Download Citizenship and Governance in Mercosur

Citizenship and Governance in Mercosur:
Arguments for a Social Agenda 1
Jean Grugel
Department of Politics
University of Sheffield
[email protected]
1
The research for this paper was made possible by an award from the Economic and Social Research
Council (RES-000-22-0427 New Regionalism and Transnational Collective Action in South America).
The article is based on primary research in Argentina in 2004; many of the interviewees spoke off the
record and I have therefore not identified them by name. An earlier version of this paper was presented
at the ESRC Seminar Series Social Policy, Stability and Exclusion: Housing, Public Services and
Social Class, the Institute for the Americas, University of London, 10 December 2004. I would like to
thank the organisers and the participants in the seminar for their comments, as well as the reviewers for
helpful suggestions.
1
Citizenship and Governance in Mercosur:
Arguments for a Social Agenda
Abstract
This paper examines a neglected dimension of the debate about post-national
citizenship by focussing on the articulation of citizenship demands at the level of the
region. More specifically, it analyses the pressures for, and the constraints on, the
project of social citizenship within Mercosur. Drawing on primary research in
Argentina, the article identifies a number of initiatives that attempt to infuse Mercosur
with a social agenda. I argue that the significance of these initiatives is that they
represent the first coherent attempt to articulate a citizen-centred model of new
regionalism in Mercosur. But I also suggest that a formidable combination of
obstacles lie in the path of this alternative project of regional governance. Finally, I
explore the consequences of excluding issues of citizenship, rights and welfare from
the agenda of regionalism, highlighting in particular the possibility of societal
rejection if region-building remains empty of social meaning.
Jean Grugel is Professor in the Department of Politics, University of Sheffield. She
has written extensively on democratisation and new regionalism, especially in Latin
America. She is presently working (with Nicola Piper) on a monograph entitled
Marginalising the Many: Liberal Global Governance and Ordinary People to be
published by Routledge and two ESRC-funded projects, the first of which is a study
of the Convention of the Rights of the Child and children’s rights in Argentina while
the second (with Paul Mosley and Ben Thirkell-White) is a comparative study of the
political economy of pro-poor adjustment.
2
Democracy happens when subordinated social groups achieve sufficient access to the
state to change patterns of policy making and representation within it and elites accept
the need to share political power and to redistribute, to some extent, economic and
social resources (Rueschmeyer, Stephens and Stephens 1992). Democratisation thus
requires not only institutional change but, more fundamentally, the construction and
practice of social citizenship (Grugel 2002). Judged in this light, democratisation in
Latin America has proved a very disappointing affair (Hakim 2003; World Bank
2003). One response to the superficiality of contemporary democratic processes
across the region has been for communities and movements to organise in order to
press claims and demands rights from recalcitrant states. Such movements, described
by Friedman and Hochstetler (2002) as ‘the instantiation of civil society’, have
become a feature of the political and social landscape in Latin America and are central
to the expression of citizenship and demands for social welfare (Smulovitz and
Perruzzotti 2000; Abel and Lewis 2002; Gonzalez Bombal and Villar 2003).
In recent years, civil society organisations have also become interested in exploring
the links between the search for citizenship and activism beyond the state. There is
now an extensive literature that analyses the impact of transnational advocacy
networks on domestic struggles for rights and recognition (Keck and Sikkink 1998). I
explore here a rather more neglected aspect of transnational citizenship by examining
the role of regionalism – understood as an intermediate space between the global and
the national levels of politics - in demands for citizenship. I do so through an analysis
of an emergent project to transform the norms that underpin regional integration
within a sub-region of Latin America, the Common Market of the South (Mercosur),
focusing in particular on efforts by non-state actors in Argentina to link regionbuilding to claims for social citizenship. To advance the argument somewhat, I
suggest that the significance of these initiatives is that they represent a novel attempt
to articulate a mode of citizenship-centred regionalism. As such, they present an
important critique of contemporary forms of regionalism in the Americas, namely that
they fail both to ameliorate the social costs of integration and to build a region-wide
identity through practices of inclusion. But I also argue that the impact of these ideas
is circumscribed by the difficulty civil society actors experience in penetrating
regional states; the resistance of state elites to change; and institutional obstacles
within Mercosur itself, some of which reflect a firm rejection of the notion that
citizenship constitutes, or should constitute, a core component of the model of
regional development. The exclusion of social citizenship from the agenda of
Mercosur restricts, in turn, the extent to which it can become embedded within the
fabric of regional societies and ultimately threatens its legitimacy as a form of
regional governance.
Citizenship and regionalism
Citizenship is usually understood as sets of inter-linking political, social, cultural and
economic rights and obligations. These comprise the classic liberal freedoms – of
association, information, expression etc – alongside rights to identity, dignity, welfare
and security. Theories of citizenship tend to assume that rights are understood and
expressed primarily within and via nation states. Indeed, citizenship, within the
3
narrative of Western history at least, is established alongside states and cannot be
separated from the history of state creation (Tilly 1984). For Marshall (1973),
extrapolating from developments in twentieth century Europe, social, cultural and
economic rights follow on from political rights in a process he terms ‘social
citizenship’.
Within Europe, alongside this tradition of state-bound rights, a more diffuse regional
model of social citizenship linked to common patterns of development and notions of
welfare also emerged in the period following the Second World War. This model has
made European integration if not possible, then certainly smoother than it might
otherwise have been. Europeanisation has created ‘soft’ law, norms and standards that
regulate social citizenship and establish minimum welfare standards that are
applicable across all member states. Integration, together with the trend towards
power migration to the centre within the European Union (EU) has led to
improvements in social citizenship. The apparent lesson here is that integration can
act as a frame for the articulation of social citizenship and the extension of welfare, if
only because the process of establishing a new political community is made more
manageable if it is embedded in practices of social inclusion and the recognition of
social and cultural rights. Welfare regimes create elective affinities with regional
institutions (Habermas 1998). Moreover, over time, regional institutions may then
become part of the structure of citizenship opportunities, furnishing civil society
groups with a clear institutional complex above the state to lobby (Tarrow 2001).
The European model is undoubtedly a source of inspiration to civil society activists
within Mercosur (Di Pietro 2003). But Latin America’s history of citizenship is very
different to that of Europe. In particular, the disparity between formal and ‘real’ rights
is marked (MacDonald 2000). If we accept Jelin’s (1996:104) definition of citizenship
as ‘a conflictive practice related to power – that is, to a struggle about who is entitled
to say what in the process of defining common problems and deciding how they will
be faced’, then ordinary people have for the most part hardly enjoyed citizenship
rights in Latin America at all. As Hochstelter (2003) argues, ‘far from accruing rights
in a lineal and incremental way [as in Europe] Southern Cone citizens have seen their
citizenship rights given, taken away, and restored in cycles largely outside their
control’. Moreover, for most of the twentieth century citizenship in the Southern Cone
was understood mainly as labour rights; in Argentina in particular, citizenship came to
be associated with the political influence of the trades union movement.
Democratisation since the 1980s has allowed for the articulation of a broader project
of citizenship where it is conceptualised more diffusely as sets of social, political,
cultural and economic rights; and democratisation has been accompanied by the
emergence of sophisticated and dynamic civil society organisations (Smulovitz and
Peruzzotti 2000). But social citizenship, in the sense in which it is deployed by
Marshall or understood in Europe to mean inclusion, welfare, security and dignity for
all members of the national community has proved impossible to establish due to,
inter alia, the collapse of the labour movement, the legacies of authoritarianism,
neoliberal state retrenchment and the trend towards the privatisation of social welfare.
Thin codes of citizenship and weak traditions of rights protection within Latin
America meant that civil society groups have frequently sought support from outside
the nation state. One result of this was an early internationalisation of social protest.
This has led to the creation of Latin American nodes within dense global networks of
4
citizenship activism. But the extent to which citizenship claims can be staked at the
regional (rather than the transnational) level has largely remained unexplored terrain.
Studies of new regionalism in Latin America have mainly focused on its role within
the unfolding of a post-1980s political economy of trade and investment liberalisation
and its sociological and political dimensions have generally been neglected. This
stands somewhat in contrast with how the study of new regionalism in Asia, for
example, where identity, belonging and boundary questions have been more
systemically examined. In an important study of networks in Asia, for example, Piper
and Uhlin (2004) argue that newly constructed regions can act as an effective space
for the generation and coordination of transnational collective action. Nevertheless,
there is now a greater awareness of the extent to which civil society movements in the
Americas are trying to use new regionalism as a frame for claims-making. There is
growing evidence of social activism and demands for social development at the
macro-level of the hemisphere in particular. The Free Trade Area of the Americas
(FTAA) and Summits of the Americas have sparked widespread mobilisation in
favour of agendas of development, human security and citizenship (Botto and Tussie
2003; Smith and Korzienwicz 2003; Smith and Korzeniewicz, forthcoming). As a
result of the mobilisation of civil society across the Americas – and the recognition by
some state elites of the value of including moderate elements of civil society in the
structures of region-building - there is now the beginning of (weak and partial) civil
society inclusion within the structures of macro-regionalism.
In the light of this, it is important to ask whether sub-regionalism integration schemes
within the Americas, such as Mercosur, can also become sites for advancing
citizenships claims – and, if so, what kind of claims are being staked. Mercosur,
formed in 1991 by Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay, is, overwhelmingly, an
elite inter-governmental scheme of integration. Its origins lie in governmental
decisions in Brazil and Argentina in the mid 1980s to strengthen weak transitional
governments through active policies of cooperation. It builds on notions of the
cultural specificity of ‘South’ America, in contrast with the hemispheric project of
trade and investment liberalisation identified with the FTAA, and it offers a
development agenda that is, in diffuse but strongly-felt ways, regarded as different to
the integration model advanced by the US-led FTAA. As such, Mercosur has invited
speculation about its role within Latin America as an alternative pole of integration.
Its relationship with the EU has strengthened the notion that Mercosur is integration
in the ‘European’ mould, in contrast to the market-driven FTAA (Sanchez Bajo 1999;
Grugel 2004). Nevertheless, Mercosur’s essential rationale is driven by elites’ view of
national political-economic interests. It has continued to exist, despite periodic crises,
because it plays a role in protecting national economic elites (Brazil’s especially) by
staggering trade and investment liberalisation. As Diuna (2004) notes, Mercosur
builds on existing shared ‘ontological and normative notions about the world’; but
those notions refer principally to state sovereignty, elite-led liberal democracy,
economic regulation and a sense of belonging to ‘South’ America. There was no
thought-though concept of social citizenship or substantive welfare regime at risk
through integration and no member state where maintaining significant levels of
welfare spending mattered politically. As a result, citizenship issues have largely been
absent from mainstream debates about region-building
Broadening the norms surrounding region-building to incorporate social citizenship
now is no easy task but, if it were achieved, it could provide Mercosur with a broad
5
societal acceptance – Habermas’ ‘elective affinity’ - that is currently absent. Within
this in mind, voices are gradually being raised to push governments in the direction of
region-building through citizenship. One particularly distinctive feature of these
voices is that they do not come from grassroots social movements – the prospective
beneficiaries of welfare and citizenship policies – but from professional bodies, social
policy ‘experts’ and officials from within member states and multilateral agencies
such as the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).
Making the case for social citizenship
Studies of global politics and norm transformation have suggested that elite
individuals and professional groups (‘epistemic communities’) can sometimes use
their expertise to change ideas and policy (Risse et al 1999). Finnemore and Sikkink
(1998: 895) describe such groups as ‘norm entrepreneurs’: ‘agents having strong
notions about appropriate or desirable behaviour in their community’. Successful
norm change, they argue, requires the existence of such groups to stimulate public
debate and construct organisational platforms to press for change, alongside state
structures that have been rendered, for whatever reason, permeable to external
influence. It is exceedingly difficult to establish whether governing elites are
embracing a rhetorical endorsement of change or if real and profound norm
transformation is genuinely in train, especially since, in the developing world in
particular, state leaders tend to mimic conformity with international norms and
western ideals. To be convinced that pressure is effective and norm change taking
place, therefore, evidence is needed not only of a rhetorical embrace of new principles
by state leaders but of policy-based change.
There were signs from the middle of the 1990s that the absence of citizenship policies
was increasingly viewed, within Mercosur and outside it, with alarm. The EU, for
example, sponsored the creation of the Centro de Formacion para la Integracion
Regional (CEFIR) in Uruguay with the brief to promote and coordinate research on
integration in the Southern Cone, including questions of citizenship (Grandi and
Bizzozero 1997). Local academics/activists such as Elizabeth Jelin (1999) noted that
economic integration of the sort demanded by Mercosur would inevitably intensify
social dislocation. She concluded that integration would necessarily require the
introduction of coordinated social policy by the member states, if only for reasons of
governance. Jelin (2001) also articulated a powerful critique of Mercosur’s technical
and economistic approach to integration. A further sign of concern about the direction
of integration was the foundation of the Instituto Social Mercosur (IMS), the first
research centre devoted to the study of social policy in Mercosur, in 1999, with
branches in Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro. From these gradual and diffuse
beginnings, a campaign began to take shape to put social citizenship issues on the
agenda of region-building – that is, to challenge the established norm set and infuse
region-building with new norms of citizenship. In Argentina, this intensified quickly
after the economic collapse of 2001. Until then, Mercosur had not really captured
public attention to any degree and civil society movements with concerns about
Argentina’s place in the world in the Americas had tended to focus on the FTAA.
After 2001, as civil society groups reflected on the relationship between globalisation,
development and foreign policy, some space gradually opened up within which it was
possible to think not just of how to oppose the FTAA but how to engage critically
with Mercosur. Debates about representation, social protection, welfare provision and
6
citizenship became bound up with strategies of internationalisation and regionalism,
creating a sense that the time was ripe for the introduction of new perspectives on
integration. External circumstances helped here too, including the victory of Lula in
Brazil and the intensification of the EU-Mercosur negotiations which aimed to create
a bi-regional association deal which would, in turn, establish Mercosur firmly as an
actor in international politics.
Academics, researchers and policy experts thus formed the kernel of a loosely
connected network that advances an agenda of region-building through social
citizenship. In the process, Mercosur itself came to be posited as a preferable
alternative to the FTAA, since the latter, it was thought, would serve to lock-in what
was now seen as a discredited neoliberal paradigm of development while Mercosur
contained the potential for reform. The IMS and others came to argue not that
Mercosur represented a fully-fledged model of integration which respected and
enhanced citizenship rights but that it could potentially embrace citizenship. Their
goal, as they saw it, was to influence leaders and the public debate in order to make
this outcome more likely.
The first task was to clarify what citizenship claims could mean within Mercosur.
This came to be expressed as the search for a ‘social agenda’ that could be grafted on
to Mercosur: a debate as to what citizenship could mean in circumstances where the
fragmentation of the labour movement and the emergence of new claims around
identity implied that it could no longer be subsumed straightforwardly into trades
union rights, at the same time as neoliberalism had decidedly consigned universal
social policies to the past. In general terms, the social agenda came to be understood
as a re-working of the corporatist bargain, alongside a targeted approach to welfare
based in part on ‘new’ identity-based rights (Deacon 2001). Di Pietro (2003) sums it
up quite simply as sets of policies that pay ‘attention to the negative social effects of
integration’. Such policies would also include the adoption of common anti-poverty
strategies and coordinated policies that ameliorate embedded forms of social
exclusion between the Mercosur member states (Podesta 1998). Crucially, it was
suggested that social reform of this sort was compatible with the progressive
liberalisation of economic policies to which Mercosur was already committed.
Emphasis was placed on welfare spending as a positive-sum game: new forms of
social investment in housing and welfare, for example, would have a positive impact
on regional growth, development and social peace (Draibe 1998). In short, reform
would complement, not challenge, the process of development through strategic
liberalisation.
Of the local groups pushing for change, the IMS is undoubtedly the most visible. It
has a staff of around ten employees, mainly social policy and legal experts, and
combines research and policy advocacy. Its aim is to counter the trade-centred agenda
of regionalism which has meant that social issues have been traditionally treated ‘as
essentially peripheral to Mercosur’ (founder member, interview with the author). In
private, members express essentialist beliefs about the importance of human dignity,
democracy and inclusion and an ideological preference for Latin-based integration. In
public, however, the tone is rather more technical and debates are framed rather
differently. Arguments are put forward about the utility of reform, welfare and
inclusion for managing the integration process and reference is made to the European
process. Influenced by European debates about citizenship and integration, the IMS
7
argues that successful integration can only proceed through active policies of social
inclusion since the spill-over problems from economic integration will gradually
necessitate a co-ordinated response by member states:
The process of regional integration in Mercosur should have social
development as its objective, given that social problems now transcend
national frontiers and political and social demands are common across the
region…Our governments should begin to think about social policy in a
regional perspective, in order to create the conditions through which all
citizens in the region can experience development in dignity. The new
social integration [which is happening across Mercosur] does not respect
geography (Luna 2000).
This project of citizenship does not advocate the delivery of welfare through and for
the labour movement, as in the past (Barrientos 2004). The IMS identifies a range of
rights-bearing subjects, in addition to labour, that have emerged through globalisation
and regional integration. Attention is also drawn to the negative consequences of
unregulated economic integration on the most vulnerable members of the community,
including children, ethnic minorities and marginalised and impoverished families
within the informal economy and the need for policies that recognise the rights of the
displaced and migrant labour. IMS arguments stress the linkages between social
reform and economic productivity: that is, it is argued that social reform is necessary
not only for intrinsic reasons to do with the dignity of the person but also because the
pace of economic integration, especially in border regions, makes coordinated social
regulation inevitable if states are to remain legitimate and to lay claims to sovereign
control over territory.
In making its case, the IMS seeks, above all, to influence policy-making debates. As
with other professional non-state groups, members of the IMS are overwhelmingly
drawn from the metropolitan intellectual middle class of Buenos Aires. They are
frequently linked to the small and overlapping political elite through friends, family,
social networks, education and neighbourhood. They easily connect with, and
sometimes form part of, Peronism’s counter-elites and often have personal and
informal lines of contact with state leaders and policy makers. As a result, in addition
to the programme of academic research, IMS members participate in public debates
alongside politicians and journalists. In particular, the IMS works closely with the
Department of Integration and Regional Programmes (INTAL), a branch of the InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB), based on Buenos Aires. With INTAL, the IMS
has hosted seminars which bring together Mercosur social policy experts and
politicians, such as Identity Rights and Childhood in Mercosur (2000) and the Social
Agenda in Mercosur (2003). In addition, the IMS lobbies the small Joint
Parliamentary Commission within Mercosur, set up in 1994, and takes an active part
on the formal channels of civil society consultation within Mercosur. Links have also
been established directly with the state through the Department of Social
Development; indeed the civil servant responsible for coordinating policy on
regionalism within the Department until 2003 was a founding member and is an exPresident of the IMS. As a result, the IMS drafted preliminary discussion documents
for consideration in Mercosur on regionalism and family policy (Luna 2002). It has
also been an enthusiastic participant in the forum within the Argentine Foreign Office
which was created as an institutional channel into civil society designed to ascertain
8
and influence civil society preferences regarding integration, the Consejo
Consultativo de la Sociedad Civil (CCSC). Part of the range of overtures by the
Kirschner administration to civil society, the CCSC mirrors attempts elsewhere in
Latin America to bring moderate civil society insiders into trade and foreign policy
making. The IMS organises the section within the CCSC on Social Development. It
hopes through this to have a voice in how the Foreign Office thinks about
regionalism, even though the limitations of the initiative – little is documented, no
decisions are binding, the extent of influence of the Foreign Office over integration is
no longer clear – are recognised.
Although the most articulate, the IMS is not alone in its advocacy of citizenshipcentred regionalism in Argentina. Other social policy organisations are also gradually
taking up the issue. The Observatorio Social (OS), for example, which, general, has
also recently endorsed Mercosur as a vehicle for the advancement of citizenship. The
OS has proved particularly active as a nexus for social policy experts across the
Mercosur region to engage in exercises of information-sharing and comparison. Its
President, ex-President of Argentina, Eduardo Duhalde, is head of the Commission of
Permanent Representatives of Mercosur, created in 2003, a first and very weak
attempt to establishing some kind of regulatory regional body between the member
states, provides the OS with a clear channel of influence into the regional structures of
governance.
In addition to some limited access to policy-making elites, social citizenship activists
have forged close ties with multilateral agencies and other international actors through
research, policy studies, consultancy and employment. Indeed, one striking feature of
the debate on social citizenship is the extent to which the views of the IMS and other
groups are apparently in line with the recent endorsement of social inclusion as part of
the post-Washington consensus approach to development. Within the BID and even
the World Bank there appears to be a growing recognition of the importance of
adjusting development policies to include social investments of some sort, alongside
the creation of ‘inclusive policies that build on citizen consultations and foster
transparency and accountability’ (IDB 2002; SELA 2003a and 2003b; World Bank
2003). The Bank now claims to take ‘a strong position on the type of inclusive
development that should result from trade’ and to suggest that ‘the ultimate objective
of regional integration remains largely the aspiration for a new form of development’
(Indu: 2003:1; see also Perry 2003). The IDB, meanwhile, has turned into an
enthusiastic pioneer of development through social inclusion and recommends the
introduction of socially inclusive models of regionalism as part of a new approach to
development (IDB 2003). Multilateral agencies, it appears, are gradually recognising
regional bodies as potential sites for social policy making (Yeates 2005).
The coincidence in views between local activists and multilateral institutions suggests
that the ideas endorsed by the IMS and the OS are congruent with international
values. As a result, it is not surprising that there are some tentative signs that the
importance of welfare and a discursive commitment to social inclusion are beginning
to find an echo in the discourses of regional states vis-à-vis Mercosur. Presidents
Kirschner and Lula have both picked up the idea of regionalism as a frame through
which to articulate a development project that combines export growth and
international trade alongside social reform and a commitment to greater equality (see
Sigal 2003). At the Summit of Copacabana in March 2004, Kirschner and Lula also
9
entered into what was termed in the press a ‘historic agreement’ to move towards a
new regional model of social democratic development. Copacabana was, preeminently, a politics-led summit, marking a change in atmosphere from more
technocratic-minded summits in the past. But there was little, if any, detailed
discussion of how a new regional model would take shape; instead Kirschner and
Lula used the summit simply to call for a regional and global commitment to sociallyresponsible development.
There is, then, some evidence on the part of governing elites in Mercosur of a
rhetorical acknowledgement that regionalism – and indeed development strategies
generally - should pay heed to questions of welfare, citizenship and social
development. But the declarations of politicians can hardly be interpreted as firm
statements of policy intent. Copacabana is best understood as an exercise in mimicry;
it provides evidence of rhetorical compliance with what were seen as new
international norms. It reflects the fact that Kirschner and Lula, as relatively
vulnerable political leaders in need of international support, must try and reflect what
the international community wants to see. Such declarations are also, inevitably, there
to oil the wheels of meetings between heads of state. Copacabana may perhaps mark a
small change in the uses of regionalism in political discourse; the most optimistic
reading would be that discursive changes such as these indicate a small breach in the
previously unquestioned association between regionalism and the trade/investment
agendas. But we cannot assume that, because office holders rhetorically endorse the
principle of citizenship, real and substantive policy change in on the way. No firm
policy proposals have yet been produced. Moreover, even if Lula and Kirschner were
seriously interested in the construction of a citizen-centred regionalism, there are a
considerable number of obstacles in their path.
Obstacles to citizenship-centred regionalism
Pro-social reform groups in Mercosur, such as those outlined above, seek to persuade
state actors of the advantages of embracing regional-building through dialogue,
citizenship and social reform. Their agenda overlaps to some degree with that of
multilateral agencies concerned with the problematic nature of governance in Latin
America and the limited embrace of welfare reform by regional governments (Hall
2005). But, internal and international support for elements of a social agenda
notwithstanding, its introduction would require the sustained implementation of a
broad swathe of policies of social inclusion across the region; and this demands a
change in how state elites in the member countries think about development,
democracy and integration, as well as sweeping reform in how regional states operate.
The primary obstacle to reform, then, lies in the nature of regional states, which,
though different in many respects, all share embedded histories of limited access, elite
dominance and a poor record in so far as social inclusion is concerned, accentuated by
the legacies of neoliberal reform in the 1980s and 1990s.
Let us take the question of access to states first. The expectation that ‘norms
entrepreneurs’ such as the groups identified here, can change the direction of policy is
to assume that states in Mercosur are open to ‘good’ or ‘sensible’ arguments, if they
are made well, endorsed by policy experts and backed up by international actors with
clout. But Latin American states are not neutral spaces; they have been constructed
since their origins around principles of elite privilege. Ultimately, it is the nature of
10
the state which explains why the region’s record on social citizenship is so poor (IDB
2003). There are simply no established traditions of pluralism, openness or
transparency in the Southern Cone which would allow for ‘good’ arguments to be
listened to. Furthermore, democratisation has not transformed cultures within states;
instead, the new democracies have tended to accommodate established elites in an
effort to build consensus (Grugel 2002). Although to differing extents perhaps, in all
member states of Mercosur traditions of elite capture have gone relatively
unchallenged, while neoliberal restructuring has served not to open the state up but to
entrench authoritarian policy-making still further and seal states off from society.
Democratisation, in sum, has created expectations of access but has not fundamentally
changed the state; economic crisis, meanwhile, has undermined the legitimacy of
neoliberalism but not significantly disrupted the hold elites have on the state. As
Mecham (2003) argues, development in Mercosur has been hampered because states
are not strong enough to push through reforms that restrict the power of local elites.
Changing such cultures is extremely difficult. Even in Argentina, where civil society
is strong and the economic crisis of 2001 disrupted the economic model and
discredited traditional forms of political authority, there is only patchy evidence that
the state is now more willing to listen to arguments from civil society actors than in
the past. The crisis of 2001, it seems, has not opened the state up in any lasting way.
Strategies such as the creation of the CCSC, which at first sight seem to presage civil
society inclusion, may actually signify the containment of protest from below through
cooperative inclusion. Moreover, politicians’ understanding of what is possible and
what is not has ineluctably been shaped by the weight of twenty years or so of
structural reform, economic crisis and external dependence: the neoliberal revolution,
in short. This has made the articulation of a development model that puts the social
agenda at its centre difficult and seemingly utopian. It has undermined belief in the
viability of alternative strategies of development and transformed the notion of what
governing means and what it is for. Even for those on the centre-left, the task of
government is frequently reduced to one of technocratic management of the status quo
rather than the articulation of new visions of inclusion and transformation.
Beyond the problems of the state’s willingness to change and the ideological matrix at
the heart of regional governments, lie other, equally huge, obstacles, most especially
the difficulties of social reform. Current welfare regimes across the Southern Cone are
patchy, uneven, exclusionary – and highly resistant to reform (Barrientos 2004).
Moreover, the disparities within and between member states in terms of poverty,
equity and social rights makes the articulation of a common social agenda and the
coordination of policy across Mercosur highly problematic. There are different
institutional mechanisms between states for the delivery of policy; and neoliberalism
has impacted differentially with regard to social provision and social sectors (Laurell
2000). For all states, the persistence of weak and under-funded institutions with
contradictory codes and practices makes social policy reform an exceptionally
challenging task. Even within states, achieving a coordinated agenda of social
inclusion, turning this into national law and implementing it is a gargantuan task, the
magnitude of which is sufficient to defeat even most reform-minded politicians
(Haagh and Helgo 2002).
There are also the bureaucratic politics of region-building to consider, which have, if
anything, exacerbated the difficulties of pushing change on states. It is exceptionally
11
difficult for civil society-based groups to access regionalist policy-making arenas.
Regionalism has come, overwhelmingly, to be dominated by technocrats and to be
seen as an element of trade/economic policy, thereby sealing off regionalism from
broader societal debate. The small technocratic teams that negotiate agreements and
resolve disputes within Mercosur tend to be closed off from other parts of the state
and civil society more broadly. At most, they have links into the business sectors
(Schelhase 2004). In a number of interviews with state representatives in Mercosur, I
raised the question of how society-based actors can access region-building
negotiations; I was always told to speak to someone who was located in another part
of the state, someone who was, in effect, excluded from the core of the negotiating
procedures. These difficulties mean that groups such as the IMS are simply unable to
make their arguments in the ‘right’ institutional arenas.
A further set of problems derive from the institutional structure of Mercosur. Regionwide institutions are extremely weak and, furthermore, there are no supranational
instruments whose role is to mediate the asymmetries between member states and no
commitment to their introduction. Thus far, Mercosur has essentially operated as an
association of states with the aim of articulating strategies for enhancing regional
competitiveness, encouraging foreign investment and protecting the regional
industrial base and the sovereignty of the member states. To some extent, this reflects
regional political cultures that reject supranationality in favour of national autonomy
(Malamud 2003). Inter-governmentalism suits the larger and more powerful of the
member-states since it means that they can shape outcomes. Giving this up will prove
difficult, for Brazil especially. Asymmetries between member states have only
strengthened the view of political leaders, in the larger countries especially, that
integration should be restricted to the building of a common market. It is difficult to
graft an agenda of social integration – something that is only partial in the EU and has
taken forty years to achieve – onto such structures. Furthermore, even if Mercosur
were to formally endorse the social agenda, it would be up to the member states to
enforce them. Given the poor record that Mercosur states have in terms of
guaranteeing already-agreed citizenship rights, it is hard to imagine that Mercosursponsored rights could have deep meaning.
Finally, we should also note that current debates about citizenship and regionalism are
largely taking place largely at the margins of the established structures of
representation within Mercosur. Pro-social citizenship groups are attempting to push
change on Mercosur through persuading state elites of their importance. They do not,
as yet, have the cooperation of the regional institutions, such as they are, designed to
‘represent’ civil society, such as the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC), which
brings together representatives from the parliaments of the member states, and the
Foro Consultativo Economico y Social (FCES). Both are exceptionally weak and
neither is fully in favour of social reform, the JPC because it represents all parties
across the region and contains a paralysing mix of views from right to left, and the
FCES because it is dominated by business. The Argentine branch of the FCES is
particularly suspicious of the activism of independent civil society actors. Although
they have no executive authority, they are symbolically important and, without their
backing, the case for change is significantly weakened.
Conclusion: why does it matter?
12
In one sense, it would not be difficult to make the case that initiatives such as those
described in this paper are peripheral to the ‘real business’ of Mercosur. Mercosur
was not designed as a citizenship-centred project of regionalism; it is, as has been
amply demonstrated, an instrument to protect national elites from the pressures of
globalisation (Phillips 2004). To complain about the absence of policies of social
citizenship is to miss the point. It is certainly the case that Mercosur was not meant to
provide the region with a set of rights-based structures. But projects of integration,
like all political projects, are subject to change over time, whether through activism,
the transformation of belief structures or changing circumstances. Institutions, once
created, are not set in stone, although they may be difficult to reform. Change is,
theoretically and empirically, possible; Mercosur is not inevitably an exclusionary
form of integration. Moreover the failure to construct stable and consensual forms of
governance within the Southern Cone, despite democratisation, means that there are
now strong arguments in favour of reform – even if there are also powerful obstacles
in the way - not only for ethical reasons of welfare and social justice but also for
purposes of regulation and development, as international agencies now increasingly
recognise. All of this means that we need to take seriously arguments for transforming
the foundations of regional integration, even when they do not immediately bear fruit.
For the citizenship project put forward through groups such as the IMS reflects not
only an idealist notion of what Mercosur should be; it also expresses a very
fundamental lack of conformity within local civil societies with what it is.
Equally, it is possible to dismiss the activism described in this paper on the grounds
that it represents arguments put forward by small, non state, professional elites rather
than via mass protest. Clearly this is a source of weakness. Marshall’s (1973)
landmark study of social citizenship highlights above all the role of organised mass
pressure. Within Mercosur, cultures of exclusion, clientelism and populism and
divisions within civil society certainly contribute to undermining the extent to which
overwhelmingly technocratic organisations such as the IMS or the OS can speak to
popular movements, while the disintegration of corporatist relations with labour,
especially in Argentina, has made accessing the state by the non-elites more difficult
even than in the past. Yet, in the absence of mass organised pressure from below, the
agency of reform-minded elites, especially if they enjoy international support and
champion ‘reasonable’ norms that reflect some form of international consensus,
stands out as a potential route for gradual change through persuasion and argument.
Professional elites have historically played an important role in terms of highlighting
social injustice and in making reasoned cases for change and reform; and there are
examples globally of norm change through elite influence. As such, despite the
considerable obstacles in the way, the IMS and other groups cannot simply be
dismissed as middle class reformers. Social activism, moreover, cannot be judged
solely on whether is has an immediate impact in terms of policy change. Its
significance lies in the capacities to put arguments in the public domain; to build
coalitions for change; to provide resources for other groups; and to make connections
across and within civil society. The arguments here represent the first reasoned
attempt to undergird Mercosur with norms of inclusion, social citizenship, human
security and dignity. As such, they are part of Latin America’s contemporary
opposition to the dominance of market values.
The activism described in this paper is also important in that it illustrates the depths of
disconformity with the state of democracy in the Southern Cone and perhaps most
13
especially in Argentina. This increasingly presents as a governance problem within
states and across the region. States are distanced from their populations. Levels of
citizenship are low. Violence, unemployment and insecurity of all kinds are endemic.
Democratisation has proved unable to generate ties that bind communities into
national projects of development. For the IMS and other activists, Mercosur
represents an opportunity to breathe new life into the structures of democratic
governance through policies of social citizenship and transnational cooperation. They
have turned to Mercosur in the hopes of creating an EU-style regulatory frame that
can generate pressure on member state to conform to international standards of rights
because state actors in the Southern Cone are impermeable to influence from their
own civil societies. At present., Mercosur’s institutions are removed and distant from
issues of day-to-day wellbeing of the region’s population; without reform, there is a
real chance that they simply become empty of meaning, accentuating the democratic
deficit that is characteristic of Latin American systems of governance.
The obstacles to reform are, as discussed here, certainly formidable. States, elitist,
inefficient, closed, dominate the integration process and there are no alternative
sources of regional authority that are comparable to the strong integration institutions
in the EU through which to push citizenship policies. Traditions of state sovereignty,
institutional poverty and the magnitude of the task of equitable development also limit
the role the regional level of politics can play in strategies of social inclusion and
citizenship. In that sense, it is difficult to see how the struggle to place norms of
citizenship onto the agenda of Mercosur, at least in the way described in this paper,
can be fully successful in the short term. Yet the tragedy of Mercosur is that, without
concerted efforts to give its institutions a social meaning, it will remain a project of
economic integration that transforms and disrupts social identities through market-led
change but which offers no compensation to its citizens for the costs of belonging. If
it is not underpinned by social reform, it is hard to see how Mercosur can evade the
risk of becoming marginal to the people who dwell within its boundaries, thereby
generating indifference and perhaps eventually rejection.
14
References
Abel, C and C Lewis, C (Eds) (2002) Exclusion and Engagement. Social Policy in Latin
America (ILAS, London)
Barrientos, A (2004) ‘Latin America: towards a liberal-informal welfare regime’ in I Gough
and G Word (eds) Insecurity and Welfare Regimes in Asia, Africa and Latin America
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)
Deacon, B (2001) The Social Dimensions of Regionalism GASPP Occasional Paper (Stakes,
Finland)
Di Pietro, L (2003) La Dimension Social del Mercosur Recorrido Institutional y Perspectivas’
Paper presented to the workshop on Integracion Regional y la Agenda Social BIDINTAL (Buenos Aires 12-13 November)
Draibe S (1998) Mercosur: La Tematica Social de la Integracion desde la Perspectiva
Iinstitutional Mimeo (CEFIR: Montevideo)
Duina F (2004) ‘Regional market-building as a social process: an analysis of cognitive
strategies in NAFTA, the EU and Mercosur’ Economy and Society 33 (3) 359-389
Finnemore, M and K Sikkink (1998) ‘International Norm Dynamics and Political Change’
International Organization, 52(4): 887-917
Friedman E and K Hochstetler (2002) ‘Assessing the third transitions in Latin American
Democratization: Representation, Regimes and Civil Society in Argentina and Brazil’
Comparative Politics 35 (1) 21-42
Gonzalez Bombal, I and R Villar (ed) (2003) Organizaciones de la Sociedad Civil e
Incidencia el Political Publicas (Buenos Aires: Libros de Zorzal)
Grandi, J and L Bizzozero (1997) ‘Hacia una sociedad civil del Mercosur Viejos y nuevos
actors en el tejido subregional’ Integracion y Comericio 1 (3)
Grugel, J (2002) Democratization; A Critical Introduction (London: Palgrave)
Grugel, J (2004) ‘New Regionalism and Modes of Governance: Comparing US and EU
Strategies in Latin America’ European Journal of International Relations 10 (4) 603626
Haagh L and C Helgoe (eds) (2002) Policy Reform and Market Governance in Latin America
(London: Palgrave, Macmillan)
Habermas J (1998) Communicative Ethics (Cambridge: MIT Press)
Hakim, P (2003) ‘Dispirited Politics’, Journal of Democracy 14 (2) 108-122
Hall A (2005) ‘Widening Horizons? Social development and social policy in the World
Bank’ Paper presented to Social Policy, Stability and Exclusion in Latin America:
Definitions, Theories and Concepts Institute for the Americas, University of London,
2-3 June
15
Hochstetler, K (2003) ‘Citizenship and Human Rights in Mercosur’ Paper prepared for the
workshop Changing Patterns of Rights Politics: A Challenge to the State? Hanse
Institute of Advanced Studies, Delmenhorst, Germany 27-29 June
IDB (2002) Social Exclusion in Latin America: Introduction and Overview (IDB,
Washington)
IDB (2003) ‘Inequality, Exclusion and Poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean:
Implications for Development, prepared for the European Commission/IDB Seminar
on Social Cohesion in Latin America and the Caribbean (Brussels, June 5-6)
Indu, JA (2003) ‘Trade and Development’ paper presented to the Third Regional Forum
Regional Integration and Social Equity (Angora dos Reis, Brazil, October 22-23)
Jelin E (1996) ‘Citizenship Revisited: Solidarity, Responsibility and Rights’ in E Jelin and E
Hersberg (Eds) Constructing Democracy: Human Rights, Citizenship and Society in
Latin America, (Boulder: Westview Press)
Jelin E (1999) ‘Dialogues, understandings and misunderstandings: social movements in
Merocsur’ International Social Science Journal 159 37-48
Jelin E (2001) ‘Los movimientos socials y los actors culturales en el escenario regional. El
case Mercosur’ in G de Sierra (Ed) Los Rostros de Mercosur (Buenos Aires:
CLACSO)
Keck M & K Sikkink (1998), Activists Beyond Borders, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press)
Korzeniewicz, R and W Smith (2003) ‘Redes tranancionales de la sociedad civil: entre la
protesta y la colaboracion’, in D Tussie and M Botto (Eds) El ALCA y las cumbres de
las Americas: una nueva relacion publico-privada?(Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblios)
47-74
Laurell AC (2000) ‘Structural adjustment and the globalisation of social policy in Latin
America’ International Sociology 15 (2) 306-325
Luna, M (2002) Las familias migrantes en/del Mercosur: la preservacion de la identidad
Documento de Trabajo de la Reunion Gubernamental Tecnica del Mercosur, Buenos
Aires April
MacDonald, L (2000) ‘Citizenship, Participation and the Public Sphere in Latin America’
Draft prepared for the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic
Development Meeting Citizenship, Participation and the Public Sphere in the
Americas, Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies, York University, Toronto
Malamud, A (2003) ‘Presidential Diplomacy or Presidential Democracy: The Institutional
Underpinning of Mercosur’ Paper presented to the Annual Conference of Latin
American Studies Association (LASA), Dallas, March 27-29
Marshall, T H (1973) Class, Citizenship and Social Development (Westport, Conn:
Greenwood Press)
Mecham, M (2003) ‘Mercosur: a failing development project?’ International Affairs 79 (2)
369-387
Perry, G (2003) ‘Integration and Equity’ Paper presented to he Third Regional Forum
Regional Integration and Social Equity Angora dos Reis, Brazil, October 22-23
16
Phillips N (2003) ‘Hemispheric integration and subregionalism in the Americas’
International Affairs 79, 2 327-349
Phillips, N (2004) The Southern Cone Model: The Political Economy of Regional Capitalist
Development (London: Routledge)
Piper N and A Uhlin (eds) (2003) Transnational Acitivsm, Strategies and Organisations
(London: Routledge)
Podesta, B (1998) La globalizacion y la dimension social de la integracion (Mondevideo:
CEFIR)
Risse, T, S Ropp and K Sikkink (1999), The Power of Human Rights: International Norms
and Domestic Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)
Rueschmeyer, D, E Stephens and J Stephens (1992) Capitalist Development and Democracy
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)
Sanchez Bajo, C (1999) ‘The European Union and MERCOSUR: a case of inter-regionalism’
Third World Quarterly 20, 5 927-941
Schelhase, M (2004) Organised Business Interests in the Mercosur: Conflict, convergence
and influence (Ph.D thesis presented at the University of Warwick, August)
SELA (2003a) Evolucion Reciente de la Integracion Regional: Ideas para la Convergencia
SP/CL/XXXIX 0/Di No 6-03
SELA (2003b) ‘Cepal propone un nuevo pacto de cohesion social para America Latina’
SELA Noticias Servicio Informativo 1 July
Sigal, E (2003) ‘La importancia del proyecto regional’ Comunidad y Desarrollo 1(1)
November-December
Smith W and R Korzeniewicz (forthcoming) ‘Transnational Social Movements, Elite Projects
and Collective Action from Below in the Americas’ in L Fawcett and M Serrano (eds)
Regionalism’s ‘Third Wave’ in the Americas (Routledge: London)
Smulovtiz, C and E Peruzzotti (2000) ‘Societal Accountability in Latin America with Civil
Society’ Journal of Democracy 11, 4 147-158
Tarrow S (2001) ‘Transnational Politics, Contention and Institutions in International Politics’
Annual Review of Political Science 4 1-20
Tussie D and M Botto (2003) (Eds) El ALCA y las cumbres de las Americas: una nueva
relacion publico-privada?(Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblios)
World Bank (2003) Inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean: Breaking with History
(Washington: World Bank)
Yeates, N (2005) ‘Globalization’ and Social Policy in a Development Context: Regional
Responses Social Policy and Development Programme Paper No 18 April 2005,
Unitied National Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) Geneva
17