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A scholarly debate is emerging on how recent regional trends in Latin America and South America have impacted the meanings and practices of sovereignty. This debate pits two groups engaged in regionalist analysis against each other: the optimists and the skeptics. Optimists argue that recent changes in regionalism are having a transformative impact on sovereignty. Skeptics acknowledge that changes in regionalism have occurred, but that they have been accompanied by persistent and traditional sovereignty meanings and practices. The article employs a tripartite conception of sovereignty regime—sovereign, space, and authority—to sketch the parameters of the debate. Given the recent origins of ALBA, CELAC, and UNASUR, as well as the post-hegemonic regionalism which they reflect and promote, this debate can only be resolved through ambitious qualitative empirical research, especially in South America, the regional experience upon which many of the contending claims are made. Such a research agenda on the regionalism-sovereignty nexus has both significant theoretical and practical implications for understanding Latin America's and South America's unique regional, institutional, and sovereignty patterns, as well as the limits and possibilities for regional governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the history of regional integration in the Americas, drawing lessons from the diverse ways that people have sought to unite the hemisphere. It begins at the point when most of the modern nation-states of Latin America came into being: the nineteenth-century wars for independence. From there, it traces various attempts at regional integration, keeping in mind three fundamental questions: How does regional integration compromise sovereignty? Does it have to? Is it worth sacrificing sovereignty to increase integration? The article concludes that while every attempt at regional integration in the Americas has required the participants to voluntarily sacrifice some measure of their sovereignty, the most successful efforts have been those that either kept the sacrifice to a minimum or offered significant enough rewards to offset the loss of sovereignty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows, from an interdisciplinary perspective, the incidence of lack of “stateness" and its construction process in Latin American states, as well as showing the reluctance on the part of Latin American states to transfer sovereignty to regional integrational organizations. First, classical and contemporary ideas of sovereignty are contrasted, in order to understand the development of the sovereignty concept in Latin America and Europe. Second, we interpret how the sovereignty concept has been conceived through Latin American states' formation process. Third, the sovereignty process is addressed within integration thinking and its three big waves: the developmental, neoliberal and post-hegemonic waves. Fourth, the concept of sovereignty in Latin America and its impact on the region are discussed critically. Fifth, current regionalism perspectives are explained. Sixth, the current relationship between sovereignty and regionalization in South America is described. And finally, throughout this paper, we maintain that it is the weakness of “stateness" in the Latin American states which has had an important influence on their reluctance to transfer national sovereignty to regional integration institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an inherent contradiction between the regional integration projects in Latin America, albeit rhetorically conducted, and the staunch defense by most countries of their national sovereignty, which restricts and opposes many liberalization mechanisms implicit in, and necessary to, the integration processes, based on the rendition of sovereignty in some areas of economic relevance, including, and especially, trade and industrial policies, as well as other sectorial measures. The dilemma is historically compounded by a juridical tradition that places the retraction into an introverted version of the sovereignty principle into the context of conceptual elaborations well known in the international law, such as Calvo doctrine and the Drago principle. Brazil is one of the most resolute promoters of the national sovereignty principle among Latin American countries, clearly expressed in its constitutional chart and foreign policy stances, since the Second Hague peace conference of 1907. Other Latin American countries, mainly in Central America and the Caribbean, are much more motivated by real concerns over recurrent United States interventionism in the regional, in some cases by military means. This framework has somewhat infringed on integration projects, which is also hindered by economic nationalism and state interventionism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the same time during which the European Union is passing through one of the worst crises in its history, the attempts to promote regionalism in South America are also beset by grave problems, with some commentators suggesting that ‘regionalism is out, sovereignty back in', in the words of Andrés Malamud. This article aims to respond to the question whether there is a connection between the problems confronted in Europe and the difficulties here in the region. In other words, what has been the impact of the European crisis on the prospects for highly developed regionalism in South America. Based on interviews with policy-makers and representatives of Brazilian industry, as well as an analysis of the existing literature, the article argues that, even though both have suffered as a consequence of the general global political and economic trends – and both suffer from similar problems in terms of their strategic thinking – the particularities of each case does not allow for a direct causal link between the European and South American case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the increasing levels of cooperation within Latin American countries, this article suggests that domestic political and institutional variables affect the options for greater integration within countries. Traditional ways of understanding security among policymakers explain the lack of reforms in this sector. The article provides the example of Argentina and Chile, the most advanced countries within South America in terms of cooperation in the field of security. The authors try to demonstrate that several institutional inertias within each country have preempted these two countries from advancing a paradigmatic shift in their security approaches toward each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]