Table Of ContentInternational Political Economy Series
Regionalism, Development
and the Post-Commodities
Boom in South America
Edited by Ernesto Vivares
International Political Economy Series
Series Editor
Timothy M. Shaw
Visiting Professor
University of Massachusetts Boston, USA
Emeritus Professor
University of London, UK
The global political economy is in flux as a series of cumulative crises
impacts its organization and governance. The IPE series has tracked its
development in both analysis and structure over the last three decades. It
has always had a concentration on the global South. Now the South
increasingly challenges the North as the centre of development, also
reflected in a growing number of submissions and publications on indebted
Eurozone economies in Southern Europe. An indispensable resource for
scholars and researchers, the series examines a variety of capitalisms and
connections by focusing on emerging economies, companies and sectors,
debates and policies. It informs diverse policy communities as the estab-
lished trans-Atlantic North declines and ‘the rest’, especially the BRICS,
rise.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/series/13996
Ernesto Vivares
Editor
Regionalism,
Development and the
Post-Commodities
Boom in South
America
Editor
Ernesto Vivares
International Studies and Communication
FLACSO Sede Ecuador
Quito, Ecuador
International Political Economy Series
ISBN 978-3-319-62550-8 ISBN 978-3-319-62551-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-62551-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017955026
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F
oreword
Few would deny that the world is in flux. Since the end of the Cold War
many observers have offered their views about world order transforma-
tion, as illustrated by arguments about the end of history, globalization,
clash of civilizations, chaos and disorder, a world of regions, and a world
dominated by new and emerging powers, to name only a few.
South America is arguably one of the most interesting regions of the
world, both because its future is so deeply intertwined with world order
transformation, but also because of its rich and varied intellectual com-
munity. Ernesto Vivares and his colleagues carry forward this proud intel-
lectual heritage as they provide us with a compelling account about South
America’s insertion into an unequal world. Apart from the many empirical
insights, the book offers at least three important theoretical and method-
ological contributions. The book’s approach is “critical”, “global”, and it
moves beyond the conventional “formal” IPE to include “informal”
dimensions and issues. Its novelty lies in the combination of these
contributions.
First, Vivares and colleagues argue in favor of critical, alternative and
interdisciplinary theoretical approaches that confront state-centric or
economistic views about how the world hangs together. A fundamental
distinction in this type of research is between “problem-solving” theory,
which takes the world as given, and, on the whole, as “good” and “criti-
cal” theory that is concerned with how the existing order came into being
and what the possibilities are for structural and social change. Critical IPE
theory challenges problem-solving features such as the separation of sub-
ject and object, fact and value, and rationalist epistemologies. Critical IPE
v
vi FOREWORD
also rejects “methodological nationalism”, a point strongly emphasized in
this book.
The point with transcending methodological nationalism is not to
reject the nation-state and national space per se, but to transcend conven-
tional conceptions of the unitary Westphalian nation-state and “the terri-
torial trap” of the nation-state inherent in much of problem-solving
theory. Surely, methodological nationalism has resulted in many superfi-
cial representations of spatial horizons and practices. When the “taken for
granted” national scale is problematized then other spaces and actors
automatically receive more recognition, below as well as above the nation-
state. This approach is particularly plausible for the study of regionalism in
the Global South, because it helps to transcend Eurocentric conceptions
of both the nation-state and regional integration.
Second, Vivares and his colleagues emphasize a “global” perspective.
Just like other regions, South America was not formed in a vacuum. The
book correctly underlines that regions cannot be understood only from
the inside-out, but must also, and perhaps mainly, be approached from a
“global” and outside-in perspective. Although IPE scholars are trained to
analyze global structures (perhaps more so than regionalist scholars), the
fundamental question is what the global perspective actually entails. Much
effort is made to theorize the “global”, but what is often lacking is a global
perspective that also takes into account regional particularities and con-
texts. Somehow, a genuinely more “global” approach to IPE needs to be
tackled, which moves beyond Western-centric perspectives of the world.
This book makes an important contribution to a genuinely more “global”
IPE by studying South America’s external penetration, and how globaliza-
tion, regionalization, and domestic variables interact to produce a diversity
of outcomes in different policy fields.
Third, Vivares and colleagues transcend the “formal” side of IPE and
include informal processes and agents, from solidarity economies, infor-
mal flows, to organized crime. A broadened understanding of external
penetration and regionalization around the world rests on reaching
beyond hegemonic formal/formalistic and state-centric interpretations of
global and regional governance. This, of course, implies that comparison
becomes a more pluralistic exercise, transcending the prevailing tendency
in the field to focus on and explain variations from the “standard”
European case, not least formalistic and EU-style institutionalization. This
book successfully straddles the formal-informal nexus through focusing
FOREWOR D vii
on both the formal configurations of development (e.g., trade, finance,
technology, and knowledge) and the informal structures (e.g., organized
crime, and informal economy).
School of Global Studies Fredrik Söderbaum
University of Gothenburg,
Gothenburg, Sweden
A
cknowledgements
This project was born during August, 2015, at the Third Latin American
and Caribbean Congress of Social Sciences, when nearly 200 regional
scholars met to present their latest research and hold discussions regarding
their increasing concern about the South American IPE, regionalism, and
global insertions after the end of the commodities boom and the changing
and unsettle global order. The discussion was friendly but intense, in par-
ticular about the lack of Southern voices in an international debate,
monopolized and understood by and from the North academy in terms of
neoclassical economics and political sciences, based on two major unques-
tioned assumptions. The first is the assumption that everything moves to
the achievement and wisdom of the industrialized north, and second, that
the fluctuations of South America are causal and directly related to the
oscillations of the commodity cycles, as the region never has managed to
rule capitalism. For the South American scholars and partners at the
Congress it was that the undeniable time after decades to endeavor open,
critical, and multidisciplinary academic studies and discussions upon the
IPEs of regional development and global insertion as a contribution from
the South. The result is this book composed of the efforts of a great deal
of colleagues, South Americans, and others from many parts of the world,
whose contributions in recent years have been vital for the return and
development of the IPE germinal epistemic community in the Southern
Cone. To all them, my thanks.
First, I am pleased to thank Professor Timothy Shaw, editor of this
International Political Economic Series, for friendship, loyal support, and
invaluable advice to the scholarship in the region, FLACSO, and to myself
ix
x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
over the years. Also, to Christina Brian, editorial director at Palgrave
Macmillan, for her constant support, direction, and advice, and to James
Safford for his clear assistance during the editing process. Thanks to Juan
Ponce, Director of FLACSO, Ecuador, and to his Coordinator of Research,
Fredy Rivera. Also, to the invaluable recommendations and refreshing dis-
cussions about IPE and South American regionalism from our colleagues
Cintia Quiliconi and Raul Salgado. Thanks to Steen Christensen and the
scholars from Aalborg University for intellectual advice and support in
Ecuador and Denmark. Also, to Arlene Tickner, Diana Tussie, and Gladys
Lechini, three great colleagues in our regional field who backed the proj-
ect from the beginning. Thanks also to Jose Briceño from Venezuela,
Javier Vadell and Leonardo Ramos from PUC Minas Gerais with whom
we had the opportunity to talk and exchange ideas about the central issues
of this work. Thanks to Rachel Babin, Lorena Herrera, Adriana
Montenegro, Alexis Colmenares, and Marco Mendez, doctoral candidates
at the PhD program in International Studies of FLACSO, Ecuador, who
contributed with their research to enable us to take further reflection on
regionalism in our doctoral seminars. Also thanks to Daniela Barreiro for
her technical assistance with the editing of the book; to Ankur Mehrotra
and Nicola Salgado for translating and correcting the academic styles of
the first drafts. Finally, as always, thanks to my wife Cheryl Martens for
discussion and recommendations for the book, and to my sons, Genaro,
Ayel, Alejandro, and my bandits pets; all the sources in my life.
