The Liquidity of Regional Consultation

Building on the historical and theoretical contextualisation of regionalism in the Americas, this chapter introduces and characterises contemporary cases of regionalism in the region through the lens of our typology, focusing on their development in the wave of Liquid Regionalism. Specifically, it examines the emergence of regional projects that align with the Consultation type, such as CELAC, the Lima Group, and Prosur. This analysis is grounded in a qualitative examination of official documents and academic literature on each of these regional initiatives. We argue that these newer regional projects, which have proliferated since the 2010s, exemplify Liquid Regionalism due to shared traits, including state-centric and loosely structured institutional designs, voluntary norm adoption, a reactive operational logic, and minimal levels of interdependence and commitment among regional leaders. The central question this chapter addresses is how the processes that have emerged under the paradigm of Liquid Regionalism reflect a preference for flexible institutional arrangements with significantly reduced levels of commitment compared to earlier regional blocs. This indicates a shift towards organising blocs characterised by predominantly liquid logic.