“Regional cooperation exists, but looks different in the global South than in the European Union,” claim the contributors to South American Policy Regionalism, which offers novel theory, methods, and Latin American case studies of joint governance efforts in nine international policy arenas, ranging from illegal drugs to artificial intelligence.

Contrasting three major schools of thought in international relations (highlighting power, institutions, and ideas), this book introduces the idea of international policy regionalism as a framework for informed debate about international policy-sector interactions in a regional space. Beginning with a conceptual approach applicable to any world region, it includes a brief history of Western Hemisphere regionalism to aid in future cross-regional comparisons. An international group of contributors constructs rich narratives of the politics of Latin American policy sector evolution since the Cold War. Besides the aforementioned, included sectors span regional development banking, infrastructure planning, electricity distribution, migration governance, climate action, neglected tropical diseases, and food policies.

This volume equips readers from various academic disciplines and the policy world to understand the relevance of core international relations theory for the analysis of policy sectors that cross national borders, both within Latin America and elsewhere, and especially throughout the global South.