Why do member states of regional intergovernmental organizations (RIOs) voluntarily adapt their policies and institutions to the norms and procedures implemented in other member states? I tackle this puzzle by investigating the domestic effects of health cooperation among South American states within the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR). The article shows how the establishment of a regional sector-based institution like the Health Council of UNASUR triggered the diffusion of similar policies by reducing transaction costs and increasing information exchanges among member states' health bureaucracies. I argue that RIOs such as UNASUR catalyse transnational diffusion not by enforcing binding regional norms (as in the case of the EU), but by bridging member states' shared functional needs and asymmetric capacities in specific policy areas. Using the case of UNASUR Health, the article contributes to the study of the logics of transnational diffusion within RIOs in the absence of authority delegated to supranational institutions.
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected virtually every aspect of life, for individuals, communities, nations, regions, and the international system. In this forum, scholars from around the world with diverse areas of expertise consider the contributions of international relations (IR) scholarship in our understanding of the politics and governance challenges surrounding the pandemic. The seven essays that follow together examine how our current state of knowledge speaks to the theme of ISA 2020: “Multiple Identities and Scholarship in a Global IR: One Profession, Many Voices.” Each essay features a research area and body of scholarship that both informs our understanding of the COVID-19 pandemic and reflects on how the pandemic challenges us to push our scholarship and intellectual community further. Together, these essays highlight the diversity of our discipline of IR and how its many voices may bring us together in one conversation. La pandemia de COVID-19 ha afectado prácticamente a todos los aspectos de la vida para las personas, las comunidades, las naciones, las regiones y el sistema internacional. En este foro, los académicos de todo el mundo con diversas áreas de experiencia consideran las contribuciones de los estudios de las relaciones internacionales (International Relations, IR) a nuestro entendimiento de la política y los desafíos de gobierno que rodean a la pandemia. Los siete ensayos a continuación analizan en conjunto cómo nuestro estado de conocimiento actual aborda el tema de la Asociación de Estudios Internacionales (International Studies Association, ISA) de 2020: “Múltiples identidades y estudios en una IR global: una profesión, muchas voces.” Cada ensayo presenta un área de investigación y un cuerpo de estudios que conforman nuestro entendimiento de la pandemia de COVID-19 y también reflexionan sobre cómo esta nos desafía a impulsar aún más a nuestra comunidad académica e intelectual. En conjunto, estos ensayos destacan la diversidad de nuestra disciplina de relaciones internacionales y cómo sus numerosas voces pueden juntarnos en una conversación. La pandémie de COVID 2019 a affecté pratiquement tous les aspects de la vie, que ce soit les individus, les communautés, les nations, les régions ou le système international. Dans cette tribune, des chercheurs du monde entier spécialisés dans divers domaines d'expertise réfléchissent aux contributions des recherches en relations internationales à notre compréhension des défis politiques et de gouvernance entourant la pandémie. Les sept essais ainsi réunis examinent la manière dont l’état actuel de nos connaissances aborde le thème de la convention 2020 de l'Association d’études internationales : « Identités et recherches multiples dans des relations internationales globales : une profession, de nombreuses voix ». Chaque essai présente un domaine de recherche et un corpus d’études qui éclaire notre compréhension de la pandémie de COVID 2019 tout en amenant une réflexion sur la façon dont la pandémie nous remet en question et nous pousse à aller plus loin dans nos recherches et notre communauté intellectuelle. Ensemble, ces essais mettent en évidence la diversité de notre discipline des relations internationales et la manière dont ses nombreuses voix peuvent nous réunir dans un débat.
What explains the variation in how states collectively deal with public health challenges across different regions? We tackle this puzzle by comparing the regional health governance efforts pursued within the Central American Integration System (SICA) and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR). We show that Central America's health governance has been driven by external actors, whereas South America's was driven by states within the region, and remained insulated from external actors’ influence. We argue that the explanation for such variation lies in the interplay of state capacity and regional leadership. In Central America, weak state capacity combined with the absence of a regional leader willing to provide governance resources. This opened up space for external actors to contribute actively to regional health governance, complementing the governance of Central American governments. In South America, Brazil's regional leadership mobilised neighbouring states’ capacities by promoting a South-South cooperation agenda based on intra-regional exchanges among national health bureaucracies, which, however, proved vulnerable to intergovernmental conflicts. Through the comparison of Central and South America, the article bridges the gap between global health governance scholarship and comparative regionalism, providing new insights on the determinants and effects of regional health governance modes in the Global South.
Under what conditions does one transnational governance mode evolve into another? Under what conditions does a transnational governance initiative break down? The article addresses these questions through the analysis of the Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America (IIRSA), showing how delegation, orchestration, and intergovernmental (direct) governance can be linked to one another, creating a chain of governance modes in motion. By reconstructing IIRSA's trajectory, we illuminate the orchestrating role of regional development banks, and explore the conditions leading to the breakdown of transnational governance. The article contributes to the indirect governance literature by complementing prevailing functionalist accounts with a power‐based perspective that underlines the impact of intergovernmental conflicts and power asymmetries on transnational governance. The article also bridges the gap between the international relation governance scholarship and comparative regionalism, providing new insights on the logics of transnational governance in world regions characterized by limited state capacities.
Why do democracies agree with contested illiberal regimes on the creation of regional institutions for election monitoring? This article tackles this puzzle by analyzing the creation of the Union of South American Nations’ (UNASUR) Electoral Council (ECU) and its electoral “accompaniment” missions. The case of the ECU is particularly relevant, since its missions allowed for the legitimization of illiberal electoral practices in a region predominantly populated by democratic states that have pursued democracy consolidation through regional cooperation. We show that the emergence of the ECU resulted from the interaction of the following conditions: Venezuela’s leadership; the mobilization of the transgovernmental network of South American electoral authorities; and the interaction between different sets of state preferences regarding election observation, which reached an equilibrium around an institutional design that did not impose a diminution of sovereignty on the contracting states. The article sheds light on the genesis of sovereignty-protective institutional designs, showing how they allow for the reconciliation of non-coincident preferences even in a sensitive field like election observation. The article also contributes to the literature on international election observation by explaining why democratic states may favor the emergence of monitoring mechanisms that contribute to the erosion of democracy in a region. In so doing, the article adds to the literature on regime-boosting regionalism, illuminating the conditions under which democratic regional organizations (ROs) create institutions that can boost illiberal regimes’ legitimacy. In particular, our findings show that secondary powers, like Venezuela, can strategically exploit transgovernmental networks’ mobilization to pursue their domestic and geopolitical interests (including illiberal ones) within ROs.
Latin American regionalism displays a long history of crises, which have affected almost all regional organisations (ROs) across different waves of regionalism. The article conducts the first comparative analysis of the outcomes of crises in Latin American ROs across time, tackling the following questions: What have been the outcomes of the crises faced by Latin American ROs? Under what conditions does a crisis result in the survival or breakdown of the affected RO in Latin America? We adopt a multi-method approach that combines QCA with process tracing to identify the causal pathways to the survival or breakdown of ROs across a universe of eight crises. The findings show that Latin American ROs have been resilient to crises, which resulted in RO survival in seven cases out of eight. The QCA reveals how the distributive nature of interstate conflicts and the availability of majority voting are both sufficient conditions for Latin American ROs to survive a crisis. Analysis of the outlier case of UNASUR shows that normative conflicts that take place in the absence of majority voting constitute a ‘perfect storm’ configuration that can lead to RO breakdown. The findings also show that Latin America ROs’ tendency to survive crises is associated with the preservation of the status quo in terms of institutional design, which in some cases is achieved through the temporary flexibilisation of existing rules. Differently from the case of the EU, then, the crises of Latin American ROs have not led to the deepening of regional integration, but rather to institutional inertia.
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