Latin American Policy最新文献

The latest comparative studies of climate policies reinforce the fundamental importance of employing adaptation planning alongside national development strategies. While these studies are necessary to document and share the knowledge of the practices and experiences undertaken at the national level, documents are still scarce on regions of interest such as Central America. This article scrutinizes the state of adaptation planning through an exhaustive investigation of adaptation policy documents, consisting of National Adaptation Strategies, National Climate Legislation, and National Adaptation Action Plans, which are common in all six Central American countries. The findings reveal a region with an intricate yet progressive trend toward adaptation policies, with each country showing different speeds and qualities of adoption. An increasing learning curve has allowed for the emergence of two generations of adaptation policies with several improved features, including horizontal and vertical coordination, monitoring systems, and the inclusion of heterogeneous instruments to implement these systems. Yet, institutional challenges outside the adaptation realm could hinder the progress attained, due to factors such as political and economic crisis and institutional fragility. Further research into the broader political and governance landscape is needed, focusing on if and how climate policies should address political instability and institutional fragility as vulnerability stressors.

The Pacific Alliance, born as an alternative to “postliberal regionalism,” aimed at reinforcing the liberalization and openness strategies as well as the North–South agreements previously subscribed by its members. It sought to enhance intraregional trade, promote value chains, and reach out to the Asia-Pacific region. Ten years after the creation of the Pacific Alliance, it is relevant to assess its effect on trade flows among its members and with other regional trade agreements like the Andean Community and the Southern Common Market. We use an augmented gravity model and the panel data methodology to provide evidence that the Pacific Alliance has not affected trade flows significantly among its members or with other South American regional trade agreements.

Recent protests in Colombia, Ecuador, and Chile, as well as tense elections in Peru, Ecuador, and Chile, suggest strong polarization. At their heart lies a dispute for the development model. The plurality of factions and vindications underscore the plurality of development notions, rendering the situation a wicked problem. Grid group cultural theory makes sense of such complexity, identifying four irreducible cultures and their respective development models—illustrated by neoliberalism, the developmental state, multiple alternatives such as Sumak Kawsay, and a chimera. To address this problem effectively and legitimately, all models must be engaged to produce clumsy solutions. Further, each culture has its own pathway to harness this plurality. These are messy institutions whose shape, as well as that of clumsy development models, will depend on the relative power of each culture and the context in which they are located. It could be beneficial to incorporate these insights into research on and the practice of development governance in the Andean Region.

In recent decades, the relationship between Argentina and Brazil was understood as an alliance sustained by common interests and shared values. We argue that this assumption no longer holds, and that the relationship is going through a growing divide. In this article, we examine the evolution of Argentina–Brazil relations and carry out a plausibility probe to test three explanations of their rise and decline. To do so, we look at the shifting patterns of preferences (i.e., domestic coalitions and the electoral cycle), interests (i.e., business actors and trade patterns), and the shadow of the future (i.e., prospects for future interactions). We find that each of the three explanations contributes significantly to our understanding of the relationship's development and the challenges that lie ahead.

Our last issue for this year of Latin American Policy (LAP) opens with an article written by Alain Fairlie and Erika Collantes assessing the commercial repercussions of the Pacific Alliance, considering other regional trade agreements like the Andean Community and the Southern Common Market. The authors conclude that the Alliance has not significantly affected trade flows among its members or with other South American regional trade agreements. Pablo Garcés Velástegui then explores four irreducible cultures and their respective development models that currently prevail in South America, to consider the issues inherent to development theories. Charles G. Ripley explores the importance of South–South alliances in aiding the establishment of relations between Colombia and Venezuela (2008–2010), in handling Argentina's financial crisis (2003–2007), and in ending over 50 years of civil war in Colombia (1964–2016).

Luis Diego Segura R., Annemarie van Zeijl-Rozema, and Pim Martens offer a complex study of climate-change adaptation policies in Central America, considering if and how much they have been implemented. On a related environmental topic, Jennapher Lunde Seefeldt explores the growing contention between local communities and mining companies over water use for extracting lithium resources in Chile. The author concludes that activism and company and government responses can facilitate improved negotiations between stakeholders and allow for access to lithium while protecting more the environment and the peoples that survive in the desert. Finally, Nicolas Didier assesses the effectiveness of the Chilean training system, focusing on how it can improve wages.

LAP has also invited two distinguished Brazilian scholars, Monica Herz and Leticia Pinheiro, to prepare a special issue on Bolosnaro's foreign policy and the departure from previous Brazilian commitments in both multilateral fora and regional associations. The product is an excellent collection of eight research articles—also blind-reviewed by anonymous referees—that contributes to a thorough understanding of major policy changes affecting this key country in the Latin American region. We hope our readers may also benefit from this special issue.

In this article, we put forward an interpretation of Jair Bolsonaro's foreign policy based on its attachment to a conservative authoritarian worldview. We look at how a conservative authoritarian movement and leadership interact with foreign policy in three different ways—by redefining the place of foreign policy in the wider social and political project of the government; by redesigning how the government prioritizes international relations with different countries; and, most importantly, by alienating the country's foreign policy from its longstanding support for multilateral institutions.

Brazilian diplomacy has historically used the environmental agenda as a soft-power tool, particularly regarding climate change, but this situation has drastically changed under Jair Bolsonaro's administration. Imitating other far-right populists and their antienvironmental rhetoric, especially Donald Trump's, Bolsonaro attempted to use the topic to inflame his domestic supporters against international players. On the one hand, this strategy weakened Brazilian influence in bilateral and multilateral forums; on the other, dismantling environmental policies and governance structures had substantial consequences, especially in deforestation rates and attacks on traditional communities. This article analyzes the Bolsonaro administration's stand on the environment and climate issues and the repercussions of its policies and rhetoric in Brazil's domestic and foreign scenarios. We conclude that changes in the international context, especially after Trump's electoral defeat in the United States, led to a softening of Bolsonaro's international environmental and climate discourse, with no substantial policy changes internally. Although climate denialism is a centerpiece of the discourse of far-right populists, this empirical analysis indicates that, in the case of Brazil, this narrative did not bring significant results to Bolsonaro in terms of support or international relevance.

This article considers how Brazilian entrepreneurs, mainly from the agribusiness and manufacturing sectors, interpreted and reacted to Brazil's foreign policy during the first 3 years of the Jair Bolsonaro administration (2019–2021). Through semistructured interviews and content analysis of business primary sources, the article concludes that, despite significant heterogeneities within and between economic sectors, agribusiness and manufacturing entrepreneurs were more critical of than complimentary toward the nature and directions of Bolsonaro's foreign policy. The article also shows that business lobbying was successful in several issues, including keeping the project of South American economic integration alive; containing the close association between Bolsonaro and Benjamin Netanyahu's Israel; and limiting the economic and political consequences of Brazil–China diplomatic crises. Despite their achievements, business leaders were less successful in moderating and much less changing Bolsonaro's approach toward the environment and climate change, which constituted a significant predicament for the country's image abroad and played a crucial role in obstructing the ratification of a trade deal with the European Union. Still, these negative implications were not enough to produce any serious split between business groups and the Bolsonaro administration during the first 3 years of Bolsonaro's rule.