The Finances Of Regional Organisations In The Global South

This book addresses a major gap in the longstanding research on regional organisations: how do their finances work and what do they reveal about the region-building process? It brings together an empirically rich collection of chapters written by experts of regional organisations in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Based on the insights on thirteen regional organisations as well as two chapters dedicated to the influence of external funders, the editors develop typologies to cluster regional organisations according to their financial characteristics: the size of budgets, the sources of funding and the criteria to calculate contributions. Through analysing the process of budgeting and resourcing, the book sheds light on the different nature and functioning of these organisations existing outside of the Global North and puts a specific emphasis on regional organisations in the area of security in Africa and the Global South. It provides explanations to why members pay or do not pay and how budgeting works, and it deals with data availability, the role of donors, overlapping regionalism, cultural transfers between regional organisations and the impact on regional actorness. This volume will be of key interest to scholars and students of African studies and politics, the Global South, the finances of international organisations, comparative regionalism, international political economy and international relations.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the evolution and particularities of regional organizations across Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe since 1945. The authors analyze the membership dynamics and policy scopes of 76 organizations, and compare their opportunities and challenges in regional governance. They consider organizations’ competencies in eleven different policy areas, including trade, security and environment, and trace patterns in their development. For those with interests in comparative regionalism, international relations, political science and international law, this is an essential companion to some of the world’s most significant organizations.

This book analyzes regional integration in South America with a focus on the Mercosur and Brazilian foreign policy from the 1990s. It reviews the history of the Mercosur and identifies the results achieved by the bloc, as well as the causes of difficulties and the reasons for stalemates over nearly 30 years of its existence. The authors identify the complex interrelation between domestic and foreign factors that have shaped Brazilian foreign policy. From 1991 onwards, relations between Latin American countries have changed while the Mercosur developed from a free trade area to a customs union. While intrabloc trade grew, there were huge difficulties in the form of regional institutional affirmation and cooperation. This history is of the utmost importance to understanding regionalism and politics in Latin America. The book therefore has two interrelated analytical dimensions: namely, focus on ideas and identity; and behavior, actions, and economic and political interests. This very topical book is of interest for researchers and students of Brazilian foreign policy and those of Latin American and/or Mercosur countries. Particularly, readers interested in regionalism will find important theoretical and empirical elements in this book, as well as discussions necessary for comprehending the role of big, emerging countries, and the potential and limits to their international role.

This book analyses the regional complexes of climate security in the Pacific. Pacific Island States and Territories (PICTs) have long been cast as the frontline of climate change and placed within the grand architecture of global climate governance. The region provides compelling new insights into the ways climate change is constructed, governed, and shaped by (and in turn shapes), regional and global climate politics. By focusing on climate security as it is constructed in the Pacific and how this concept mobilises resources and shapes the implementation of climate finance, the book provides an up-to-date account of the way regional organizations in the Pacific have contributed to the search for solutions to the problem of climate insecurity. In the context of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris in 2015, the focus of this book on regional governance offers a concise and innovative account of climate politics in the prevailing global context and one with implications for the study of climate security in other regions, particularly in the developing world.

Contributions to this volume summarize and discuss the theoretical foundations of the Collaborative Research Centre at Leipzig University which address the relationship between processes of (re-)spatialization on the one hand and the establishment and characteristics of spatial formats on the other hand. Under the global condition spatial formats are products of collective negotiations on the most effective and widely acceptable balance between the claim for sovereignty and the need for interconnectedness.

This book explores when, why, and how regional organizations adopt and design institutions to promote and protect fundamental standards of democracy, human rights, and rule of law in their member states. These regional institutions have spread globally. While their institutional designs have become increasingly similar over time, regional particularities persist. The book identifies factors that generate the demand for regional institutions and shape its institutional design. The argument combines hitherto juxtaposed explanatory factors of demands and diffusion by integrating them in a single framework and clarifying under what conditions the interplay between demands and diffusion plays out in the adoption and design of regional institutions. The book provides a comprehensive overview of regional democracy, human rights, and rule of law institutions based on two original datasets and draws on multivariate statistical analysis as well as case studies on the making and change of regional institutions in the Organization of American States and the Organization of African Unity/African Union.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. It is free to read, download and share on Elgaronline.com. Building a thorough and comprehensive understanding of the limits of the international rules-based liberal order across a variety of issue areas, this topical book highlights how the discourse and values inherent in these long-established political arrangements are now facing a backlash, and how Europe is responding towards it.

Asian economies continue to be subject to new shocks: US monetary policy tightening, the adoption of negative-interest-rate policies by central banks all over the world, the slowdown of the People's Republic of China, and the sharp drop in oil and other commodity prices. All these highlight the vulnerability of the region to volatile trade and capital flows even as the global and Asian regional financial architecture evolves. This volume analyzes the vulnerabilities of Asian economies to external economic and financial shocks and assesses the performance of Asian regional institutions in financial surveillance and cooperation. It also evaluates ongoing reforms of the global financial architecture, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Financial Stability Board, and reviews the experience of the "Troika" (European Commission, European Central Bank, and the IMF) in managing the European sovereign debt and banking crisis. Based on these, the book develops valuable recommendations to strengthen the Asian regional financial architecture and improve cooperation with global multilateral institutions.