Abstract
Brazil has launched a regional leadership project in South America to strengthen its global position, yet secondary regional powers have contested it through diverse means and to different ends. Among these secondary regional powers, Colombia represents a case of institutional contestation. In this chapter, Flemes and Castro address how Colombia has deployed institutional contestation in relation to Brazil, especially in the context of Colombia’s new international identity and the creation of the Pacific Alliance. The authors examine the impact of the latest political and structural changes that South America is undergoing—the decline of leftist populism in South America and the downgrading of former secondary powers such as Venezuela—on Colombia’s contestation approach. Finally, they identify the main drivers that have influenced the variations in its contestation approach.
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Notes
- 1.
For authors such as Niu (2015), the decrease in China’s purchases hasn’t been that significant, and what has really hit the Latin American economies is the drop in commodities’ prices.
- 2.
It is important to remember that all PA members have already signed economic complementation agreements with the Mercosur to facilitate the convergence between both institutions. The member states of both regional organizations have agreed on a roadmap to work together on trade facilitation, customs cooperation, trade promotion, support for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and identification of possible regional value chains.
- 3.
The ALBA , another institution classified as post-hegemonic, is also at a crossroads because Venezuela, its main promoter, is undergoing a deep economic and political crisis.
- 4.
Despite the new regional factors, the trade deal Mercosur-European Union seems to be advancing after many years of stagnation.
- 5.
Burges (2015) also points out that consensual hegemony has its limits and that the countries of the region have demanded a greater payment of the costs of integration by Brazil, a greater capacity for commitment and a greater willingness to share power, that is, they have come closer to the demands of a cooperative hegemony .
- 6.
A complementary or alternative explanation is that it also changed to gather support from South American countries for the peace negotiations.
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Flemes, D., Castro, R. (2018). Colombian Foreign Policy: Contestation by Institution Building. In: Ebert, H., Flemes, D. (eds) Regional Powers and Contested Leadership. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73691-4_3
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