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This paper analyzes the role of think tanks as members of civil society in Latin America. Our goal is to present an initial conceptualization and measurement of the role think tanks play in the foreign policy sub-subsystem. We focus on three of the most influential think tanks in the region: CARI (Argentina), CEBRI (Brazil), and COMEXI (Mexico). This paper suggests that the state's characteristics and the character of its civil society determine the type and strength of its think tanks. This paper also considers the challenges that think tanks face in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico more generally by comparing each chosen think tank's board, public activities, presence in local media and social media, and publications. We conclude that there have yet to be significant incentives and resources available for thinks tanks in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico to grow and, thus, Latin American think tanks' activities typically follow their governments' agendas.

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50 years after the publication of the first and influential article in international relations (IR) analyzing foreign aid motivations, A theory of foreign aid, by Hans Morgenthau, IR scholarship has not yet accomplished a consistent theoretical body explaining international development cooperation. Most of the empirical studies on foreign aid have been contributions from other disciplines, especially economics. Research from the field of international relations has been mostly descriptive or poorly connected with IR paradigms.This article proposes to analyze motivations of foreign aid allocations decisions of donors. These motivations will be examined from the theoretical perspective of the international relations scholarship. In this way, it is sought to contribute, from the discipline of IR, to the explanation of the process in which developed countries make transfers of resources to developing countries.CITE AS:Pauselli, G. (2013). Teorías de relaciones internacionales y la explicación de la ayuda externa. Iberoamerican Journal of Development Studies, 2 (1): 72-92

The literature on aid allocation shows that many factors influence donors’ decision to provide aid. However, our knowledge about foreign aid allocation is based on traditional foreign aid, from developed to developing countries, and many assumptions of these theories do not hold when applied to southern donors. This article argues that south-south development cooperation (SSDC) can be explained by the strength of development cooperation’s domestic allies and foes. Specifically, it identifies civil society organizations as allies of SSDC and nationalist groups as opponents of SSDC. By using for the first time data on SSDC activities in Latin America, this article shows the predictive strength of a liberal domestic politics approach in comparison to the predictive power of alternative explanations. The results speak to scholars of both traditional foreign aid and south-south development cooperation in highlighting the limits of traditional theories of foreign aid motivations.

Claims about international relations and political science more broadly becoming more globalized coexist with enduring critiques of the discipline being dominated by scholars from wealthier Western countries. This article leverages data on publication patterns between 2008 and 2020 in the Argentine IR community, which we believe is a relevant and potentially representative sample from the Global South, to show that the discipline is becoming more globalized yet also more segmented. We argue that this segmentation is a product of unequal participation in social and professional networks. The norms and information that circulate through these networks shape the inclination as well as the ability of Global South scholars to join a globalizing discipline.

How do authoritative international bodies decide that states have complied with their orders? Compliance research has mostly focused on how states react to rulings and how interest groups mobilize for and against compliance. Less has been said about how international bodies certify compliance with their orders in contexts of conflicting interests and incomplete information. Because in theory the seal of compliance could be given to different types and volumes of state actions, we argue that when nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) monitor implementation closely, international adjudicators will be more demanding in compliance certification, resulting in more protracted compliance monitoring processes. We test our expectations in the case of the Inter- American Commission of Human Rights and find that recommendations take longer to reach status of full compliance when more NGOs act as petitioners and when they have more experience with monitoring compliance. If NGOs help that more effective implementation receives an international organization's seal of approval, large numbers of orders without full compliance might not necessarily be bad news about human rights on the ground.

Scholars have long discussed whether the rise of China poses a threat to the Liberal International Order. However, there are methodological challenges to studying the effect of a rising power on established norms. In particular, the participation of rising powers in the established order is not exogenously determined. To make an empirical contribution to this debate, we focus on Beijing’s influence as a member of the Human Rights Council. We exploit the fact that China’s membership in the Council is determined by an exogenous membership rule and implement a matching technique to test whether China has influenced the voting patterns of the other member states on identical recurring resolutions. We find that China’s presence in the Council systematically alters the voting behavior of other states in favor of China’s interest, and that this change is larger when it comes to the enforcement of human rights through international criticism. To delve into the mechanisms underlying these findings, we conduct in-depth interviews with experienced diplomats at the UN Human Rights Council.