Challenging Hybrid Security Approaches in Latin America

Abstract

Global Governance has been increasingly used in the study of International Relations which, thanks to its versatility and utility, has generated an expansion of its conceptual, methodological, and practical scope. Regional governance is a useful derivation because it makes it easier to understand, from a more precise perspective, how global issues with local repercussions are solved.

In this sense, the article shows that security governance in Latin America is characterized by enduring balance of power practices, geopolitics, and mistrust between different parties.  At the same time there is coexistence between the historical intention to establish security communities, to find resolutions to controversies, and to solve disputes through institutional instruments, principles, and values that favor peaceful means. In other words, in the region we are in the presence of a hybrid security governance, with practices that evolve over time in accordance with three key factors: the behavior of States and other agents, the capacity of institutions to overcome structural and conjunctural challenges, and finally, the effects of changes in perceptions of organized crime and other ideological and political challenges.

Therefore, this article consists of three parts. In the first, the definitions and scope of global governance will be reviewed. Subsequently, its utility will be validated for the comprehension of regional orders and the characteristics that are forged there. Finally, it will be used to expose the hybrid characteristics in Latin America throughout the 21st century.

Traditionally, since its inception as a scientific discipline, the explanations provided by International Relations,have been the subject of multifaceted debates. In fact, it was through these great debates, sometimes theoretical and in other cases methodological, that the discipline grew in terms of academic and research production, as well as in the political scope for decision-making. This led to the creation of a true field of study, which took as its initial object of study the area of war and peace between nations, before later moving on to cooperation, the environment, and other issues of the contemporary international agenda. 

Likewise, governance has been an ideal vehicle to give greater scope and heterogeneity to explanations of processes and empirical events, ones which go beyond traditional theoretical approaches such as realism, institutional liberalism or constructivism.

Along the same lines, this progressive academic production has stimulated the specialization and concentration of governance in regional orders, since it allows a clearer reflection on the historical patterns of behavior among the members.  This offers a more nuanced explanation of the challenges present,the responses required for structural or conjunctural issues, and the eventual emergence of distinctive elements between different groups.

Security governance has mainly focused on four challenges to solve. First, the expansion of the research agenda to specific contexts; second, the greater attention that academic production should give to the relationship between intergovernmental organizations and other non-state actors in defined spaces; third, the predominance of explanations on security in the Euro-Atlantic region and, finally, the need to further link the security governance agenda to debates on region and regionalism.

In the same way, the construction and specific behaviors developed in the regions cannot be detached from global dynamics. In this sense, regardless of the geographical character of a region such as Europe or South America, these are mainly political factors, as Hurrell well recognizes, that regional dynamics are a historical social construction, which has been politically contested and criticized. with the intention of recognizing patterns of continuity and transformation, which facilitate the identification of dynamics that particularize and distinguish between them.

In this sense, Latin America has not neglected the use of governance, as a concept and as a valid analysis methodology to understand the distinctive characteristics that have made up a particular set of elements that, on the one hand, endure over time and, on the other hand, have recently changed. When referring to security, the opposing points of view show the emergence and incipient development of a heterogeneous, incomplete, and controversial governance. The main objective of this article, based on a hybrid and eclectic approach, will be to understand the evolution of the concept of governance and establish the characteristics of security for Latin America.

Thus, in matters of security governance, this article highlights the hybrid character from two lines of argument; on the one hand, there are defenders of a vision based on geopolitics, the balance of power and the latent tension between states; and on the other, there is one more oriented to analyze security characteristics from a constructivist, associative and cooperative perspective. Indeed, Adler and Greve presented an interesting initial reflection on the subject, in the sense that both are necessary for the holistic understanding of the movements, not always ascending, that states carry to equip themselves with instruments and mechanisms that enable them. They allow you to live together in a more harmonious and peaceful way.

First, some authors situate regional governance in mainly realistic terms, in which the dynamics of balance of power between states continue to prevail two hundred years after independence. They underline, for example, realities of ungovernability, while a series of specific variables, among which at least five stand out: first, the old geopolitical tensions between states continue to determine situations of conflict and mistrust; secondly, the competencies of individual and personal leaders in provision of common goods and dispute resolution stand out. Third, regional disputes have continued to be fueled both by internal competition - that is, between the states of the region - and, at the same time, by permissiveness in the face of the influence of external powers; Fourth, the importance of the quality of democracy for the countries of the region, which facilitates internal governance processes and strengthening the rule of law and, finally, the link between security and the economy in terms of economic development, that is, the effect of economic independence and economic autonomy in strengthening state security.

Second, there is the most interpretive line of reflection on reality, highlighting that beyond the instruments of power and geopolitical, political processes and new ideological realignments must be understood, in which the following variables can be highlighted: first, the internal factors that condition or reinforce the international action of the States; second, the regional redefinition based on the creation of alternative multilateral forums, beyond the OAS, such as CELAC, UNASUR or ALBA, in which there are also components not only of trade and integration, but also of security and, finally, the little regional cooperation in security with low institutional, political and budgetary density.