Reconstructing Regionalism: What does Development have to do with It?

Abstract

Is Latin America facing a “Polanyian” moment of compensation for market excess or is it part of a “revolution in the making?” This question is at the core of this chapter. The route to answer it, we propose, is to make a distinction between moderate regionalism based on resilient models conceived by the “open regionalism” that prevailed during the 1990s and more radical models of socialist integration. By looking at the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) we argue that UNASUR and ALBA must not simply be seen as ad hoc subregional responses to the many crises of neoliberalism and the collapse of US-led hemispheric leadership but rather as visible manifestation of a repoliticization of the region giving birth to new polities in which citizens, social movements, political parties, and leaders interact and construct new understandings of social development and autonomy. Theoretically, we hope to challenge New Regionalist approaches that have usefully embraced issues beyond mainstream European Union (EU) studies (in particular the links between the regional, the international, and the local), yet had assumed regionalism as taking place within and modelled by neoliberal economics. Although there is undisputable agreement that regionalism is driven by economic calculations, we claim that UNASUR and ALBA relink the political and social dimensions to define post-neoliberal integration objectives.