Objective
Recently, economic liberalization emphasis on regionalism has been a prime concern for wider sectors of civil society around the world. Over and over, these groups are presented in the mass media as opponents to this policy option. Less has been said about the alternatives they have put forward. This research focuses on this task and in so doing; it develops a systematic and comparative South-South analysis of: a) key initiatives promoted by civil society groups in Latin America as alternatives to overcome socio-economic deficits embedded in contemporary regionalism; and b) practices of governance that are emerging for the implementation of these alternatives. Therefore, this project advances my previous research findings on gender, trade and democracy and identifies concrete forms in which economic liberalization, gender inequalities and the lack of citizen participation (particularly of elderly, poor, disable and indigenous women) are inextricably related at sub-regional level. Based upon an action-oriented research methodology and incorporating intersectoral exchanges between civil society and the academic sector in Europe and Latin America, this study’s contributes to: 1. Bring together the literature on the politics of alternative development, feminist economics and regional studies within IPE for the comparative and systematic analysis of alternative regionalisms 2. Provide an updated and comparative assessment of concrete practices of alternative regionalisms in Latin America in which greater levels of subsidiarity in decision-making has (or has not) been successfully promoted. 3. Explore concrete cases of civic activism in relation to three official mechanisms of regional governance that involve Northern and Southern counterparts: the European Union New Strategic Partnership for Latin America and the Caribbean (EU-LAC), the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP/NAFTA plus).
Fields of science
Keywords
Call for proposal
FP7-PEOPLE-2007-2-2-ERG
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
MC-ERG - European Re-integration Grants (ERG)Coordinator
3062 PA Rotterdam
Netherlands