Overview

In Power and Regionalism in Latin America: The Politics of MERCOSUR, Laura Gómez-Mera examines the erratic patterns of regional economic cooperation in the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR), a political-economic agreement among Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and, recently, Venezuela that comprises the world’s fourth-largest regional trade bloc. Despite a promising start in the early 1990s, MERCOSUR has had a tumultuous and conflict-ridden history. Yet it has survived, expanding in membership and institutional scope. What explains its survival, given a seemingly contradictory mix of conflict and cooperation? Through detailed empirical analyses of several key trade disputes between the bloc’s two main partners, Argentina and Brazil, Gómez-Mera proposes an explanation that emphasizes the tension between and interplay of two sets of factors: power asymmetries within and beyond the region, and domestic-level politics. Member states share a common interest in preserving MERCOSUR as a vehicle for increasing the region’s leverage in external negotiations. Gómez-Mera argues that while external vulnerability and overlapping power asymmetries have provided strong and consistent incentives for regional cooperation in the Southern Cone, the impact of these systemic forces on regional outcomes also has been crucially mediated by domestic political dynamics in the bloc’s two main partners, Argentina and Brazil. Contrary to conventional wisdom, however, the unequal distribution of power within the bloc has had a positive effect on the sustainability of cooperation. Despite Brazil’s reluctance to adopt a more active leadership role in the process of integration, its offensive strategic interests in the region have contributed to the durability of institutionalized collaboration. However, as Gómez-Mera demonstrates, the tension between Brazil’s global and regional power aspirations has also added significantly to the bloc’s ineffectiveness.

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Reviews

Power and Regionalism in Latin America adds depth and breadth to scholarly reflections on Mercosur and more widely on the drivers of regional cooperation. It carefully distinguishes between survival and success of integration. The interplay of systemic forces, especially regional power configurations, and domestic interests, especially state agencies' preferences, will determine whether Mercosur will be a case of one or the other. For now, Gomez-Mera provides a convincing explanation of what is perhaps the only consistency in Mercosur's trajectory: its inconsistency. --Bulletin of Latin American Research A careful theoretical scheme includes domestic, bureaucratic, and external bloc forces to explain the evolution of this [MERCOSUR] regional integration bloc. . . . The multidimensional theoretical approach does clearly get at the complexity of the MERCOSUR case, in which domestic actors are influential but the state, albeit often divided, remains central in responding to domestic and international pressures. --Choice In this book Dr. Briggle provides a sympathetic account of the President's Council on Bioethics led by Dr. Leon Kass. He shows the wisdom of the approach to bioethics taken by the Kass Council and corrects the unfair and often nasty attacks on the Council and Dr. Kass himself. It is a persuasive and thoughtful reconstruction of the Council's goals and rationale. --Law & Medicine Briggle had an inspired idea to make the controversies surrounding Leon Kass's chairmanship of the President's Council on Bioethics (2001-5) his point of departure to argue the need for bioethics based in humanistic questioning rather than accepting the more restricted task of what he calls instrumental bioethics, which exists to offer specific policy guidelines. The issues are clear throughout but perhaps best crystallized near the end of the book, when Briggle presents criticisms that the Kass Council failed to be sufficiently policy oriented. --Science and Public Policy Briggle offers the first book-length analysis of the council's work, setting it in a wider philosophical, historical, and political context. The book also discusses how the procedure for selecting council members led to accusations that it was ideologically narrow. The book's well-balanced analysis and close but fair readings of the council's documents show how the Kass Council dealt with differences and was far more tolerant of varying opinions than many think. This book would be a useful supplementary text in classes on bioethics and public policy. --Choice . . . Briggle sketches a set of views about nature, rationality, and the self that is decidedly modern and characteristic of instrumentalist thinking. . . . A Rich Bioethics is well worth reading . . . it offers a model for public ethics committees that merits serious consideration. --Commonweal

Author Information

Laura Gómez-Mera is assistant professor in the Department of International Studies at the University of Miami.

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