Regionalism has taken hold around the world over the past few decades. There is a global trend towards larger and broader ROs, defined as organizations in which at least three states cooperate with each other in more than one narrowly defined policy area and which are further characterized by primary law, a headquarter office and/or a secretariat, and geographical membership criteria. Scholarship on ROs in the Americas has flourished but focuses predominantly on a few selected organizations and policy areas (Riggirozzi and Tussie, 2012; Nolte and Wehner, 2013; Bianculli, 2016; Ribeiro Hoffmann and Bianculli, 2016). The paucity of knowledge about broader developments in the Americas is therefore what motivates this chapter about patterns and trajectories of all ROs and across all 11 policy areas in this region.

The chapter draws on the typology of ROs in order to examine regional cooperation in the Americas (see Chapter 2). Thus, it investigates how American ROs have developed over time with respect to state membership and policy competencies.

The chapter first provides an analysis of the particularities in the creation and dissolution of American ROs, and focuses subsequently on membership dynamics in American ROs followed by a detailed descriptive analysis of RO policy competencies. This reveals that American ROs are almost equally split between the four types of ROs. By 2015, five ROs each resembled the small selective and the small encompassing type, three the large selective type, and two the large encompassing type. UNASUR is a special case as it resembles the global average RO in 2015, being equipped with the average number of policy competencies (53) and member states (12). The chapter ends with a summary of American trajectories of regional cooperation, pointing out the similarities and differences of American regionalism compared with other regions.

Membership dynamics in American Ros

From 1945 to 2015, 18 ROs were created in the Americas and only two dissolved (Table 5.1). Regional cooperation in the Americas has experienced different waves. In the aftermath of WWII, a first wave of American regionalism can be observed, lasting until the late 1960s with the emergence of several significant regional cooperation projects.