This collection analyses the impact and influence of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), whose vision of alternative regionalism has spearheaded Latin America and the Caribbean's collective challenge to neoliberal globalisation in the twenty-first century. The volume's comprehensive coverage incorporates insights from the domestic level in Nicaragua, the Anglophone Caribbean, and especially Venezuela, while also exploring ALBA's key regional economic and social-policy initiatives and its place in the wider international relations of Latin American and the Caribbean. Moving beyond normative debates about the project's desirability and descriptive accounts of its initiatives, this volume provides critical analyses that consider equally ALBA's progress, problems, and prospects. In tackling many of the key questions about the past and future of ALBA it reveals a frequently misunderstood organisation whose impacts have been significant but whose failings also jeopardise the project's long-term sustainability. This timely volume helps us to understand the dynamics shaping the region at a time when its global relevance has never been greater.

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the implementation, functioning, and impact of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), cornerstone of Venezuelan foreign policy and standard-bearer of "postneoliberal" regionalism during the "Left Turn" in Latin America and the Caribbean (1998-2016). It reveals that cooperation via ALBA's regionalised social missions, state multinationals, development bank, People's Trade Agreement, SUCRE virtual currency, and Petrocaribe soft-loan scheme has often been hampered by complexity and conflict between the national political economies of Ecuador, Dominica, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Antigua and Barbuda, and especially Venezuela. Shared commitments to endogenous development, autonomy within mutlipolarity, and novel sources of legitimacy are undermined by serious deficiencies in control and accountability, which stem largely from the defining influence of Venezuela's dysfunctional economy and governance. This dual dependency on Venezuela leaves the future of ALBA hanging in the balance.

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the implementation, functioning, and impact of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), cornerstone of Venezuelan foreign policy and standard-bearer of "postneoliberal" regionalism during the "Left Turn" in Latin America and the Caribbean (1998-2016). It reveals that cooperation via ALBA's regionalised social missions, state multinationals, development bank, People's Trade Agreement, SUCRE virtual currency, and Petrocaribe soft-loan scheme has often been hampered by complexity and conflict between the national political economies of Ecuador, Dominica, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Antigua and Barbuda, and especially Venezuela. Shared commitments to endogenous development, autonomy within mutlipolarity, and novel sources of legitimacy are undermined by serious deficiencies in control and accountability, which stem largely from the defining influence of Venezuela's dysfunctional economy and governance. This dual dependency on Venezuela leaves the future of ALBA hanging in the balance.