The effect of populist governments on intergovernmental cooperation within MERCOSUR

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of populist governments on intergovernmental cooperation within MERCOSUR from 1991 to 2019. To begin, literature is reviewed regarding MERCOSUR’s competences, acquis of cooperation, governance and decision-making, and the effect of populism in the bloc. The review uncovers that the acquis of cooperation within MERCOSUR is mainly economic and trade-centered, but that it also includes democratic protocols. Also, the bloc is primarily driven forward by the collective will of the presidents in power, and is not supranational but exclusively intergovernmental in nature by design and since inception. After, this study references experiences of populist governments within the European Union (“EU”) as a frame of reference for MERCOSUR because the EU is the oldest and most successful intergovernmental and supranational bloc. The literature review discovered: 1) three features of populism – drawing a divide between two allegedly antagonistic sections of a country’s population, hyper-nationalism, and protectionism; 2) three modulating mechanisms – emphasizing the salience of foreign policy issues, scapegoating the EU (or MERCOSUR, in this study), and influencing debate surrounding issues by controlling the narrative; and, 3) the effect of populist governments of stonewalling intergovernmental cooperation within the EU. This study then proceeded to design research by determining all eligible governments of MERCOSUR for analysis and terms that may uncover evidence of populism and of modulating mechanisms. Regarding the dependent variable, a decrease in decisions issued by the Common Market Council – comprised of member state presidents and high-ranking officials – is defined as ‘stonewalling’ of intergovernmental cooperation. This study then applied the research design to empirical evidence for analysis by searching for specific terms that either confirmed or rejected if each government, as led by a president, was populist and used the two modulating mechanisms. Not all three mechanisms were studied due to feasibility. Five very-populist governments were found after analysis and not all used modulating mechanisms. Subsequently, analysis of the dependent variable, intergovernmental cooperation, through analysis of CMC decisions, was completed. Ultimately this single case study found that: CMC decisions tended to decreased after the election of the first very-populist government in 2002 and throughout the time period all other four were in power; CMC decisions were severely unstable while many very-populist governments were in power from 2013 to 2016; and, CMC decisions surprisingly increased when many very-populist governments that utilized one mechanism were in power simultaneously. Thus, in half (2/4) of the analyses of the dependent variable, very-populist governments negatively affected intergovernmental cooperation.