Meta-organizations and the making of a neocolonialist global order

José Augusto Lacerda Fernandes, Mariana Baldi, Fernando Dias Lopes and Héloïse Berkowitz

Chapter 8 in A World of Meta-Organizations, 2026, pp 148-170 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter develops a neocolonialist perspective on meta-organizations and global order. We examine whether and how meta-organizations contribute to the creation and diffusion of a neocolonialist global order. We focus on Mercosur, the EU, the EU–Mercosur free trade agreement and the many meta-organizations that have attempted to create decision premises around it. Borrowing from Latin American scholarship, we explore some of the mechanisms of social order creation at work and the strategic interplays between dominant and peripheral actors, including reprimarization and resourcification, and strategies and counter-strategies such as lobbying, organizing ignorance, or meta-organizing in territories. We highlight how meta-organizations can drive either coloniality or resistance, and how meta-organizations can serve reinforcing or contesting structures of dominance. This research argues for re-examining meta-organization theory by developing perspectives from the margins of the Global Souths and fostering a pluridiverse understanding of a just global order.

Keywords: Global Order; Neocolonialism; Meta-Organization; Latin America; Brazil; Mercosur; EU–Mercosur Agreement; Indigenous Peoples (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035342211
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