MERCOSUR and Pacific Alliance Responses to the Pandemic

Abstract

This paper aims to identify the responses that regional institutions (MERCOSUR and the Pacific Alliance) have had to the Covid-19 pandemic. Taking into consideration perspectives from South American Regionalism Studies, the paper analyses the institutional responses of these regional arrangements from the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 up to March 2022. Despite South American regional governance having already been in crisis before the pandemic’s arrival, this paper aims to highlight firstly the incapacity of these institutions to take advantage of previous regional institutional capacities, and secondly that intergovernmental ideological convergence or divergence is crucial to reach regional agreements. The health, economic and social consequences brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic would have been better managed with regional policy co-ordination. First, the paper analyses the situation of regional governance in the pre-pandemic context. Regionalism’s crisis is made manifest on the fragmentation of previous ideological intergovernmental convergence. Subsequently, an analysis centred on the empirical exercise of mapping the MERCOSUR and Pacific Alliance responses will follow. The differences between the two cases’ responses to the crisis and their consequences for regional governance will be highlighted with data from the content analysis strategy used to study the cases.

El Covid-19 y la crisis del regionalismo latinoamericano: lecciones que pueden ser aprendidas y sus limitaciones

“…Existe un amplio consenso sobre la crisis en que se encontraba el regionalismo latinoamericano antes de que estallara la pandemia (Bianculli, 2021;Brun y Legler, 2021;Mariano et al, 2021;Granja, 2022;Deciancio y Quiliconi, 2022aMerke et al, 2021;Nolte, 2019Nolte, , 2021Nolte y Weiffen, 2021;Saraiva y Granja, 2022;Ribeiro y Katsikas, 2022). Así, la cooperación regional no cumplió con las expectativas de operar como un "escudo epidemiológico" para América Latina (Herrero y Nascimiento, 2020).…”

Higher Education in the Pacific Alliance: Descriptive and Exploratory Analysis of the Didactic Potential of Virtual Reality

“…Although homogeneous levels of the different categories measured by the KAM were found throughout the PA area, the greatest weaknesses were found in the aspects of innovation and infrastructure, which are those that have suffered the most after the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in the PA countries, having increased, moreover, the gaps in this regard between countries [10]. One of the most pronounced effects of the pandemic affected the digital skills of professors [11]. Hereinafter, the term professor is used in this paper to include all academic ranks of university educators: full professor, associate professor, assistant professor, and lecturer.…”