An original account of contemporary US-Latin American relations, this book utilises neo-Gramscian and historical materialist approaches to build a novel conceptual framework for analysing US hegemony, extending critical theory in new and exciting directions. It disaggregates US power into distinct forms (structural, coercive, institutional and ideological) to convincingly argue that the United States is remaking its hegemony in the Western hemisphere.
The first decade of the new century saw the ascendancy of leftist and centre-left forces in Latin America. The emergence and consolidation of the ‘New Latin Left’ signalled a profound challenge to the long-standing hegemony of the United States in the region. This book details the ways in which US foreign policy responded: defining hegemony as a dialectical relationship patterned by multiple and overlapping forms of power, it situates US policy in the context of the Post-Washington Consensus. Making considerable use of confidential diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks, it examines the interplay of different facets of US hegemony, which are inextricably bound up in the neoliberalisation of the region’s political economy.
This book brings clarity to what remains an open and contested process of hegemonic reconstitution, and promises to be of interest to scholars working in a number of overlapping subject areas, including International Relations (IR), US foreign policy and Latin American studies.
Chapter 1: Introduction: Latin America’s new left and the challenge to US hegemony.
Chapter 2: The powers of hegemony: a framework for analysis.
Chapter 3: Reviving neoliberalism: US trade policy after the Washington Consensus.
Chapter 4: Redirecting force: US coercive power and the New Latin Left.
Chapter 5: Reforming institutional power: the OAS in the new regional landscape.
Chapter 6: Reinscribing 'populism': US ideological power and the ‘radical’ left.
Chapter 7: Conclusion
Biography
Rubrick Biegon is an Associate Lecturer in International Political Economy in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent. Prior to coming to Kent, he worked as a policy analyst with a small international consulting firm based in Washington, where his reporting focused on political and economic developments in Latin America and US policy towards the region.
This book is an outstanding statement, at the cutting edge of debates, on hegemony and resistance in Latin American and international studies that makes a number of innovative and original developments, not least in coining the term New Latin Left to grapple with geopolitical issues in Latin America and in focusing on the "reconstitution" of hegemony in the Americas. - Adam David Morton, University of Sydney
Though an early-2000s wave of elected leftist leaders challenged U.S. preeminence in Latin America, Rubrick Biegon explains, this preeminence—or "hegemony"—proved stable. This sweeping survey views 21st century U.S.-Latin American relations through lenses of trade, security policy, bilateral and multilateral diplomacy, and analysis of U.S. discourse, backing it up with innumerable examples from U.S. officials’ own words. Employing a thoughtfully constructed and richly layered theoretical framework, this book gives us important new tools with which to make sense of recent developments in hemispheric affairs. - Adam Isacson, Senior Associate for Defense Oversight, Washington Office on Latin America
