Ecuador
Lessons from Regional Responses to Security, Health and Environmental Challenges in Latin America – review
Lessons from Regional Responses to Security, Health and Environmental Challenges in Latin America explores these three areas in terms of governance challenges post-COVID-19. Editor Ivo Ganchev brings together diverse regional perspectives that critically analyse US influence in the region, regional versus national approaches and alternative tools for governance. While its contemporary focus may risk obsolescence, the book is a valuable resource for understanding and addressing current challenges in Latin America, writes Tainá Siman.
This volume edited by Ivo Ganchev presents an assessment on the current challenges for governance in Latin America in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, considering three under-researched topics in Latin America: security, health and environment. These three topics were not selected randomly, but on the basis of the results of a survey among 78 political scientists asking which themes lacked further research in the Latin American context. In a compelling introduction dividing scholarship on regionalism in Latin America into three different groups – optimists, sceptics and innovators – Ganchev sets out the volume’s aim of reflecting on appropriate governance tools to regionally address common challenges in the protection of borders (security), lives (health) and land (environment) (iv).
The choice to address these issues at regional versus national levels is the core point discussed in most of the chapters. Why should countries opt to solve problems by cooperating with regional organisations? Or why should they opt for dealing with them at the national level? These reflections address why these paths were chosen and why they failed or succeeded, span the three broad topics almost equally (security has four and health and governance have each three chapters).
Why should countries opt to solve problems by cooperating with regional organisations? Or why should they opt for dealing with them at the national level?
Considering the context of Post-Hegemonic Regionalism, signifying weakened US hegemony in Latin America, Ganchev’s opening chapter examines coups and coup attempts from a security perspective. Coups and coup attempts are a recurring theme throughout Latin American academic literature, even under the framing of democracy clauses. Democracy clauses are tools that foresee sanctions or suspension of members that have experienced coups or democracy breaches. This topic is usually taken under the discussion of regional politics or appropriateness in institutional design, so framing it as a security issue is innovative. A significant aspect of this perspective deals with relations to the United States (US) and Organization of American States (OAS) responses (or lack thereof). Each coup and coup attempt is scrutinised to determine whether it served US interests to intervene, considering the potential outcomes (success or failure of coup attempts), as well as the US interest in activating or not regional organisations.
In the section of chapters focusing on health, Ruvalbaca (Chapter Six) presents a significant reflection of how the COVID-19 crisis impacted the power of Latin American countries in the international arena. Alongside analysing internal political and economic dynamics, Ruvalbaca discusses how each country’s response to COVID-19 impacted its international overall power performance along three dimensions: material, immaterial and semi-material. The chapter gives an interesting account of how some countries experienced economic crises but performed relatively well in dealing with the pandemic (Costa Rica and Cuba), others performed well economically while (not) dealing well with the pandemic (Ecuador). However, it lacked a clear categorisation that would allow measurement of how greatly the pandemic contributed (or not) to the gain or loss of relative power at the global level.
Ruvalbaca discusses how each country’s response to COVID-19 impacted its international overall power performance along three dimensions: material, immaterial and semi-material.
Situated within the volume’s dedicated third section on the environment, Chapter Ten by Combs and Buganza reflects about Mesoamerican regional constructions concerning the environment. They provide insight into the beginnings of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor as a non-institutionalised initiative, describing how its development progressed, in an interesting twist, to being incorporated as part of a regional organisation. A series of accomplishments, such as its decades-long further institutionalisation, as well as challenges, such as lack of financial resources for funding, enable a reflection on the level of structuring, formalisation and effectiveness of environmental transnational policies.
Two important characteristics makes this book stand out. The first is that the chapters do not merely cover regional organisations, though they are well-discussed, being the most common arena to debate regional issues. Other chapters highlight transnational solutions (Villa, Braga, Alaya in Chapter Three) international funds (Gomis in Chaper Four), and transgovernmental networks (TGNs) (Segovia, Mugica, Chapter Five). It makes us reflect, as the title suggest, that when we talk about “regional responses” we should think broadly about what format these solutions will take and the best approach to each specific challenge. It presents a broader sample of tools for regional governance instead of the common solution of regional organisations.
when we talk about ‘regional responses’ we should think broadly about what format these solutions will take and the best approach to each specific challenge.
The second positive feature is the wide range of regions and sub-regions in Latin America that are addressed. such as the Andes (Chapter Three), the Caribbean (Chapters Four, Núñes in Chapter Seven and Borzona in Chapter Eight), Mexico (Chapter Ten) and South America in relation to Continental America (Chapter One). The final chapter also has a recommendation of exercises on policy transfer between regions, arguing that it would be useful to have a mechanism similar to the Escazú Agreement into African countries (Mballa, Chapter 11). Having authors with diverse backgrounds and coming from a diversity of regions also gives some freshness on how the issues are framed. Considering external factors impacting the region, such as the Ukraine and Russia war, China and NATO (Konolvalova and Jeifets, Chapter Two) and Africa (Chapter 11) give us some ideas of how wider issues interfere with regional Latin-American challenges.
In times of post-hegemonic regionalism, it shows that the US still shapes regional architecture, whether to interfere as an actor, or to cause ruptures or disagreements between countries in regional initiatives.
Something that’s present in most of the chapters is the influence of the US in Latin American regional affairs. In this sense, what stands out is the US’s contribution to these challenges. In times of post-hegemonic regionalism, it shows that the US still shapes regional architecture, whether to interfere as an actor, or to cause ruptures or disagreements between countries in regional initiatives. Even in cases where chapters don’t explicitly discuss ties between Latin American states and the US, the analysis of intra-regional intergovernmental relations still shows how these relationships were affected was still very highly connected with the government’s alignment or non-alignments with the US.
If there is a con to this book is that, since its framing has a highly contemporary component to it, its lessons may become outdated relatively soon. However, it serves as a diagnostic collection, highlighting what has proven effective and areas in need of improvement. Ultimately, its relevance will only diminish if we fully move past these problematics, and diagnosing these problematics is the initial step to overcome them. Another issue is that the volume lacks a conclusion which would have been a useful means of drawing together discussion points and themes across the chapters and looking ahead to the future of the region. That said, the volume examines a diverse range of pressing issues across Latin America from the COVID-19 pandemic onwards, and will be worthwhile reading for anyone interested in Latin America, regionalism (in terms of international institutions) or in one of its three specific agendas (security, health and environment).
Note: This review gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image credits: Banco Mundial América Latina y el Caribe on Flickr. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED
The IMF is hurting countries it claims to help | Mark Weisbrot
The fund’s loan agreement with Ecuador will worsen unemployment and poverty
When people think of the damage that wealthy countries – typically led by the US and its allies – cause to people in the rest of the world, they probably think of warfare. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died from the 2003 invasion, and then many more as the region became inflamed.
But rich countries also have considerable power over the lives of billions of people through their control over institutions of global governance. One of these is the International Monetary Fund. It has 189 member countries, but the US and its rich-country allies have a solid majority of the votes. The head of the IMF is by custom a European, and the US has enough votes to veto many major decisions by itself – although the rich countries almost never vote against each other.