SEMINAR: Crafting Regional Authority in Africa and Latin America

Is regional authority emerging through regional organizations (ROs) and how can it be conceptualized as a new political phenomenon? REGPOL-ALA project has the ambition to explore the surge of authority beyond states at the regional scale. Comparing four ROs from Africa and Latin America, the main objective is to identify the types, determinants and effects of regional authority. The project builds on the intersection of IR institutionalisms, international political sociology, and international public administration. It advances debates in the comparative regionalism and regional governance literatures by offering a context-sensitive framework of analysis of regional bureaucracies, staffs and practices. Methodologically, a mixed methods approach (prosopography, ethnographic observations and semi-structured interviews) supplemented by inter-regional comparisons will advance debates in IR concerning the effects of cumulative micro-level factors (individual characteristics) on macro-transformations (regional authority). REGPOL-ALA fleshes out formal institutional approaches to understand differently how ROs insert in global governance and craft a new political phenomenon: regional authority.