MERCOSUR and Pacific Alliance Responses to the Pandemic

Abstract

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.