Introduction
As in other parts of the globe, states in Latin America have created regional international organisations (RIOs) as a means for institutionalised cooperation. Unlike global IOs, regional IOs are general-purpose organisations which base their membership on geographically defined criteria. Thus, RIOs allow for multilateral cooperation amongst states sharing regional identities across a broad variety of policy fields.Footnote 1 Hence, RIOs shape their corresponding regions considerably. This also applies to central and south America, which are home to numerous RIOs.Footnote 2 Due to their intergovernmental character, Latin American RIOs are strongly influenced by the political orientation of their member states, especially that of the bigger and more powerful ones.Footnote 3
From the late 1990s onward, Latin America experienced a ‘Pink Tide’, a period that saw many left-wing governments assume office. The RIOs created around this time – such as the Unión de Naciones Suramericanas (Union of South American Nations, UNASUR), the Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, ALBA), and the Comunidad de Estados Latinoamericanos y Caribeños (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, CELAC) – championed the notion of ‘post-neoliberal’ or ‘post-hegemonic’ regionalism,Footnote 4 and were guided by member states with left-leaning agendas. Moreover, existing RIOs, most notably the Mercado Común del Sur (Southern Common Market, MERCOSUR), also underwent shifts from economic liberalism towards a focus on topics associated with a left-wing orientation.
After the mid-2010s, the Pink Tide started to ebb away, as in many Latin American countries centre–right and right-wing governments took office.Footnote 5 As a result, the ideological divergence between member states in ALBA, CELAC, UNASUR and MERCOSUR increased and they became arenas for ideological disputes.Footnote 6 This triggered contestations of these RIOs, including discursive and rhetorical criticism,Footnote 7 as well as norm violations and non-compliance.Footnote 8 While previous research has analysed the contestation, resilience and disintegration of Latin American RIOs,Footnote 9 this paper focuses on the most severe form of contestation, namely exit threats and actual withdrawals.Footnote 10
Existing research on exits, i.e. the intentional terminations of membership in accordance with the organisation’s legal provisions, either takes a very broad comparative perspective or focuses on specific high-profile cases such as Brexit.Footnote 11 In this paper, we consider the level in between and focus on exit-related challenges in one region in one specific context: contestations of Latin American RIOs at the end of the Pink Tide. While exit-related challenges – in the form of threats to leave and actual withdrawals – by states toward RIOs are not unique to Latin America,Footnote 12 in recent years several organisations in the region have been particularly affected. These included, among others, the withdrawals of Bolivia and Ecuador from ALBA in 2018 and 2019, Brazil’s exit from CELAC in 2020, Uruguay’s and Brazil’s threats to leave MERCOSUR in 2006 and 2019, as well as a total of nine exits from UNASUR between 2018 and 2020. Yet not all Latin American RIOs were challenged to equal extents, and not all right-wing governments were equally inclined to engage in these severe forms of contestation.
Contestations can express themselves as dissatisfaction or non-compliance of member states in organisations and constitute commonly experienced forms of challenges by both regional and international organisations. While recent research has analysed the disintegration and contestation of RIOs in Latin America,Footnote 13 in this paper we seek to bring this research into conversation with literature about the contestation and death of IOs more broadly.Footnote 14 To provide a more systematic comparative analysis of the patterns of contestation of Latin American RIOs following the Pink Tide, this paper zooms in on the drivers of severe contestation, such as ideological divergence and the resulting inability to achieve changes within the organisation. These went beyond mere dissatisfaction and rather presented themselves in the form of exit-related challenges – exit threats and withdrawals – throughout this period.
Accordingly, the research questions guiding this paper are these. (1) Which states used exit threats and their realisation as a means to challenge which RIOs after the ebb of the Pink Tide? (2) How can the observed pattern be accounted for? These questions are addressed in several steps. We begin by outlining the rise and ebb of the Pink Tide within the region and the respective effects on regional cooperation. We then present the analytical framework: severe dissatisfaction arises under conditions of ideological divergence between RIO member states, especially when a government is systematically unable to achieve desired outcomes within the RIO’s normal procedures due to ideological cleavages. This provides incentives to engage in exit-related contestations, which are likely to manifest themselves in actual withdrawals when the state in question does not attach high importance to the RIO. We follow with an empirical plausibility probe through a series of qualitative case studies.
In sum, this paper illustrates that in the context of increasing ideological divergence in Latin America after the end of the Pink Tide, right-wing contestations of RIOs are not a rare phenomenon, but differ in frequency between the organisations. UNASUR and ALBA are considerably more contested than CELAC and MERCOSUR. Moreover, in instances in which governments ideologically clash with the RIO whilst being unable to introduce changes in line with their own interests, severe dissatisfaction arises. This, in turn, triggers exit-threats and also – especially when the RIO in question is not regarded as highly important – withdrawals. The drivers of dissatisfaction, with the resulting severe contestations that can bring exit-related challenges levelled against Latin American RIOs, are ideological in nature and do not emerge because of changes to the authority of the IO in question. The paper contributes to our understanding of the dynamics of ideologically motivated challenges against (regional) IOs, as well as of organisational resilience and decay.
Rise of the ‘Pink Tide’: Leftist Governments and RIOs
The term ‘Pink Tide’ – coined by New York Times correspondent to Montevideo, Frank Lehrer – refers to the unprecedented phenomenon of left-leaning governments coming into office throughout the Latin American region from the late 1990s onward.Footnote 15 The Pink Tide originated in social movements’ political activism and popular backlashes against neoliberal policies in line with the Washington Consensus, which had been dominant in the region from the late 1970s onward.Footnote 16 Consequently, its underlying ideology, i.e. pattern of preferences and beliefs, featured prominently market reforms and social distribution, while being legitimised by democratic elections.Footnote 17 The elections of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela (1998), Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (‘Lula’) in Brazil (2002), Néstor Kirchner in Argentina (2003), Evo Morales in Bolivia (2006), Michelle Bachelet in Chile (2006), Rafael Correa in Ecuador (2006), Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua (2007), Álvaro Colom in Guatemala (2008), Fernando Lugo in Paraguay (2008), Mauricio Funes in El Salvador (2009) and Ollanta Moisés Humala in Peru (2011) in particular are understood as representative of the region-wide shift toward left-leaning governments at that time.Footnote 18
Latin American regionalism is characterised by both a pluralist institutional architecture, i.e. the presence of multiple organisations which are not hierarchical and work in parallel on similar issues, and by ad hoc arrangements based on strong inter-presidential solidarity, whereby presidents are supportive of each other while cooperating despite weakness or absence of institutional settings.Footnote 19 During the peak of the Pink Tide, left-leaning governments that emphasised economic policies focusing on social inclusion and redistribution set up RIOs, most prominently ALBA, CELAC, and UNASUR, or redirected the emphasis of existing RIOs, such as MERCOSUR, towards issues associated with the political Left.Footnote 20 These developments were often described as ‘post-neoliberal’ or ‘post-hegemonic’ regionalism, emphasising the rejection of the neoliberal project and the intention toward greater Latin American autonomy from the influence of the United States.Footnote 21 This process resulted in an increasing sub-regionalisation of Latin American integration – with a shift from away from single, continent-wide unity projects toward smaller, localised and often ideologically or economically distinct sub-regional blocs – and a diversification of RIOs.Footnote 22 In effect, RIOs in Latin America are generally more politicised and ideological than organisations in other regions, such as Europe or Asia.
The organisation featuring the most outspokenly left-leaning contingent of member states that emerged during the Pink Tide was ALBA, which was established by Venezuelan President Chávez and Cuban President Fidel Castro in 2004.Footnote 23 In the following years, Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras and Nicaragua, as well as several Caribbean island states, joined the organisation. Created in opposition to the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas,Footnote 24 ALBA, under the headline of ‘socialism of the twenty-first century’,Footnote 25 pursued Latin American integration ‘not based primarily on trade liberalization but on a new vision of social welfare and equity’.Footnote 26 In this regard, ALBA displayed a rather confrontational activist discourse referring to a conflict between Latin American unification and the neoliberal social and economic models imposed on the region through the imperialism of the United States, e.g. through the Organization of American States (OAS).Footnote 27 Advocating far-reaching sociopolitical reforms throughout the region,Footnote 28 ALBA was successful in articulating a fundamentally different conception of Latin America compared to previous RIOs,Footnote 29 while Venezuela’s position as the preeminent energy supplier in the region played an integral role in the increasing viability of ALBA.Footnote 30
UNASUR was founded during the height of the Pink Tide, at a summit meeting in Brasilia in 2008, and encompassed all countries located in south America.Footnote 31 The organisation covered several issue areas, including defence, infrastructure and health.Footnote 32 In contrast to other Latin American RIOs, UNASUR did not focus primarily on economic integration but instead emphasised political cooperation and security and defence issues.Footnote 33 In this context, the Consejo de Defensa Sudamericano (South American Defense Council, CDS) created by UNASUR in 2008 represents the rare case of a regional institution in Latin America mandated exclusively in the area of security.Footnote 34 UNASUR thus sought to establish its institutional legitimacy as the regional defender of democracy.Footnote 35 After its foundation, UNASUR more or less openly competed with the OAS in managing several episodes of political crises – including in Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay – and positioned itself against US influence by projecting greater south American autonomy over regional security.Footnote 36
CELAC was created in Mexico in 2010 as a merger of the Rio Group (G-Rio) of Latin American and Caribbean countries and the Cumbre de Países de América Latina y el Caribe (Latin American and Caribbean Nations’ Summit, CALC).Footnote 37 The organisation comprises all sovereign states in the Americas, excluding Canada and the United States. One of the organisation’s objectives is the common representation of the Latin American and Caribbean countries vis-à-vis third parties, such as in the European Union (EU)–CELAC summits.Footnote 38 Based on this mandate, the organisation further aims at countering the shortcomings of the OAS as the hemispheric organisation, most specifically by attempting to curb the influence of the United States and creating credible mechanisms for regional conflict resolution.Footnote 39
MERCOSUR, established in 1991 before the rise of the Pink Tide, has its origin in a series of bilateral trade agreements between Argentina and Brazil, the two major economic powers on the south American continent, and features the most comprehensive economic integration agenda. As part of the political realignment resulting from the ‘Pink Tide’ among most of its member states, the organisation’s focus shifted from a neoliberal toward a left-leaning orientation.Footnote 40 MERCOSUR focuses primarily on economic integration through the creation of a common market.Footnote 41 Comprising Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and – from 2012 onward – Venezuela, which from the late 1990s all turned to leftist governments, MERCOSUR pursued policies associated with social regionalism and greater autonomy in relation to the United States and its neoliberal hegemony, as well as with elements of protectionism.Footnote 42
Importantly, however, the phenomenon of post-neoliberal regionalism, emerging concurrently with the Pink Tide, was neither exclusive nor uncontested. Besides the OAS, where the strong influence of the United States prevented a decisively leftward shift, several exclusively Latin American RIOs did not follow this turn, either. In central America, no single post-liberal-dominated RIO associated with the Pink Tide emerged.Footnote 43 More specifically, some existing RIOs continued to pursue liberal economic integration projects despite increasing ideological divisions, e.g. the Comunidad Andina (Andean Community, 1969), or were founded with an explicit focus on market-oriented regional integration, e.g. the Alianza del Pacífico (Pacific Alliance, 2011), which includes Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru.
Ebb of the ‘Pink Tide’: Increasing Ideological Diversity and Challenges to RIOs
During the mid-2010s, the Pink Tide started to ebb away, as leftist governments lost power to centre–right, right-wing or ‘neo-patriotic’ challengers.Footnote 44 Except for the 2018 election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico, from the mid-2010s onward the ‘pendulum of electoral politics’ in Latin America swung back, bringing into power several right-leaning governments with neoliberal and in some instances authoritarian orientations.Footnote 45 A first sign of this trend was the impeachment of leftist Paraguayan President Lugo by the centre–right opposition in 2012. MERCOSUR and UNASUR, due to the ad hoc nature of the proceedings, labelled this a ‘legislative coup’ and subsequently suspended Paraguay from their organisations.Footnote 46 Additional important turning points included the 2015 fall from power of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in Argentina, as well as the 2016 ‘soft coup’ deposing leftist president Dilma Rousseff in Brazil. Further, Lenín Moreno, successor to Ecuadorian President Correa, switched toward more moderate policy positions and closer engagement with the United States. Bolivian President Morales was removed from power in light of social unrest in 2019.Footnote 47 The Pink Tide thus gave way to a conservative ‘wave’ in the form of the elections of Mauricio Macri and Javier Milei in Argentina (2015, 2023), Sebastián Piñera in Chile (2018) and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil (2018).Footnote 48 Finally, while Chávez’s successor Nicolás Maduro managed to stay in power in Venezuela, the crushing economic crisis, intense domestic opposition – and the regime’s increasingly authoritarian and violent backlash to it – as well as the unprecedented emigration of millions of Venezuelans, undermined the image of the Chávez-inspired political project as a viable model for the region.Footnote 49 These developments were driven by the end of the commodity boom and ensuing economic stagnation throughout the region, changes concerning domestic groups’ voting behaviour,Footnote 50 and emerging confrontations and divisions in the context of this ‘Venezuelan crisis’.Footnote 51 However, given the return or ascent to power of leftist governments in Bolivia (2020), Brazil (2022), Chile (2021), Colombia (2022) and Honduras (2021), the long-term impact of the conservative counter-current is also questionable.
In light of the strong inter-presidential character of Latin American regionalism and the crucial role of presidential ideologies,Footnote 52 the ideological divergences between member states became manifest as RIOs developed into arenas for ideological disputes.Footnote 53 In recent years, research has focused on different forms of contestations of IOs by member states, including rhetorical criticism, the withholding of payments and non-cooperation with the organisation.Footnote 54 In this paper, we focus on exit-related challenges – exit threats and realised exits – as especially severe forms of contestation of RIOs.Footnote 55 We define exit threats as public statements by state officials indicating the state’s intention to terminate its membership in the RIO.Footnote 56 Beyond mere threats, state withdrawals – realised exits – formally end membership in an organisation.Footnote 57 Both threats and withdrawals represent significant contestations of RIOs. On the one hand, they signal the existence of severe RIO-internal cleavages and thus damage the organisation’s legitimacy. This is even more the case as RIOs are based on conceptions of community and society related to common identities.Footnote 58 Additionally, these challenges provide practical problems for RIOs, as (potential) exits decrease the organisations’ geopolitical influence and entail budgetary constraints. Withdrawal threats and their realisations thus constitute the most extreme forms of contestations by states against RIOs and consequently represent our focus in this paper.
The ebb of the Pink Tide led to several RIO withdrawals and threats thereof by right-wing governments. The first of these challenges occurred when Honduras exited ALBA in 2010 after the organisation – along the majority of the international community – condemned a coup against President Manuel Zelaya.Footnote 59 Further contestations ensued with the withdrawals of Ecuador in 2018 and Bolivia in 2019. In the case of Ecuador, this was primarily due to conflicts with Venezuela arising from the country’s uncooperative stance in the Venezuelan refugee crisis, which presented a significant problem for Ecuador,Footnote 60 as well as incompatibilities between ALBA’s economic initiatives and Ecuador’s embeddedness in the global economy.Footnote 61 As for Bolivia, the decision to exit, taken by the conservative interim government of Jeanine Áñez after leftist President Morales had been forced into exile, represents a clear case of a challenge to an RIO with mainly left-leaning members by a more right-wing government during the (preliminary) ebb of the Pink Tide. In this regard, it aligned with the Áñez government’s breaking of ties with other leftist governments in the region.Footnote 62
The two Pink-Tide RIOs to have faced the fewest exit-related challenges by right-wing governments are CELAC and MERCOSUR. In 2020, Brazil suspended its participation in CELAC due to what it regarded as CELAC’s compromising stance against Venezuela.Footnote 63 This was a direct result of the conflict between the right-wing Brazilian government under Jair Bolsonaro and the RIO’s policy toward Venezuela as a leftist member state.Footnote 64 In 2006, Uruguay issued a threat to withdraw from MERCOSUR as it sought to conclude a bilateral trade agreement with the United States – a move that was repeated by Brazil in 2019 over its intent to enter a bilateral trade agreement with China.Footnote 65 In these cases, the threats reflected not only the ideological differences between the right-wing governments of Brazil and Uruguay and the other MERCOSUR member states, but also their preference for negotiating trade agreements unilaterally – a stance that ran counter to the organisation’s common external trade policy.
The RIO most seriously challenged in the context of the waning Pink Tide is UNASUR. Facing exits by Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay, between 2018 and 2020 the organisation lost nine member states.Footnote 66 This mass exodus can be attributed primarily to governments’ dissatisfaction with UNASUR’s lack of effectiveness – despite its sizeable budget – due to ideological polarisation between member states, which prevented them from agreeing on a new Secretary-General in 2018.Footnote 67 Many member states had increasing divergences with Venezuela, which had a strong ideological influence over the UNASUR project.Footnote 68 While the high number of withdrawals in the short time frame also resulted from group dynamics among withdrawing states, the fact that Uruguay – the last country to withdraw from UNASUR in 2020 – did so only after a change toward a more conservative government underlines that the exits were primarily linked to ideological factors.Footnote 69
Analytical Framework
To shed light on when and why right-wing governed states contest RIOs through exit-related challenges, we adopt an analytical framework that captures how ideological divergence between the government in question and the RIO, as well as the state’s inability to trigger institutional change in the organisation, lead to severe dissatisfaction. Severe dissatisfaction, in turn, increases the chances for RIO contestations in the form of exit threats, which are especially likely to be turned into withdrawals when the state in question does not attribute high importance to the RIO with which it is severely dissatisfied.
Proponents of liberal international theory, which posits that cooperation in an anarchical international arena is possible and facilitated by international institutions, have long argued that second-image factors, i.e. state-level factors such as domestic politics or institutions,Footnote 70 should be taken into account when explaining states’ international actions, claiming that states’ political preferences represent the interests of the dominant subset of their domestic society. Thus, the ideological orientations of societal groups that can select the state’s government significantly influence the government’s preferences and foreign policy behaviour.Footnote 71 Bruno Theodore Luciano and Rafael Mesquita in fact argue that the ideological orientation of governments has a significant impact on the formation of RIOs in Latin America.Footnote 72 As a result, if right-wing governments come to power based on the support of a sufficiently large part of the electorate, we expect these governments’ preferences to be derived from their ideological orientation and that of the electorate they represent. The government’s ideological orientation is not the only element shaping its preferences and decisions, as structural international factors will likely exert constraining influences and, in pluralist states such as those in south America, governments also face domestic constraints that set limits to how they can turn their ideological preferences into (foreign) policy decisions.Footnote 73 However, the relevance of domestic political factors, especially the ideological orientations of governments and the societal groups on which they base their power, should not be neglected.
This, however, implies that ideological divergence between the member states of an organisation increases the chance for dissatisfaction. Preference divergence represents a crucial factor impacting state exits from IOs and even organisational decline and death.Footnote 74 At the end of the Pink Tide in particular, ideological divergence between member states amplified, and RIOs increasingly became arenas for ideological disputes between them.Footnote 75 Thus, right-wing governments’ rejection of leftist economic policies and preferences for a positive relationship with the United States stand in contrast to the rather left-leaning member states and the corresponding orientation of UNASUR, ALBA, CELAC and MERCUSOR. Due to the strong inter-governmental – or inter-presidential – character of Latin American regionalism,Footnote 76 dissatisfaction of right-leaning governments with these RIOs, in general, does not result from specific left-wing policies of these organisations as such, as neither pooling nor delegation is particularly pronounced in these organisations.Footnote 77 Rather, this dissatisfaction is likely to result primarily from ideological mismatches with influential left-wing member states within the organisation.
Thus, Hypothesis 1 states: if right-wing governments are confronted with left-leaning dominant member states, this ideological divergence induces discontent with the RIO.
In such contexts, severe dissatisfaction increases if the right-wing government in question is unable to introduce change in the RIO in line with its aspirations. States are more likely to withdraw from organisations that they are unable to adapt in line with their preferences.Footnote 78 Thus, before escalating a conflict by resorting to exit-related challenges, governments will most likely seek to achieve their goals within the day-to-day workings of the organisation, for example achieving institutional or policy change at summit meetings.Footnote 79 Recent research has identified increasing and unaccountable institutional authority as an underlying reason for the contestation of IOs,Footnote 80 but, given the intergovernmental nature of Latin American regionalism and RIOs’ low level of delegation, powerful secretariats and regional courts are not what prevents member states from achieving desired changes in the region’s organisations. Rather, the success of these efforts depends on two factors: first, the relative power of the challenging state within the RIO. If a state is disproportionately more powerful than the other RIO members, it will be more likely to get its way by exerting pressure on or making side-payments to fellow member states, withholding contributions to the RIO, or threatening the pursuit of unilateral strategies outside of the organisation.Footnote 81 Less powerful states are much less able to do all of this. In the case of several challenging states, their ability to act in alignment and their combined relative power are relevant. Second, besides challengers’ relative power, their ability to achieve desired change within the RIO also depends on the RIO’s institutional design, especially the number of veto players.Footnote 82 For example, if an RIO’s decision-making mechanism is based on unanimity, one individual state can block all adjustments suggested by the challenging government. In contrast, in RIOs with higher levels of pooling, challenging governments have better chances of building a majority coalition.
Accordingly, Hypothesis 2 expects the following: states that cannot achieve institutional change to remedy their ideological mismatches and cleavages within the RIO are severely dissatisfied and likely to resort to exit-related contestations.
If right-leaning governments experience ideological divergences from other members of the RIO which they are unable to change through conventional means, resorting to exit threats represents one possibility for them to overcome this deadlock. However, whether or not a government realises its exit threat – or decides to withdraw even without a prior exit threat – is influenced by the RIO’s importance. First, while the functions that RIOs are intended to fulfil range from specific policy competencies to more diffuse symbolic and representational functions,Footnote 83 the importance of an organisation declines when it does not fulfil a function that is relevant for the state in question, or if the organisation is ineffective and the relevant benefits produced are marginal for the challenging state.Footnote 84 Second, an RIO’s importance is limited if the functions it fulfils can easily be substituted by another organisation of which a state is a member.Footnote 85 Latin America is characterised by a high regional regime complexity, with many RIOs overlapping in terms of membership and policy functions.Footnote 86 Thus, if an overlapping organisation covers the same policy competencies as the challenged RIO, its importance reduces. This is even more the case if the other RIO has proven more effective in producing policy results in these issue areas.Footnote 87
Hence, Hypothesis 3 states: the less important the RIO for the challenging government, the more likely it is that it will actually withdraw from the organisation which it has been unable to change, while it is more likely to resort to only the threats of exit if it attributes high importance to the RIO in question.
Plausibility Probe: Case Studies
In this section, we subject the analytical framework and the three hypotheses to an empirical plausibility probe, i.e. an initial examination, based on case studies of exit-related challenges by right-wing governments in ALBA, CELAC, MERCOSUR and UNASUR. We draw on secondary literature along with a variety of primary sources, including official state and RIO documents, and newspaper articles.
CELAC
In January 2020, the Brazilian government announced the suspension of its membership in CELAC, citing both the organisation’s ineffectiveness ‘in the defense of democracy’ and its representing a platform for ‘non-democratic regimes like those of Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua’.Footnote 88 While framing its discontent in terms of these states’ democratic deficits, ideological divergences between the right-wing Bolsonaro government and the three states’ left-wing governments in fact constituted the underlying issue.Footnote 89 Brazil’s suspension of its membership was directed against CELAC’s inability or unwillingness to exclude specific member states, thus representing a clear case of discontent resulting from ideological divergences (Hypothesis 1).
Brazil was unable to achieve a remedy for its discontent within the organisation. In the first place, decision-making in CELAC – which primarily represents a forum for intergovernmental dialogue – is based on the principle of consensus. Thus, even though CELAC’s ‘Special Declaration on the Defence of Democracy and Constitutional Order’ includes a clause providing for the suspension of members in case of a ‘rupture of the constitutional order or of the rule of law’,Footnote 90 achieving the simultaneous exclusion of three states from the organisation would have been very difficult for Brazil. Additionally, as CELAC aspires to be an inclusive body bringing together all Latin American and Caribbean states, the exclusion of one or several members would have run counter to its mission. Further, in 2020, Mexico, which held the organisation’s pro-tempore presidency, was determined to revitalise the organisation and was thus not willing to endanger the CELAC summit by trying to exclude member states from it.Footnote 91 Finally, even though Brazil is one of the most powerful states in CELAC, it is not powerful enough to get its way against a broad majority of other member states, especially in a situation where Mexico – another powerful member state – held the organisation’s presidency. Thus, Brazil’s dissatisfaction with CELAC increased due to its inability to achieve the desired institutional changes (Hypothesis 2).
In this situation, Brazil did not threaten to withdraw from CELAC but instead directly suspended its membership in the organisation. This was the result of several factors which limited CELAC’s importance (Hypothesis 3). On the one hand, at the time of Brazil’s self-suspension, the organisation had been paralysed due to ideological polarisations between its members, and there had been no summits since 2017.Footnote 92 CELAC’s effectiveness had thus been significantly limited. While during the Covid-19 pandemic the organisation experienced a revival through increased technical cooperation,Footnote 93 this was not yet visible at the time of Brazil’s withdrawal. On the contrary, from the perspective of the Bolsonaro government, the value-added of CELAC compared to other RIOs was low.Footnote 94 While one benefit of CELAC was the representation of the whole region vis-à-vis other regions – such as in CELAC–EU summits – in terms of achieving economic agreements, this function would be better fulfilled by MERCOSUR. However, the Bolsonaro government placed increasing emphasis on bilateral trade agreements (see below), thus limiting the potential relevance of CELAC. Furthermore, CELAC’s relative advantage over the OAS – the inclusion of all American states except the United States and Canada – became less relevant for Brazil under Bolsonaro, owing to close ties with the Trump administration and to ideological cleavages with several left-wing governments in the region.Footnote 95 As the influence of these governments was countered in the OAS by the presence of the United States, CELAC became even less important for the Bolsonaro government. Thus, Brazil did not attribute high importance to CELAC and acted upon its severe dissatisfaction by suspending its membership in this organisation.
UNASUR
Between 2018 and 2020, seven member states – Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay and Uruguay – withdrew from UNASUR, citing the organisation’s ineffectiveness and the prominent role of Venezuela.Footnote 96 Both problems resulted from ideological divergences among member states, especially between the right-leaning states and left-wing Venezuela (Hypothesis 1). Colombian President Iván Duque thus regarded the organisation as captured by Venezuela: ‘Unasur was created by Hugo Chávez [as] a sounding board for his regime’, as UNASUR ‘never denounced the destruction of Venezuelan democracy’.Footnote 97 These divergences had been evident from UNASUR’s inability to elect a new Secretary-General in 2018.Footnote 98 The connection between governments’ ideological orientation and their challenges to UNASUR was particularly evident in two cases. In Bolivia, Áñez’s centre–right government, after replacing Morales’ left-wing government, withdrew the country from UNASUR (and ALBA, see below) in 2019 due to ideological differences.Footnote 99 However, as Áñez’s government was swiftly succeeded by the left-wing government of Luis Arce, Bolivia rejoined both organisations.Footnote 100 Uruguay represents the interesting case of the (so far) last member state to withdraw from UNASUR in 2020.Footnote 101 However, it withdrew from the organisation only after the change from the left-wing government of Tabaré Vázquez to the right-wing government of Luis Lacalle Pou in 2020. Here, the government’s discontent with the organisation due to ideological divergences was underlined by its reference to UNASUR as an ‘ideological political alliance’.Footnote 102 Ideological differences also interacted with the negative practical consequences of spillover effects from the Venezuelan crisis. This was especially the case for Colombia which, due to its geographic proximity to Venezuela, was particularly affected by the influx of refugees and the generally uncompromising stance of the Venezuelan government.Footnote 103
Even though the right-wing governments were collectively in a powerful position within UNASUR, they were nonetheless unable to address their grievances and achieve adjustments within the organisation’s day-to-day work, which triggered severe dissatisfaction (Hypothesis 2). This was primarily the result of UNASUR’s decision-making, which followed the consensus principle. It was therefore impossible for the growing number of right-leaning governments to select a Secretary-General without Venezuela’s approval or to effectively address the Venezuelan crisis.Footnote 104 Even though UNASUR’s ‘Additional Protocol to the Constitutive Treaty’ allows for the possibility of suspending member states ‘in the event of a breach or threat of breach against the democratic order’, this would have required a decision by unanimity-minus-one.Footnote 105 However, Venezuela was not completely isolated within UNASUR; it was backed by Bolivia’s left-wing Morales government, as well as by smaller member states such as Guyana and Suriname, due to their energy dependency on the state.Footnote 106 Therefore, it is unlikely that the right-wing challengers would have succeeded in expelling Venezuela from UNASUR.
In response to their severe dissatisfaction, these governments did not just suspend their membership but ultimately withdrew from UNASUR, as the organisation’s importance had been severely reduced (Hypothesis 3). UNASUR’s effectiveness was significantly limited due to the deadlock in its decision-making, leading to the inability to agree on fundamental issues. Although UNASUR was the only south American RIO with a clear mandate in the realm of security,Footnote 107 institutional deadlock resulting from the polarisation among UNASUR’s members prevented it from playing any relevant role, especially in the Venezuelan crisis.Footnote 108 UNASUR’s relevance was further curtailed by the number of withdrawals it experienced. As more right-leaning governments became mutually aware of their intention to exit UNASUR, the importance of remaining within the organisation decreased. In effect, Uruguay, the last state to exit the organisation, stated that ‘Unasur … has already been abandoned by most countries in the region … and … in fact, has ceased to function: it is no longer headquartered and lacks an operational general secretariat’.Footnote 109 The inclination to exit UNASUR was further increased by the creation of the Foro para el Progreso e Integración de América del Sur (Forum for the Progress and Integration of South America, PROSUR) in 2019 as an informal talking shop; this RIO, however, had a narrower mandate focused on cooperation in health, energy, infrastructure, defence, security and disaster management as well as technical elements of integration such as reciprocal recognition of documents.Footnote 110 The immediate availability of a newly established alternative organisation further reduced the importance of UNASUR and resulted in the withdrawals of several right-wing governments from the organisation, while no such alternative existed for CELAC.
MERCOSUR
In comparison to other RIOs in Latin America, MERCOSUR has experienced only a few exit-related contestations, and no country has so far left the trade bloc. In 2006, the Uruguayan centre–left government had threatened to withdraw from MERCOSUR due to trade imbalances in the RIO. The government also advocated for a mechanism to allow individual member states to enter into bilateral trade agreements, and to establish closer commercial ties, in particular with the United States, its largest trade partner.Footnote 111 The prospects for the realisation of these intentions had become doubtful due to the Pink Tide and the accompanying governmental changes in Argentina and Brazil, as well as the accession of Venezuela as an associate member of MERCOSUR in 2004. Another severe contestation faced by MERCOSUR was Uruguay’s 2021 threat to withdraw due to a bilateral trade agreement with China, which it was intent on signing but could not without the consent of the other MERCOSUR members.Footnote 112 In both cases, as no clear ideological divergences had existed between Uruguay and the larger neighbours to its north and south (Hypothesis 1), Uruguay’s actions were primarily guided by economic considerations.Footnote 113 Its intention was to induce institutional change, namely the recognition of the interests of the two smaller members, Uruguay and Paraguay, and the approval of bilateral trade agreements which required the consent of all member states. Nevertheless, the pressure Uruguay could exert to bring about those changes was limited as both Argentina and Brazil were significantly more powerful (Hypothesis 2). This resulted in Uruguay’s severe dissatisfaction with MERCOSUR and triggered an exit threat. Yet, in both instances of contestation by Uruguay, due to the high importance of MERCOSUR for Uruguay (Hypothesis 3), the exit threat did not escalate further into a withdrawal.Footnote 114 Despite its dissatisfaction with the neighbouring states, no other organisation in the region could substitute for membership in an RIO featuring the two largest economies of the continent which, during the time of both contestations by Uruguay, was planning further expansion through the accessions of Venezuela and Bolivia, respectively.Footnote 115 Also, as Uruguay remains economically heavily dependent on its two large neighbours Argentina and Brazil, membership in MERCOSUR is economically highly relevant as well.
Brazil’s threat to leave MERCOSUR in 2019 was closely linked both to potentially looming ideological divergences with Argentina (Hypothesis 1),Footnote 116 and an interest in negotiating a trade agreement with China.Footnote 117 The contestation occurred against the backdrop of the signing of the EU–MERCOSUR Free Trade Agreement that had been in the making for over 20 years.Footnote 118 The right-wing governments of Argentina under Macri and Brazil under Bolsonaro had worked together on concluding the negotiations and were keen on signing another free trade agreement with the United States. Yet, due to Macri’s anticipated defeat in the presidential elections, Brazil feared that it would lose its partner and be faced with a decidedly left-wing protectionist Argentine government that could potentially even prevent the ratification of the EU–MERCOSUR deal.Footnote 119 Therefore, Brazil, as MERCOSUR’s most powerful member, used the organisation as an instrument to pressure Argentina not to shift towards a more protectionist stance. In effect, due to the principle of unanimity, Brazil was unable to achieve its desired outcome against the will of the other members through MERCOSUR’s regular institutional procedures (Hypothesis 2). Thus, severe dissatisfaction led Brazil to threaten to leave the organisation. Yet, it did not realise its exit threat due to MERCOSUR’s significant economic importance (Hypothesis 3). While during the 1999 financial crisis Brazil had shown little interest in MERCOSUR by unilaterally deflating its currency to the disadvantage of its neighbours,Footnote 120 in recent years it has continuously pushed the organisation to pursue external trade agreements, thus underlining the RIO’s importance for Brazil’s trade policy.Footnote 121 Similarly to the case of Uruguay in 2021, MERCOSUR’s functions could not be substituted by some other RIO of which Brazil was a member.Footnote 122 As a result, Brazil did not realise its threat to withdraw from MERCOSUR.
ALBA
As an RIO with a strong left-wing trajectory, ALBA was susceptible to exit-related contestations from states with diverging political orientations. Honduras’ withdrawal in 2010 is a case in point. Less than two months after President Zelaya, who had come to power in 2006, was forced out of office in 2009 the Honduran Congress, with a right-leaning majority, voted to withdraw from the organisation.Footnote 123 This signifies ideological divergences between ALBA and the interim Honduran government under former President of Congress Roberto Micheletti (Hypothesis 1) who, in coordination with President-elect Porfirio Lobo, sought to distance the country from Venezuela.Footnote 124 The conflict between ALBA and the new Honduran government was also evident in the fact that the RIO was highly critical of Zelaya’s ouster, which it regarded as an unconstitutional change of government, with Venezuela allegedly even threatening the country militarily.Footnote 125 Honduras found itself ideologically cornered as ALBA’s sole member state with a non-left-leaning government.Footnote 126 Similarly to Ecuador (see below), Honduras was unable to put pressure on ALBA or other member states, most notably Venezuela, to shift the organisation’s policies (Hypothesis 2). This was mostly the result of Venezuela’s leading role in ALBA as its financial patron.Footnote 127 The reliance of the other member states on Venezuela’s oil exports made it prohibitive for them to align with Honduras. In effect, neither challenging state was able to achieve the desired change within ALBA’s normal working procedures. Thus, while the dissatisfaction became severe, ALBA also lost importance for Honduras as Venezuela, after the overthrow of Zelaya, cut its oil exports (Hypothesis 3).Footnote 128 Additionally, the new right-wing government of Honduras regarded as marginal the benefits of ALBA’s left-leaning and in some respects socialist integration project, also known as ‘socialism of the twenty-first century’, characterised by redistributive agendas as well as opposition to neoliberalism and to the United States.Footnote 129 Thus, membership in the RIO was perceived as not highly important, especially in the light of President Lobo’s initiation of a neoliberal economic programme in the country.Footnote 130
The withdrawal of Ecuador from ALBA was closely connected to the country’s relations with Venezuela.Footnote 131 Similarly to Honduras, Ecuador had experienced the Pink Tide, which brought leftist President Correa to power in 2007; it was he who led Ecuador into ALBA in 2009. In the 2017 elections, Correa’s Vice-President Moreno ran on a platform in line with left-wing policies as propagated by Correa and ALBA. However, after winning the election, his position on socio-economic issues moved towards the centre.Footnote 132 Moreno’s shift from a leftist electoral platform to a centrist position once in power contributed to Ecuador’s distancing from its erstwhile ally Venezuela and thus implied increasing ideological divergences from the other ALBA members (Hypothesis 1). Ecuador had seen an influx of over 500,000 Venezuelan immigrants in the first eight months of 2018,Footnote 133 which led Ecuador’s Foreign Minister, while expressing solidarity with the Venezuelan people, to note Ecuador’s ‘“frustration” with the government of Nicolás Maduro for the “lack of will” to solve the internal crisis’.Footnote 134 This translated also into ALBA, where Ecuador, due to Venezuela’s strong role in the organisation, was unable to induce policy changes in line with its preferences (Hypothesis 2). Furthermore, ALBA’s importance was low for Ecuador (Hypothesis 3). In the first place, the level of implementation of ALBA’s policies was very limited and often ‘produced more words than deeds’.Footnote 135 Secondly, Ecuador’s references to both UNASUR and OAS in the statement declaring its withdrawal from ALBA emphasised that the country felt it could substitute the functions of ALBA in other regional fora, while ALBA was not regarded as a highly important organisation.Footnote 136 Thus, Ecuador acted upon its severe dissatisfaction and left ALBA in 2018.
Similarly to its withdrawal from UNASUR, the exit of Bolivia from ALBA occurred following a change in government from that of Morales, one of Venezuela’s closest allies in the region, to that of Áñez, who led an interim centre–right government after the ouster of Morales in 2019.Footnote 137 Similarly to its previous reaction to the political reconfiguration in Honduras in 2009, ALBA criticised the removal of Morales and refused to accept the transitional government of Áñez as legitimate.Footnote 138 Since assuming power in 2006, Morales had guided Bolivia along a decidedly leftist path, focusing on regional integration with like-minded governments through ALBA, while minimising the role of the United States.Footnote 139 In contrast, Áñez’s interim government took immediate steps to pivot away from Venezuela and Cuba towards improving relations with the United States.Footnote 140 In addition, the interim government embraced previously shunned neoliberal economic approaches, including the liberalisation of agricultural output and large-scale privatisations of previously state-owned operations.Footnote 141 The strategic break with left-leaning policies and the subsequent conservative turn of Bolivia led to increasing ideological divergence from the other member states (Hypothesis 1). However, the unified hostile stance taken by the remaining ALBA members against Bolivia’s reorientation ensured that the new government would not be able to introduce changes in ALBA to align the organisation with its new policy direction (Hypothesis 2).Footnote 142 Given the limited importance of ALBA for a government not subscribed to the organisation’s leftist goals (Hypothesis 3), Bolivia’s (temporary) break from ALBA was a logical consequence.
Conclusions
Latin America is a region characterised by the existence of a large number of overlapping RIOs.Footnote 143 From the late 1990s onward, the region experienced the so-called ‘Pink Tide’, as many left-leaning governments came into office across the region. This was also reflected in the organisations within the region. While some RIOs, including ALBA, CELAC and UNASUR, were created with varying degrees of left-leaning, post-hegemonic and anti-US agendas, preexisting RIOs like MERCOSUR also embraced these elements and shifted away from their initial neoliberal orientations. However, the Tide’s rise was eventually followed by its ebb, as from the mid-2010s right-leaning challengers replaced left-wing governments throughout the region. These domestic political shifts soon had ripple effects at the regional level, as RIOs increasingly became arenas for ideological disputes between right- and left-leaning member states.Footnote 144
Threatened and realised withdrawals signal RIO-internal cleavages to third parties, challenge RIOs’ normative projects, reduce their geopolitical influence, and entail budgetary restraints. Thus, threats to leave and realisations thereof represent the most severe form of contestations that member states can direct against an RIO. The four RIOs most clearly associated with the Pink Tide – ALBA, CELAC, MERCOSUR and UNASUR – have all experienced exit-related challenges by right-wing governments, although to different degrees. Our analysis thus compares not only two RIOs with broader policy scopes and comprehensive integration agendas (UNASUR and CELAC) but also includes an RIO with a strong substantive focus on economic integration (MERCOSUR) as well as one organisation comprised primarily of strongly left-leaning governments (ALBA).
To account for the observed dynamics in withdrawal-related challenges, this paper employed an analytical framework. Drawing on research about the contestation and resilience of IOs,Footnote 145 we thereby added a broader comparative perspective to existing research on regional disintegration in Latin America. Ideological divergences, together with the inability to change the RIO in line with a state’s own aspirations within the organisation’s normal decision-making mechanisms and the state’s relative power position within the RIO, creates severe dissatisfaction. This, in turn, triggers threats to leave the organisation in question and – if the RIO is not highly important for the dissatisfied member state due to limited effectiveness and potential substitutability – actual withdrawals. Hence, exit-related contestations directed towards RIOs in Latin America are fuelled by effects resulting from ideologically divergent member states, as this divergence inhibits their ability to operate within the institutional setting of the organisation.
The empirical plausibility probe examined exit-related challenges of right-wing governments in ALBA, CELAC, MERCOSUR and UNASUR and demonstrated that increasing ideological divergences amongst RIO members (Hypothesis 1) and the inability to achieve desired changes within the organisation (Hypothesis 2) contributed to severe dissatisfaction.
Due to Latin American RIOs’ comparatively low levels of delegation and the limited role of the RIOs’ bureaucracies – which, in contrast to those of other IOs, did not play a significant role in responding to internal challenges – this dissatisfaction was primarily directed toward other left-leaning member states and their leveraging of the RIO.Footnote 146 This finding aligns with Inken von Borzyskowski and Felicity Vabulas’ argument that geopolitical divergences increase the chance of states exiting international organisations.Footnote 147 More specifically, the withdrawals from ALBA, CELAC and UNASUR were all related to ideological divergences manifesting themselves in conflicts between Venezuela and the challenging states in general, and with respect to the Venezuelan crisis and spill-over effects thereof in particular. This stands in contrast to, for instance, the role attributed to expanding institutional authority in precipitating severe contestations of IOs.Footnote 148
In addition, exit threats by right-wing governments also emerged from policy-related dissatisfaction with the RIO itself, especially related to economic issues, as was the case primarily in MERCOSUR. This dissatisfaction resulted in withdrawals when the state did not attribute high importance to the organisation (Hypothesis 3). Whereas the importance of ALBA resulted primarily from its function as a club of more radical left-leaning governments benefitting from Venezuelan oil supplies, MERCOSUR’s importance resulted from its focus on substantive economic integration. In contrast, for CELAC and UNASUR this importance was related to their broader projects of Latin- and south-American integration, respectively, but there were also differences concerning importance of the two organisations. While exiting states could readily substitute UNASUR through PROSUR, this was not the case for CELAC, which had a much larger membership and represented the most all-encompassing RIO in the Americas of which the United States was not a member. As a result, UNASUR was much more affected by exit-related challenges than CELAC.
The comparison between UNASUR and CELAC is especially relevant as it highlights factors affecting the differences in the occurrence of exit-related challenges in two organisations with comparably broad regional integration projects (in contrast to the primarily ideological focus in ALBA and the emphasis on economic integration in MERCOSUR). Consequently, the variance in outcome as to what extent an RIO was challenged and which right-wing governments engaged in severe contestation was, further to the initial ideological divergence, also affected by subsequent considerations relating to the effectiveness, importance and substitutability of the RIOs by the contesting governments.
While the focus of this paper has been on severe contestations by right-wing governments in the aftermath of the Pink Tide, there have been multiple instances of states governed by decidedly left-wing governments engaging in severe contestation in the context of regional cooperation. This was evident, for example, in the exit threats and eventual withdrawals of Venezuela and Nicaragua from the OAS in 2017 and 2023, respectively.Footnote 149 It would therefore seem worthwhile for future research to analyse the characteristics and drivers of those contestations in order to uncover potential similarities to right-wing contestations of RIOs.
Furthermore, recent research into the resilience and decline of IOs has argued that both ideological divergences, as well as smaller organisational bureaucracies and limited delegation of authority to them, increase the chance for IOs to die.Footnote 150 Thus, as the four RIOs could be regarded as ‘high-risk patients’, future research should move beyond this paper’s focus of explaining the occurrence of exit-related challenges toward analysing the differentiated effects of exit-related challenges on the organisations’ resilience, survival and decline.
Acknowledgements
The paper is part of a research project ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go? State Exits from Regional Organisations’, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG; PA 1257/10-1). We are grateful to Franziska Höhne, Tom Hunter, Raffaele Mastrorocco, Kyriaki Nanou, Tainá Siman, Alexandros Tokhi, Stefanie Walter and Lisbeth Zimmermann for valuable comments on earlier versions of the paper. We thank Léonie Berton, Antonia Damm, Tim Rauschenberger, Mirjam Schellinger, Martin Stoll and Tim Vent for excellent research assistance.
