Regional organizations and the politics of sanctions against undemocratic behaviour in the Americas

Abstract

Under which conditions do regional organizations in the Americas impose sanctions on member states that violate democracy? To address this question, the article combines a qualitative comparative analysis applied to 55 presumed threats to democracy brought to the attention of regional organizations (ROs), and a process tracing analysis of two cases of the imposition of sanctions. The analysis reveals that ROs impose sanctions despite lack of support or even obstruction by the US, when the threats are committed against the incumbent in relatively weak member states. The unique case in which an RO suspended a relatively powerful state because of threats by the incumbent required the convergence of interests between ROs’ most powerful member states, and the support of the US. The article demonstrates that under specific conditions, ROs in the Americas can become relatively autonomous enforcers of democracy-protection norms.

Regional sanctions and the struggle for democracy: Introduction to the special issue

“…We do so by acknowledging and critically scrutinising the diversity of regional approaches to democracy protection through sanctions. Six articles focus on specific ROs: ROs in the Americas (Palestini, 2020), the AU (Hellquist, 2020), the European Union (EU) (Closa, 2020), the CoE (Soyaltin-Colella, 2020), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) (Schembera, 2020), and LAS (Debre, 2020). A seventh contribution (Whitehead, 2020) has a comparative and cross-regional perspective.…”

“…On this basis, the CoE for instance suspended Greece in 1967 and Turkey in 1981 from the Parliamentary Assembly (Soyaltin-Colella, 2020; Whitehead, 1986). ROs in the Americas, such as OAS, MERCOSUR, the Andean Community (CAN), and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) (Palestini, 2020) have integrated sanctions into primary legislation through additional protocols. In the case of the AU, the Constitutive Act of 2000 gave a path-breaking possibility for the RO to use sanctions in cases of unconstitutional changes of government, which have mainly been operationalised as military coups (Hellquist, 2020).…”

Regional organizations and democratic conditionality: Family resemblances and shaming

“… 3. Hence Palestini (2020) assigns sanctions a causal weight of 1 in his qualitative comparative analysis exercise, but shaming is only scored 0.7. …”

Para Além Do Comércio: Mercosul, Democracia E Segurança Regional

“…Em contraste com os episódios de instabilidade política no Paraguai e em outros países da região (Bolívia e Equador), a crise na Venezuela é muito mais complexa, e a suspensão exige muito mais recursos dos países do bloco (Breitegger, 2018). Em segundo lugar, distintamente da aplicação anterior de cláusulas democráticas na América do Sul, essa é a primeira vez que um mecanismo de proteção democrática não é empregado para defender um mandato presidencial vigente contra tentativas de deposição, mas é utilizado para punir um governo em exercício que atentou contra a plena vigência de instituições democráticas (Palestini, 2020).…”