You are invited to a guest lecture by Prof. Dr. Detlef Nolte (GIGA – German Institute of Global and AREA studies) on „Overlapping Regionalism and the Venezuelan crisis (and the role of China)“.

The lecture discusses the possible risks and potential benefits of overlapping intergovernmental regional organizations. Specifically, it studies the consequences of overlapping mandates and activities in the protection and defense of democracy in Latin America. The first part presents the causal mechanisms of overlapping, showing how it affects member states’ strategies, regional organizations’ interaction patterns, and the short-term and long-term policy outcome. The second part analyzes the case of the ongoing crisis in Venezuela, where several regional organizations, including the OAS, Mercosur and UNASUR, have simultaneously taken action in defense of democracy. While one cannot say that the effects of overlap are as negative as generally assumed by the literature, the Venezuelan case illustrates how a competitive dynamics among regional actors unfolded, which contributed to the failure of attempts to resolve the crisis. The results show that, in the face of power shifts, ideological divergence and competitive inter-organizational dynamics, overlapping actions by regional organizations might jeopardize the norms they originally meant to protect. The lecture makes reference to external (to Latin America) actors in the Venezuelan crisis such as the United States and China. 

Prof. Dr. Detlef Nolte is associate fellow of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP),  associated researcher of the GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies and former director (2006-2018) of the GIGA Institute of Latin American Studies. He is adjunct professor of political science at the University of Hamburg, and a honorary member of the Instituto de Iberoamérica, Universidad de Salamanca. From 2010 to 2016 he served as the President of the German Latin American Studies Association (ADLAF) and Vice-President of the European Latin American Studies Association (CEISAL).  In 2018 – 2019 he was a visiting professor at the University of Sao Paulo (USP), the Universidad Católica (Santiago de Chile), FLACSO Argentinia and the Universidad del Salvador (Buenos Aires).His research focuses on comparative regionalism, regional organizations, regional security, regional powers, Latin America in international politics, and constitutional change in Latin America. He published numerous book chapters and articles in journals such as Review of International Studies, International Area Studies Review, and Latin American Politics and Society.

Date: 09 July 2019, Time: 4 – 6 pm s.t.
Location: room SG 183 (Campus Duisburg, Geibelstraße)

Please register with kerstin.lukner@uni-due.de