Civil society and regional integration in South America. From MERCOSUR to UNASUR: A step forward?

BOTTO, MERCEDES

Pretoria

Workshop; "Building Regions from below: civil society and supranaional governance in time of crisis”; 2013

University of Pretoria

Civil society participation in the development of regional blocks is a new phenomenon, still unclear in terms of impacts. This should not be surprising, as these processes, due to their international scope, are traditionally elitist and exclusive. However, this government-centred tradition has been changing in the last thirty years in Latin America, largely thanks to economic globalisation processes. Facing this capital concentration dynamics, governments have tried to position themselves competitively to attract financial and productive financing through the creation of regional blocs. Small businesspeople and civil society organisations—NGOs, trade unions—were excluded from the agenda and from the benefits said integration was to produce. However, they did not remain passive, but tried to make their voices heard through transnational collective action. This work aims at analysing the way in which these social and economic actors have built these transnational networks and created an identity that goes beyond their particular sectoral interests, capable of putting forward an alternative to economic globalisation. The premise we set out from assumes all collective actions or movements stem not only from the mobilisation of resources, opportunity structures and rational elections (easily measurable dimensions), but also from the production of cultural codes and innovative practices (Melucci, 2002). The focus will be on Latin America, as it is a good scenario to visualise and analyse these innovative practices: unlike some other regional contexts, Latin America has a highly politicised civil society, with a long tradition of interaction with the state, but historically focused on local issues, isolated from regional civil society (Servin and Fioramonti, 2013; p. 114).