States of sovereignty & regional integration in the Andes (2012) (original) (raw)
Related papers
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.
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.
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.
Pensamiento Propio , mayo de 2014 RESUMEN This article revises the reshaping of regional cooperation in South America.In the first section I bring to the fore the changed global scenario that has exponentially amplified the room to manoeuvre and allowed distancing from the Washington Consensus. In the second section I describe the variety of initiatives that cut across the region. In the subsequent sections I analyse and contrast the ALBA initiative and the Union of South American Nations. Finally some conclusions are offered. By looking at a set of new foundational ideas and institutions, from new continental redefinitions under UNASUR and ALBA to re-territorialized management of natural resources, defence and currency and payments arrangements, I ask how these steps are reshaping regional cooperation and what they mean for the way we understand regionalism as expanding away from erstwhile trade integration.
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.
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.
La Iniciativa para la Integración en Infraestructura Regional Suramericana
En América Latina la continuidad del proyecto extractivo, desarrollado en las últimas décadas, necesita de la readaptación de la infraestructura existente y la construcción de nueva infraestructura acorde a los actuales patrones productivos y de intercambio. Los corredores de transporte, energía y comunicaciones son las obras priorizadas por los países de la región en base a una visión en la que prevalecen las demandas del mercado internacional y de los actores geopolíticamente hegemónicos. La zona del Paraná inferior se ha transformado en un importante polo logístico con pretensiones de crecimiento y de expansión a los puertos del Paraná medio, sobre todo en la ciudad de Santa Fe, ante la hiperespecialización de la región en la exportación de commodities y la tracción del mercado mundial. En tal sentido se desarrolla una infraestructura acorde a los nuevos requerimientos del comercio internacional, priorizando la multimodalidad y las salidas bi-oceánicas. La reconversión del puerto...
Explaining Latin America's fourth wave of regionalism.
Contrary to Europe, where a single process of regional integration has experienced several waves of enlargement, Latin America is characterized by a succession of four waves that saw the signing of agreements launching or reactivating several distinct but quite similar integration processes, in the years 1950-1960, 1970-1980, 1990 and 2000-2010. Most scholarly efforts have been centered on the evolution of each regional integration process in Central America, the Andean or Caribbean regions or in the Common market of the south (MERCOSUR), or on the overall picture of regionalism, yet the simultaneous onsets, the similar features and parallel evolutions of various regional integration processes in Latin America have not been properly studied. This piece fills that void explaining the different waves by a combination of convergence of interests and diffusion of ideas, with a mix of external and internal incentives, in a given historical context. It also puts the emphasis on paradigm shifts intersecting with disruptions, as triggering the surge of a new wave, and it uses path-dependence arguments to consider legacies and resilience. The paper argues that the current wave, as compared to the previous ones, is composed of regional integration processes of a third kind, best described by a contentions blend of structuralism and neoliberalism.