Regimes of cooperation in the Western Hemisphere: Power, interests, and intellectual traditions

The 1994 Summit of the Americas marked a high point in hemispherism-our lab el for the active attempt by the nations of the Western Hemisphere to form regimes of cooperation with one another. To explain why hemispherism has no t been a more powerful trend in the last 200 years, structural, interest, a nd cultural variables are relevant but insufficient factors. An important a nd often overlooked obstacle to hemispherism has been contrarian ideas. Spe cifically, constellations of intellectual traditions that question the valu e of hemispheric cooperation have dampened both the demand for and supply o f such regimes. Only when these antihemispheric intellectual traditions wer e in retreat-the late nineteenth century, the mid twentieth century, and th e early 1990s-has hemispherism flourished. We posit three mechanisms throug h which intellectual traditions can decline, thus generating a modified cog nitivist argument that can supplement power-based and interest-based explan ations of regime formation and robustness.