Regional and International Cooperation in South America After COVID: Challenges and Opportunities for the Post-pandemic

MELISA DECIANCIO; CINTIA QUILICONI

Routledge

9781032129457

This volume analyses South American regional and international cooperation during the COVID19 crisis started in 2020.Across thirteen chapters a collection of leading experts address how regional collaboration has developed, evolved, and recoiled. The chapters explore the state of regionalism at the pandemic surge and the challenges and opportunities this situation has opened for regional and international cooperation. Authors analyze the role of extra-regional powers and traditional regional leaders during the pandemic, identifying the extent to which regional cooperation has been possible across several policy agendas. They argue that fragmented visions of regionalism, ideological polarization, and weak leadership, has prevailed from before the pandemic which, accompanied by adverse interactions among major powers, has ensured that cooperation has remained bilateral rather than regional. Ultimately all these factors have created a complex scenario in which disintegration dynamics have emerged, darkening, even more, the South American regional panorama.