How effective are democracy clauses of regional integration organizations (RIOs) in promoting democratization and democratic consolidation among member-states? RIOs are increasingly adopting "democracy only" clauses in their treaties, requiring democracy and political stability as a condition of membership. Stable democracy is a collective good for RIO members; without political stability, uncertainty regarding economic exchange increases, undermining the promise of integration. The presence of powerful countries may be necessary for the RIOs to legalize democratic conditionality. In this book, the authors argue that once established democracy clauses exert an independent influence in promoting and defending democratic norms and institutions within the member-states by increasing the transparency and credibility of democratic commitment and sanctions for violation. The findings based on the analysis of 40 RIOs around the world and in-depth analysis of the European Union, the Common Market of the South, and the Economic Community of West African States indicate that RIO democracy clauses help prevent democratic backsliding and coups and stimulate democratization and consolidation. With its global scope, originality, and theoretical rigor, this is the first book to catalogue democracy clauses adopted by RIOs worldwide with a thorough analysis of their effectiveness.

This book provides an in-depth analysis of the role of regional integration in the contemporary Caribbean, challenging the value of the neoliberal ideology that permeates regionalism discourse. The book asks what value neoliberal regionalism holds for the Caribbean, when its economic goals of efficiency and competitiveness serve to actively marginalize small states within the global community. Presenting an alternative framework for assessing success, the book investigates how the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) can confront new challenges and perform a more developmental function, centring economic transformation and a more democratic process. The book also explores long-standing challenges with implementing regional decisions at the national level and the absence of avenues for citizens to influence the direction of the integration movement. It explores these themes against the backdrop of the global pandemic and the climate crisis which underscore the fragility of Caribbean economies, their high levels of indebtedness, weak social security systems, and their marginality. Bringing together decades of research from one of the world’s foremost scholars on the subject, this book will be essential reading for researchers of the Caribbean specifically, and for those with an interest in regionalism more generally, across the fields of political economy, international relations, history, geography, economics, and global development.

This work explores the interrelationship between democracy and regional integration. Although centred in Europe, the volume shifts terms of discussion on integration and democracy by including case studies outside of Europe. It also analyzes the European Union's democratic deficit, the impact of regional integration of national democracy, and the dynamic interactions between democracy and integration elsewhere in the world.

International organizations are typically intergovernmental in nature and endowed with a bipolar institutional structure where organs of States are usually juxtaposed with the Secretariat. On these premises, in Non-Governmental Interests in Regional Organizations: The Role of Parliamentary, Socio-Economic and Territorial Institutions Elisa Tino aims at analysing the unexplored phenomenon of institutional multipolarism of regional organizations, namely the trend to establish institutions representing non-governmental interests. Particularly, illustrating their diffusion in various geographic areas, explaining rationales underlying their establishment and investigating their institutional aspects, Elisa Tino pinpoints the contribution of these institutions to the development of regional organizations both according to the functionalist approach and the constitutionalist one. Thus, she aims at providing food for thought in the study of international organizations.

Exploring Politics: A Concise Introduction addresses the challenges of teaching and learning introductory concepts in political science. Its concise, accessible writing style brings a no-frills approach to the curriculum, allowing instructors to pepper in activities, current events, and their own lectures where they want while leaning on the text for foundational material required in the course. The book is organized topically to reflect how politics spreads from the individual and group level, to the national, and eventually the international level, taking the emphasis off the typically American-focused course of yesterday and building up informed national and global citizens. Gaspare M. Genna and Taeko Hiroi provide students with brief content modules broken up by critical thinking questions, class exercises, and activities, moving students beyond memorization and into the realm of application and discovery. This title is accompanied by a complete teaching and learning package in SAGE Vantage, an intuitive learning platform that instructors and students actually love.

Groundbreaking comparative analysis of governance systems and institutional choices in different regional and international organizations.

This Handbook expertly explores the profound transformations in international relations in recent decades. Proliferating cross-border challenges, including global financial crises, climate change, environmental degradation, irregular migration, and COVID-19, require governance structures that transcend the nation state and take both global and regional interplay, as well as problem-solving capacities, into account. Contributing authors investigate the effectiveness of international cooperation and performance in a diverse range of policy fields.

In this well-researched and detailed book, the editors provide an extensive and critical analysis of post-Soviet regional integration. After almost two decades of unfulfilled integration promises, a new _ improved and functioning _ regime emerged in th

This book presents a review of the South American integration process in a global context, with the main factors of success and failure, by comparing it with the European Union development. It also presents South American integration in a regional context; with its subregional pacts and the development of the South American Union of Nations (UNASUR) and how the regionalization faced its stagnation and changed its objectives, replicating and amplifying successful experiences in the integration process. The book presents comparisons between South American and EU integration structures and policies featuring the supranational executive bodies concerned, the judicial structures, the legislative functions and the monetary systems plus common foreign and security policy and common social and development policy of both entities: three supranational institutions and three common policies that define a regional bloc. To avoid diffusing the research, only one of those dimensions receives a deeper analysis: the supranational executive bodies comparison. The second part of this book introduces the Game Theory, a shared-decision model with two or more players that have different priorities for the same decision. The Game Theory analysis is used here to evaluate two typical scenarios of South American regional policy conflicts, pointing out the important role of the exertion of supranational executive power to foster the integration process. The conclusions focus on the main challenges: the existing asymmetries between South American states and the lack of a clear leadership in the region; giving a positive assessment to the new functional approach taken by South American nations. This approach could offer them good chances to foster regional development and allow progress of South American integration. The final comments propose new fields for the Game Theory technique in the integration process analysis.

The Routledge Handbook of Latin American Development seeks to engage with comprehensive, contemporary, and critical theoretical debates on Latin American development. The volume draws on contributions from across the humanities and social sciences and, unlike earlier volumes of this kind, explicitly highlights the disruptions to the field being brought by a range of anti-capitalist, decolonial, feminist, and ontological intellectual contributions. The chapters consider in depth the harms and suffering caused by various oppressive forces, as well as the creative and often revolutionary ways in which ordinary Latin Americans resist, fight back, and work to construct development defined broadly as the struggle for a better and more dignified life. The book covers many key themes including development policy and practice; neoliberalism and its aftermath; the role played by social movements in cities and rural areas; the politics of water, oil, and other environmental resources; indigenous and Afro-descendant rights; and the struggles for gender equality. With contributions from authors working in Latin America, the US and Canada, Europe, and New Zealand at a range of universities and other organizations, the handbook is an invaluable resource for students and teachers in development studies, Latin American studies, cultural studies, human geography, anthropology, sociology, political science, and economics, as well as for activists and development practitioners.