The Coronavirus Crisis, Word Order(s) and Latin American Responses

• In Event: Relevance, Quality, and Expedience: Political Science Responds to COVID-19: COVID-19 in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

"The major research question that we will address in this paper is the following: How and why Latin American political leaders and regional organizations frame their discursive responses to the global pandemic crisis in the context of international relations? How are they reacting in rhetorical terms, with reference to international relations? In other words, the paper's major analytical focus will be to assess the reactions, in discursive terms, of political leaders in the region (Presidents and PMs), as well as regional organizations within Latin America, to the Covid-19 crisis, from March to June 2020, in terms of Latin American approaches to world order and global and regional governance.

The coronavirus pandemic is an extreme case-study to ascertain the way the world works during crises, and how different approaches to world and regional orders can capture better these crisis dynamics. The rationale behind this research question is that though the crisis is global and has affected unevenly most of the countries of the world, there might be an important Latin American regional dimension that has to be underlined, beyond the national and global generalizations. The virus is just beginning to take off in Latin America, with consequences likely to be even more enduring than those in Europe and the United States. Nowadays the Covid-19 spreads faster in Latin America than in other regions of the world, due to the conditions of poverty and inequality existing in the region, which make the requirements of lockdowns and social distancing difficult to implement. In that sense the dramatic health, political, economic, and social crisis, whereas Latin America has turned by late May 2020 in the epicenter of the epidemic, can be considered as an extreme case-study to assess in analytical terms broader issues of Latin American insertion into the world order and international relations."

Authors

• Arie M. Kacowicz, Hebrew University

• Daniel F. Wajner, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

• Exequiel Lacovsky, Hebrew University ofJerusalem