“Giving Mercosur a Human Face”: An Evaluation of Civil Society’s Role in Latin American Regional Integration

Abstract

The Common Market of the Southern Cone (Mercosur) was originally lauded as an enormous success for its four members, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. Initially created as a customs union, the organization’s first decade saw significant gains from trade and expanded its relationship with major global economies, such as the United States. However, the subsequent devaluation of the Brazilian and Argentinean currencies caused a political reckoning with the neoliberalism impulses that spurred Mercosur’s creation. Latin America’s “pink tide” led to the rise of leftist administrations, most notably Lula da Silva in Brazil, Nestor Kirchner in Argentina, and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. In 2003, a “new Mercosur” was created with the explicit intention of rejecting the prescriptions of the Washington Consensus. It sought to combine economic development with greater inclusion of the social dimension. One significant change was the establishment of new participatory mechanisms which aimed to democratize Mercosur. This thesis thus investigates the role of Mercosur’s “Social Summits”—biannual meetings of civil society—in expanding access to decision-making and commitments to regional integration. This thesis utilizes a mixed-methods approach to evaluate the extent to which these participatory mechanisms can be coopted by populist governments, which rose in prominence in South America during this period, as well as the institutional barriers that constrain civil society participation. Interviews with participants of the Social Summits illuminate the “black box” of Mercosur, thus bringing clarity to the selection process. These interviews establish that civil society organizations possess a weak institutional role, with little continuity or follow-up to their participation. However, participating organizations did receive support such as financial backing and lodging, which indicates that Mercosur did seek to alleviate some of the barriers to participation. A quantitative analysis of the effect of populist rhetoric on civil society participation in Mercosur’s sought to answer the following questions: 1. What is the effect, if any, of populism—taking into account a political party’s economic scale—on civil society integration within Mercosur’s Social Summits? 2. What is the effect, if any, of populism—taking into account a political party’s economic scale—on different countries’ civil society attendance within Mercosur’s Social Summits? Though I hypothesized that use of populist rhetoric would increase civil society participation, in line with recent empirical findings, this thesis finds the opposite relationship. Administrations that utilize greater amounts of populist rhetoric invite smaller numbers of civil society organizations, with less diversity in the countries represented. Thus, the finds in this thesis are novel in advancing both the study of Mercosur’s participatory sector as well as complicating the existing literature about populists’ foreign policy.