Lynne Rienner Governing the Americas: Assessing Multilateral Institutions

Governing the Americas presents the first systematic assessment of the functioning of hemispheric institutions since the introduction of the Summit of the Americas process in 1994. The authors evaluate the effectiveness of inter-American institutions with regard to core issues of democratic governance, security, trade, and economic development. They consider, as well, the impact of the profusion of multilateral institutions on the coordination and efficiency of hemispheric cooperation. Exploring why some multilateral efforts have worked while others have been more problematic, they also offer a reasoned assessment of the future of inter-American cooperation. This is the first systematic assessment of the functioning of inter-American institutions - in the areas of democratic governance, security, trade, and economic development - since the introduction of the Summit of the Americas process in 1994. Review A sophisticated and comprehensive analysis of the inter-American system and its travails, striking a fine balance between describing the morphology of regional and subregional arrangements and diagnosing their ailments.... Highly recommended. - David Pion-Berlin, University of California - Riverside About the Author Gordon Mace is professor of political science at Laval University and director of the University's Inter-American Studies Center. He is also director of the journal Etudes internationales. Among his publications are Foreign Policy and Regionalism in the Americas and The Americas in Transition: The Contours of Regionalism. Jean-Philippe Therien is professor of political science and assistant scientific director of CERIUM at the University of Montreal. He is coauthor of Foreign Policy and Regionalism in the Americas. Paul A. Haslam is assistant professor of international development at the University of Ottawa.