Abstract
ABSTRACTRegional organisations are moving away from traditional market-based goals to embrace issues of welfare, yet the role they play in social policy formation, and their contribution to the embedding of alternative approaches to development, is poorly understood. This article explores whether and how the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) advance pro-poor norms and policies in national and global governance. Whilst not coherent citizenship-centred projects of regionalism, SADC and UNASUR have developed institutional competences to address the health–poverty nexus, though their policy development practices and methods take quite different forms. Theoretically, the paper develops a framework addressing three key claims: (i) poverty and welfare need to be brought in to the study of regional governance; (ii) the agency of Southern regional organisations in the generation and diffusion of norms needs to be taken more seriously in the literature and in practice; and (iii) context matters for whether and how regional organisations provide normative leadership; act as brokers in a (re)distributive way; or as advocacy actors in a political way, enabling claims at different levels of governance.
Highlights
The last fifteen years have witnessed changing dynamics within the global political economy of international integration and development as a consequence of the emergence of Southern regional and inter-regional groupings and alliances
The analysis of Southern African Development Community (SADC) and UNASUR should be taken as prima facie cases for exploring the developmental dimension of Southern regionalism and the modalities of, and opportunities for, embedding approaches to social development and poverty at different levels of governance
The analysis of SADC and UNASUR developed here suggested that the context in which regional organisations are formed, as well as their normative, institutional and financial resources, support different opportunities for regional organisations to act as normative vectors; as brokers in adistributive way; or as advocacy actors in a political way, enabling action and advancing claims at different levels of governance
Summary
The last fifteen years have witnessed changing dynamics within the global political economy of international integration and development as a consequence of the emergence of Southern regional and inter-regional groupings and alliances. They can do so through negative action – excluding states that contravene established democratic standards – and in positive ways, by embedding democratic or human rights-based legislation, supporting capacity building, or the provision of norms and standard-setting in support of policies which promote deeper democracy, enhance or extend human rights, well-being and welfare (Risse 2015) From this perspective, it could be argued that regional organisations can steer collective efforts by (i) creating normative frameworks in support of pro-poor practices; (ii) facilitating the reallocation of material and knowledge resources in support of policy formulation and implementation; and (iii) enabling representation and claims-making of actors in global governance ( Riggirozzi 2015: 414). The presence of UNASUR in this type of health diplomacy, and its coordinated efforts to redefine rules of participation and representation in the governing of global health, is indicative of a distinctive modality of regional policy-making and regional diplomacy in Latin America and within Southern regionalisms
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