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New Regionalism and Civil Society: Bridging the Democratic Gap?

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The Rise of Post-Hegemonic Regionalism

Part of the book series: United Nations University Series on Regionalism ((UNSR,volume 4))

Abstract

The chapter analyses the gap between the official utterances to participation in the regional process and the mechanisms for effective civil society involvement in the new regional structures. During the last decade, several new regional integration initiatives were born in Latin America, including the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), and the Latin American and Caribbean Community of States (CEALC). Most of them include in their founding documents the goal of strengthening democracy and the rule of law and fostering regional cooperation and governance. This chapter argues that present dynamics of regionalism in Latin America and the Caribbean aims to reverse the exclusionary legacies of “Washington Consensus” yet lacks a coordinated and coherent strategy for civil society in the reconstruction of regionalism in Latin America. This creates, we argue, a contradiction in spaces that embraced real commitments with regional provisions for social policy.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    As argued in the same report, “This reformulates the role of the CSOs: it is one thing to act in a context where the state is absent and in retreat than to act in a context where the state is the very center of social investment. It is, rather, the exercise of a wide and diverse set of roles which help, supplement, control or require the state to fulfill its duties: as organized levers of society to claim rights, demand adequate service quality and coverage, participate in the design of public policies which properly channel public resources, design and test innovations for the resolution of problems, etc. (…) In this regard, it is clear that the CSOs claim a role as players and partners of development. Their capacity and skills are considered to be impoverished when they are only perceived as operators for the implementation of policies and projects designed by others”, ALOP (2010).

  2. 2.

    Cf. Equipo de Sociedad Civil (2007).

  3. 3.

    At the initiative of the Venezuelan delegation, during the XXXIV regular session of the OAS General Assembly in 2004, the Permanent Council and the Permanent Executive Committee of the Inter-American Council for Integral Development (CEPCIDI) were called to prepare a draft Social Charter of the Americas and an Action Plan on inclusion. A report by the CEPCIDI of September 2, 2010, stated that progress had been made in the completion of the normative section of the Social Charter, a proposal for a preamble and a proposal of guidelines for action and implementation of the Charter with the intent to have it approved before the end of 2010 which is still pending, in “Informe Final del Presidente del Grupo de Trabajo Conjunto del Consejo Permanente y la CEPCIDI sobre el Proyecto de Carta Social de las Américas”, CP OEA/Ser G, CP/doc.4510/10, September 9 2010.

  4. 4.

    http://www.asc-hsa.org

  5. 5.

    http://www.mesarticulacion.org and http://www.alop.or.cr

  6. 6.

    http://www.forodiplomaciaciudadana.org

  7. 7.

    http://www.minci.gov.ve/noticias-prensa-presidencial/28/9866/manifiesto_del_congreso_bolivariano

  8. 8.

    http://www.ccsica.org

  9. 9.

    http://www.somosmercosur.org, cf. also http://www.mrecic.gov.ar

  10. 10.

    Statements by the Venezuelan Vice-Minister of Foreign Relations Rodolfo Sanz, cf. http://www.mci.gob.ve

  11. 11.

    Cf. “Manifiesto de Cochabamba. Declaración final de la Cumbre Social promovida por la Alianza Social Continental y el Movimiento Boliviano para la Soberanía y la Integración Solidaria”, http://www.integracionsur.com, Centro Latinoamericano de Ecología Social (CLAES), Montevideo, and http://www.comunidadsudamericana.com/cochabamba

  12. 12.

    CSI-ORIT (2007).

  13. 13.

    Acuña Montero (2007).

  14. 14.

    CSI-ORIT (2007).

  15. 15.

    Gudynas (2006).

  16. 16.

    As Alemany and Leandro (2007) point out, “A more comprehensive view of participation is an operational view, where civil society actors are not consulted on specific issues, but rather became part of a system of monitoring, of decision making, that is to say, of influencing decisions on regional policies”, pp. 113–135.

  17. 17.

    http://www.somosmercosur.org

  18. 18.

    In Argentina a Consultative Civil Society Council was created; it is coordinated by a special desk of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

  19. 19.

    It is worth noting that, in the framework of the admission of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, this space originated strong discrepancies and confrontations, particularly with regard to trade union accreditation.

  20. 20.

    http://www.somosmercosur.org

  21. 21.

    Cf. for a more detailed account of its establishment and evolution, Vázquez (2005).

  22. 22.

    http://www.somosmercosur.org. Cf. also “Debuta el Parlamento del MERCOSUR”, in La Nación (Buenos Aires), May 6, 2007, p. 18.

  23. 23.

    Valencia (2006).

  24. 24.

    Ibid. By the way, Judith Valencia is one of the well-known personalities supporting ALBA in Venezuela.

  25. 25.

    Katz (2006) also notes that MERCOSUR re-structuring threatens ALBA development.

  26. 26.

    Cf. Tratado Constitutivo de la UNASUR.

  27. 27.

    http://www.telesurtv.net/secciones/noticias/nota

  28. 28.

    As pointed out by one of the participants to a conference held at the Latin American System (SELA, according to its Spanish acronym), in Caracas on August 20, 2007, “initiatives such as ALBA, which are not regional integration processes in classical terms, are still lacking institutional mechanisms that can be followed up”, in Márquez (2007).

  29. 29.

    Cf. Declaración Política del Consejo de Movimientos Sociales del ALBA-TCP, http://www.cubainformacion.tv, 30 de enero de 2008, and http://economiasocialista.blogspot.com

  30. 30.

    Manifiesto General de la Primera Cumbre de Consejos de Movimientos Sociales del ALBA-TCP, in El ALBA de los Movimientos Sociales, Sumario de Noticias, October 20, 2009, in http://www.movimientos.org/noalca/albasi/show_text.php3?key=16092

  31. 31.

    “Other integration is possible” is a slogan coined by social movements in their contestation to the FTAA and to commercialist and neoliberal approaches of the time.

  32. 32.

    As stated in the same report, “This questions the role of civil society organizations: it is not the same to act when the state is absent and in retreat and to act when the government is at the core of social investment. The idea is to have a wide and diversified amount of roles to help, supplement, monitor or demand the state to fulfill its duties: as socially organized levers to claim rights, demand quality, participate in the creation of public policies that direct public resources in an adequate manner, create and experience problem-solving innovations, etc. (…) Thus, it is clear that civil society organizations vindicate their roles as social actors and partners of social development. We believe that their capacity and talents depreciate when they are merely viewed as political operators for policies and projects prepared by others”, ALOP, op. cit., p. 12.

  33. 33.

    “Unfortunately, the process of consolidation of UNASUR did not acknowledge (…) the importance of social actors, and did not consider until recently citizen participation” in Ramis (2009).

  34. 34.

    “…we must attune the official dialogue process for social movements within ALBA’s process. We have been able to organize public meetings and activities, sometimes sporadically, which generally coincide with Presidential Summits or Social Forums, and which have allowed us to strengthen ties, but have not been very efficient to discuss these topics in depth,” in Programa Mercosur Social y Solidario (2010), op. cit.

  35. 35.

    Cf. “Declaración de Caracas: Otra integración es posible”, issued at the World Social Forum held in Caracas, in January 2006, and supported by several regional networks such as ALOP, PIDHH, and CRIES and currently advanced by the Mesa de Articulación de Asociaciones Nacionales y Redes de ONGs.

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  1. CRIES, Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas, Venezuela

    Andrés Serbin

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  1. , Politics & International Relations, University of Southampton, Highfield, Building 58, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, United Kingdom

    Pía Riggirozzi

  2. , Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, FLACSO/Argentina, Ayacucho 551 551, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Diana Tussie

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Serbin, A. (2012). New Regionalism and Civil Society: Bridging the Democratic Gap?. In: Riggirozzi, P., Tussie, D. (eds) The Rise of Post-Hegemonic Regionalism. United Nations University Series on Regionalism, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2694-9_8

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