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Paper short abstract:

The aim of this paper is to analyze the involvement of civil society in regional organizations through a comparative analysis of Mercosur and SADC Social/Civil Society Summits by assessing their institutional structure, agenda and performance at the regional level.

Paper long abstract:

The aim of this paper is to analyze the involvement of civil society in regional organizations through a comparative analysis of Mercosur and SADC Social/Civil Society Summits by assessing their institutional structure, agenda and performance at the regional level. First, we incorporate a conceptual literature to discuss the relations of civil society and regional integration in order to clarify why civil society involvement is relevant for regionalism, particularly in the Global South. Then, we introduce how social actors have been engaged in Mercosur and SADC over the past years, highlighting the formal and informal channels employed with the aim of introducing their demands to the executive representatives gathered in the High Level Summits. We contrast the instruments and strategies employed by civil society actors in both regions, aiming to understand how prominent and successful they have been in terms of influencing the decision making-processes of Mercosur and SADC, which have often been marked by their intergovernmental and interpresidential characters. Thus, this article seeks to contribute to the comparative regionalism literature, setting out an analytical comparative framework for assessing the role of civil society in regional organizations from the Global South, something still neglected in this particular research agenda.