Although the Internet is frequently referred to as a global public resource, its functioning remains predominantly controlled by private actors. The Internet brought about significant shifts in the way we conceptualize (global) governance. In particular, the handling of “big data” by private intermediaries has a direct impact on routine practices and personal lives. The implementation of the “right to be forgotten” following the May 2014 decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union against Google blurs the boundaries between the public and the private, and extends the responsibilities of the latter to court-style decision making. This article analyzes the regulatory developments in this area and the implications of outsourcing of important governance practices to private intermediaries. It looks at the decision-making process for the “right to be forgotten” to illustrate the extent to which the hybridization of such procedures results in new arrangements between public and private ordering in Internet governance.

This article explores the creation of a national index of sexist violence in Argentina in 2016 as an example of data activism in the Global South. Drawing upon a qualitative content analysis of press coverage and activist posts on social media, as well as interviews with activists, it describes the context of the #NiUnaMenos feminist mobilization and the collection “from below” of data on gender violence. This study illustrates how activists in the Global South can appropriate technology and promote new uses that not only respond to their local and immediate needs but also contribute to the production of alternative imaginaries on big data in the longer term. Moreover, the article positions women’s movements as an essential component of current social movements in Latin America.

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Latin American regionalism is currently undergoing a profound crisis. Although the recent wave of regionalism of the early 21st century raised high expectations just a few years ago, it has suffered some important drawbacks since, as illustrated by the suspension of Venezuela from Mercosur in 2017 or the debacle of the Union of South American Nations in April 2018. Regional integration theories extrapolated from the European case struggle to account for the short cycles of integration dynamics in Latin America. Against this background, this article emphasizes two important aspects of Latin American regionalism that differentiate Latin America from other regions and explain some of the swift changes experienced over the last decades. First, because of the presidential nature of diplomacy in the region, integration relies more on the success of summits and joint declarations than on longer-term institutional diplomacy. Second, ideology is an essential factor of integration, as opposed to a vision of regionalism based primarily on material interests. Hence, the success and failure of regional integration are partly explained by the convergence of presidential ideologies among member states in a given organization. Based on an expert survey on the evolution of presidential ideology in 15 Latin American countries since the beginning of the 21st century and complemented by a structured discourse analysis, the article explores the importance of ideological coherence in the success – and lack thereof – of four regional organizations (the Pacific Alliance, Mercosur, the Andean Community and the Union of South American Nations). It also illustrates the salience of ideological arguments in presidential discourses on regional integration. These elements shed new light on the ideological factor in the current crisis of Latin American regionalism.