Regional governance in South America: Supporting states, dealing with markets and reworking hegemonies

Abstract

Introduction to this Handbook, we see the central dilemma in contemporary South American governance as intrinsically linked to the way states engage with and contest market forces, and similarly how markets define state-based governance arrangements. For this reason we claim that regional integration has in effect evolved as one sought mechanism to regulate and extend markets over and above the state boundaries, as much as a mechanism that enhanced states? capacities to deal with external political and economic influence.