Summits and Regional Governance : The Americas in Comparative Perspective

Despite the large number of regional and global summits there is very little known about the functioning and impact of this particular type of diplomatic practice. While recognizing that the growing importance of summits is a universal phenomenon, this volume takes advantage of the richness of the Americas experiment to offer a theoretically grounded comparative analysis of contemporary summitry.

The book addresses questions such as:

• How effective have summits been ?
• How have civil society and other non-state actors been involved in summits?
• How have summits impacted on the management of regional affairs?

Filling a significant void in the literature, this volume offers an original contribution helping to understand how summitry has become a central feature of world politics. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of diplomacy, international organizations, and global/regional governance.

Gordon Mace is Director, Inter-American Studies Centre at the Institute of Advanced International Studies, Laval University, Québec, Canada.

Jean-Philippe Thérien is Professor in the Department of Political Science, Université de Montréal, Canada

Diana Tussie is Director, Department of International Relations, FLACSO-Argentina, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Olivier Dabène is Director, Observatoire politique de l’Amérique latine et Caraïbes, Sciences-Po, Paris, France