Brazil's Brand of Regionalization: The Rise and the Demise of the South American Alliance

ABSTRACT Global Governance with its adherent institutional frame is perplexed by what Gramsci might refer to as “discursive conflict” between the established capitalist core and other nations that advocate divergent values and goals. The regionalist turn in the emergent powers reflects this group's growing disillusionment with the established status quo. Their regionalism amounts to neither a complete retreat from global governance nor a declaration of war on liberal premises upon which global institutions sit. Instead, the objective is to craft new institutions to manage some of the key issues in accordance with their own norms and priorities, critically, with those neighbors who share their perception. As such, Brazil engineered Mercosur and Unasur to secure its economic development within a peaceful South American interstate order. After a promising headstart, this emergent power strategy quickly ran into the systemic constraints of being a latecomer to the game of capitalist development. Reading Brazil's regionalism through Hirschman's “voting with the feet” concept, this study employs a single‐case process‐tracing design anchored in the institutional evolution of Mercosur and Unasur, with intra‐regional trade volumes and presidential discourse providing the principal empirical material.