Region Building, Autonomy and Regionalism in South America

PIA RIGGIROZZI; MELISA DECIANCIO

Handbook on the Geographies of Regions and Territories

Edward Elgar Publishing

Año: 2018;

Over the last decade it became increasingly clear that a nationalist tone to global politics is challenging the role and vitality of regional integration as a political and economic project. Key gauges of the strength of nationalism vis a vis integration are the UK referendum to exit the European Union (EU) in June 2016, and subsequent declarations of President Donald Trump threatening to withdraw the USA from the Trans Pacific Partnership and to redefine the terms of contract with Canada and Mexico regarding the North American Free Trade Area in place since 1995. In this context, we ask, paraphrasing Dani Rodrik (1997), an imperative question: ?has regionalism gone too far?? While it might be too soon, and even intellectually futile, to declare the failure of supranational governance, these events open an opportunity to analyse empirical patterns of regional transformation revealing new nuances about the relationship between states and regional governance across the world. If any lesson is to be drawn from historical patterns in Latin America, and in South America in particular as this chapter will show, is that regional governance is a dynamic process, a rebalancing act between the region and a series of individual responses to crises.