Abstract

Latin America has seen both recurrent crises and a surprising resilience of its regional organizations. This article explores how different approaches have attempted to explain this seemingly paradoxical record. Combining insights from European Union (EU) studies and comparative regionalism, we ask whether neofunctionalism as a theoretical approach developed for the study of the EU can travel across the Atlantic and enrich the analysis of Latin American regionalism. Neofunctionalist theorists posited that functional spillover could lead to politicization and subsequent deepening of regional integration. But while spillover has been the engine of European integration, it has never been a real option in Latin America. Past applications of neofunctionalist approaches to Latin American regionalism have therefore above all revealed its limitations. Comparative regionalism approaches fared better in that they identified characteristics that account for the repeated crises of Latin American regional organizations. However, this article suggests that the “second-best” strategies mentioned in neofunctionalist analyses, such as encapsulation, spill-around, or even spillback, can help explain the resilience of regionalism in Latin America. While those strategies posed an obstacle to deeper integration, as shown by classical neofunctionalist studies, we draw on a set of case studies to illustrate that Latin American regionalism survived through expansion (spill-around) rather than deepening (spillover), as well as through encapsulation and, in some cases, even spillback. A new reading of neofunctionalism therefore helps to explain the resilience of Latin American regionalism under adverse conditions.