Some thoughts on UNASUR and Bolivia

UNASUR had its emergency session in Chile, and voiced very strong support for Evo Morales' government, releasing the "Declaration of La Moneda."

Given how quickly events move, we won't know for some time whether this helps shores up Bolivian democracy. That said, it is worth pondering its relevance. The first thing that comes to mind is liberal institutional theory. I use it in my textbook, along with realism and dependency theory, to help students understand U.S.-Latin American relations. The basic idea is that international institutions can constrain behavior. Normally, this refers to state behavior, but I think it can be usefully applied to both sides--though particularly the opposition--in Bolivia. UNASUR has no enforcement mechanism, no troops, no economic leverage. So why pay any attention to its declaration?

The answer, if liberal institutionalism works, is that institutions become important in and of themselves, sometimes simply with moral authority (work on liberal institutionalism in Latin America has generally focused on human rights) and therefore can facilitate cooperation. In the current case, the hope is that UNASUR, by showing a united front, raises the perceived costs for anyone to subvert democracy. They know ahead of time that there will be a clear regional opposition to their actions, which have been defined as undemocratic, and therefore make choices accordingly.

So will this hastily assembled session and hastily drafted document matter? We'll see. At the very least, however, we've just seen a commitment in South America to reacting quickly to a political crisis. This is especially notable given the ideological variety in evidence--Hugo Chávez and Alvaro Uribe, for example, are not exactly bosom buddies.