post-hegemonic regional orders, we discuss UNASUR and ALBA as 'arenas for action' to understand divergent practices, outcomes and types of regionness emerging in alternative regional spaces in South America.
Regionalism in Latin America. Navigating in the Fog
The more recent waves of regionalism in Latin America have been associated, respectively, with structuralist, neoliberal and post-liberal economic and political experiments in the region. Structuralist regionalism was inaugurated in the 1950s and somehow survived until the 1970s; open regionalism followed in the 1980s and 1990s, and was replaced, to a certain extent, during the next decade by post-liberal regionalism. However, the limits, if not demise, of post-liberal experiments in the most important economies of Latin America pose the question of the future of regionalism. In this changing situation, this paper explores several questions that rise about the future of regionalism in Latin America. Will regionalism hold sway in Latin America? Will present integration schemes continue in the region? Will new entities arise? Will there be a convergence in diversity between integration projects in Latin America? Will the new context of global uncertainties lead to a revival of regionalism?
The Routledge Handbook to Global Political Economy Conversations and Inquiries, 2020
PROOFREADING VERSION. FOR QUOTATION PURPOSES PLEASE ACCESS THE ORIGINAL PUBLICATION AT THE DOI. The chapter addresses the two main regionalist projects that have taken place in South America since its countries’ independence from Spain and Portugal, namely the Andean Community (AC) and the Common Market of the South (Mercosur).8 By focusing on a number of case studies for each regionalist project, it will be argued that collective identity and regional institutions played an important role in orienting state action towards regionalism, for they significantly shifted state action that could have taken another direction facing the presence or absence of certain material incentives. In the case of the AC, it will be shown that cultural, ideological and intergroup collective identities were determinant for the unfolding of regionalism in the three case studies observed, where regional institutions operated also as powerful sources of state identification with one another, and as pushers for bringing cooperation forward. In the case of the Mercosur, it will be contended that in the absence of strong regional institutions, and of a cultural and an intergroup identity, the ideological dimension of collective identity was the main driver of regionalism in the two case studies addressed. But before proceeding with this analysis, a word must be said about South America as a region and South American regionalism as distinct from a broader Latin American one.
Latin American Integration: Regionalism à la Carte in a Multipolar World?.pdf-
Colombia Internacional, 2017
This article presents an analysis of the different approaches proposed by authors who have done research on Latin American integration and regionalism, and suggests that there are three competing initiatives of integration and regionalism in the third wave of Latin American integration: Post-Liberal Regionalism contained within UNASUR and ALBA, Open Regionalism Reloaded in the region through the Pacific Alliance, and Multilateralism or Diplomatic Regionalism with a Latin American flavor envisaged in the recently created CELAC. The study concludes that these new developments of a regionalism à la carte are a product of dislocation of the economic agenda of regionalism towards a set of diverse issues. Hence it demands a rethinking of the theorization of Latin American Regionalism.
Post-Liberal Regional Dynamics of South America - Inductive vs. Deductive Approaches to Regionalism
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, regionalism as an approach for studying International Relations has been gaining a momentum and popularity, yet, it has been mostly dominated by Eurocentric and deductive postulations, unable to successfully answer many regional issues. The focus of this thesis is to examine the validity of the major regionalist theories in the context of South America, a region that offers an ideal environment for a study of post-liberal regionalism. The thesis attempts to answer what are the main shortcomings of the contemporary regionalist debate. The main hypothesis is that while the contemporary debate of regionalism is dominated by the deductive approach, this can only direct us to some general variables and factors, but it is the inductive approach that leads us to correct assumption by expulsing extra-regional influences while building the hypothesis up. The hypothesis is tested on the South American regional dynamics through four thematic clusters based on the major assumptions of the regional theories that test their validity. The analyzed trajectories of the South American regional dynamic prove that the deductive approach is valuable in directing the research the right way in some general patterns, but it fails to make correct postulations about the type of the regional integration and its expectations. On the other hand, the inductive approach picks up the regional dynamics without the extra-regional experiences and allows to describe and identify the region-specific realities. The thesis ultimate shows that the study of international relations should be inductive in its nature while relying on some systemic variables and factors in its inquiries. Yet, the global multipolarity empowers specific regional dynamics and values that are determinant.
Globalization, 2021
This introduction charts the current complexity of Latin American (LA) regionalism. Seemingly pulled in opposite directionsbetween dependency/autonomy, competition/cooperation, state/civil society power, capitalism/socialismthese dynamics constitute a significant reconfiguration of the LA regional landscape. And yet, such complexity tends to elude complete capture by any singular theoretical approach. The collection of papers in this Special Issue reflects both the multiplicity of the Latin American region(s) and the theoretically pluralist terrain of contemporary scholarship on LA politics and international relations. The introduction will first outline the complexity of 21 st century LA regionalism and the challenge this poses for scholars in the field. Secondly, we make the case for an 'integrative pluralism' approach to unpacking the multiplicity of regionalisation projects, from both above and below. In bringing together diverse perspectives to a common research problem, we hope to contribute to ongoing debates in IR/IPE over the 'pluralist turn', and what might be done to push this collective project forward. Thirdly, we briefly explore the multi-scalar nature of region-building, encompassing both various spaces/scales as well as political actors. Finally, we outline the contributions to the Special Issue, that span the terrain of LA regionalism from above (political institutions) and below (transnational movements).