Latin America’s rich contributions to International Relations
Seven experts discuss the unique ways in which Latin American scholars and policy-makers enrich our understanding of world politics.
Voices from the global South are visibly marginalized in the field of International Relations (IR). Whether in relation to the novel theories of scholars or crucial solutions to global challenges by policy-makers, IR suffers from a distinct knowledge gap due to this marginalization. One region whose contributions are notably missing from mainstream IR discussions is Latin America.
In this blog symposium, authors from the special section in the January 2024 issue of International Affairs come together to highlight Latin America’s rich and unique contributions to IR. Ranging from international political economy, peace and conflict and women’s scholarship, to power transitions and unique lessons for policy-makers, this symposium is a testament to why we must bring Latin American ideas to the forefront of IR to help make sense of our world.
Forgotten Latin American thinkers
Mainstream IR has paid little attention to the rich theoretical contributions of Latin American scholars. Two such thinkers are Hélio Jaguaribe of Brazil and Juan Carlos Puig of Argentina. Jaguaribe and Puig sought to mitigate the dependency challenges faced by their countries and played pivotal roles in shaping the autonomist tradition within Latin American IR. Their contributions shed much-needed light on the challenges, preferences and policy oscillations within contemporary Latin American foreign policies, which are often criticized as irrational by foreign observers.
Despite their marginalization within mainstream IR, these thinkers’ influential ideas have shaped foreign policy discussions in the region since the 1960s. For instance, the experience of South America during the progressive cycle of left-wing governments in the early twenty-first century illustrates how Jaguaribe’s and Puig’s ideas tangibly shaped their respective national governments’ ‘grand strategies’ in response to evolving international contexts.
María Elena Lorenzini is Adjunct Researcher at the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET) and tenured Professor of International Relations Theory at the Political Science and International Relations College at National University of Rosario, Argentina.
Read her article ‘Bringing visibility to Latin American autonomists: a comparison between Jaguaribe and Puig’ here.
International political economy (IPE)
Latin American thinkers offer unique perspectives to IPE which are often sidelined in the western narratives of the subfield. In fact, Latin American IPE developed before its conception in the Anglo-Saxon world and evolved separately from mainstream views because distinctive regional problems were a poor fit within the conceptual approaches of core IPE.
Latin American IPE has focused on economic development and international insertion in ways that have revolved around the ideas of dependency, autonomy and centre–periphery. Moreover, an understanding of international insertion must start with the region’s asymmetrical trade relations with the world, marked by discussions around the political economy of development, dependent capitalism and regionalism. However, and in contrast to the bias in mainstream IR that leads it to focus on policy successes, discussions on IPE in the region have often examined the challenges and failures in policy formulation in the context of various regional crises. An analysis of how IPE has developed in Latin America provides an opportunity to appreciate a whole set of conceptualizations and approaches that not only differ from those of mainstream IPE, but also recognize that each region has its own particularities in terms of how markets and power operate in the world.
Cintia Quiliconi is Full Professor at the International Studies and Communication Department at the Latin American School of Social Sciences FLACSO-Ecuador and senior editor of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies.
Julissa Castro Silva is currently a lecturer at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP), Department of Social Sciences.
Read their article ‘Latin American International Political Economy: contributions beyond the transatlantic divide’ here.
Latin American solutions for overcoming war
While conventional narratives attribute twentieth-century proposals for overcoming war to male theorists, recent efforts have focused on retrieving American and British women’s intellectual work. Yet the writings of Latin American women scholars, such as Alicia Moreau de Justo, continue to be overlooked in discussions on peace and conflict.
Alicia Moreau was an Argentinian socialist feminist of the early twentieth century. Her international thought, though not entirely escaping Eurocentrism, offers a unique blend of socialist democratic feminism, rooted in her activism. Moreau placed the individual at the centre of international security and claimed that the causes of war were not only related to capitalism, but also to authoritarianism and people’s indifference. Her moderate, non-violent alternative to socialist and feminist discourses may provide insightful lessons for policy-makers today by emphasizing the integral roles of women, education and democracy in fostering global peace.
Ricardo Villanueva is Associate Professor (2016–) and was Head of Department (2020–22) at the Institute of International Studies at Universidad del Mar, Mexico.
Read his article ‘Alicia Moreau’s socialist feminism on war: transcending western narratives?’ here.
The theory and practice of foreign policy
While existing IR literature extensively covers interactions between academics and practitioners, the focus has predominantly been on global North experiences. Addressing this gap by examining the case of Latin America sheds light on how the interplay between scholars and policy-makers in peripheral countries influences the development of situated theoretical frameworks and shapes foreign policies. It allows us to understand decision-making in peripheral countries and how global interactions are perceived and designed there.
My research reveals the intertwined nature of IR research and policy application in Latin America around challenges like political and economic instability, the region’s peripheral status and dependency conditions, its relationships with world powers, and how it can achieve meaningful influence in the international arena. In this regard, the dynamics between scholars, academic development and foreign policy practice in Latin America have broader implications for international negotiations, North–South and South–South cooperation, global governance and international relations more broadly.
Melisa Deciancio is a Fellow Researcher at the National Scientific and Research Council of Argentina, based in the Department of International Relations at FLACSO Argentina.
Read her article ‘The scholarship–practitioner nexus: lessons from Latin American foreign policy’ here.
Mexican women scholars in IR
Minerva Morales, Olga Pellicer and Rosario Green, who specialized in IR from the 1960s in Mexico, participated in the emergence of ideas that are today considered classical thought in IPE, foreign policy studies and international cooperation. Their inputs help qualify our interpretation of Latin American contributions to IR, particularly regarding dependency theories. Morales, Pellicer and Green also enlighten us about persistent trends and challenges that have characterized the international insertion of countries in the global South.
The political challenges highlighted in their writings refer to research creativity, debt issues and development, constraining domestic factors in the design of foreign policy and the usefulness of multilateral cooperation for less powerful countries. These ideas were based on a cross-cutting concern for global asymmetries between states, and between Latin American and Caribbean states and transnational corporations. However, despite their important contributions to IR, these scholars faced structural limitations in reaching a global audience and receiving the same recognition as their male peers. This reflects how power and gender asymmetries shape the circulation of ideas and limit our understanding of international relations.
Élodie Brun is Research Professor at the Center for International Studies of El Colegio de México, in Mexico City.
Read her article ‘Mexican women’s neglected early International Relations contributions’ here.
Understanding power from the peripheries
One of the most researched questions in IR is what happens to the world when power is redistributed. However, theories for understanding power transitions are typically based on the major powers, blatantly ignoring those states in the peripheries. In this context, Latin American approaches to world politics help us understand how peripheral states navigate power transitions and, more broadly, global hierarchies. They underscore the importance of grasping the agency and trajectory of states operating on the periphery, specifically in terms of how they ascend to less peripheral positions.
The concept of international insertion, cultivated in Latin American theories, offers a nuanced understanding of how the periphery behaves while seeking recognition and acceptance from the established systemic and hierarchical gatekeepers, thus allowing them to fully exercise their agency in global hierarchies. The steps of insertion and recognition are crucial for understanding why transitions towards mid-system or improved status positions within regional and global hierarchies often occur without heightened strategic–military tensions.
Fabricio H. Chagas-Bastos is a Research Fellow at Harvard University in the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.
Read his article ‘The challenge for the ‘rest’: insertion, agency spaces and recognition in world politics’ here.
Read more about this topic in the January 2024 special section ‘Missing Voices: Latin American Perspectives in International Relations’.
All views are individual not institutional.
