Intervention Without Intervening?

Abstract

In this book we tell the story of the recent evolution of multilateral efforts by the OAS to defend and promote democracy in the Americas. Our case studies examine the OAS's attempts to resolve the political crises in Peru and Venezuela. Two principal themes underpin our analysis. On a broader conceptual level, from an older club-style multilateralism, we trace the evolution of networked multilateralism in its relation to an emerging regional democratic solidarity paradigm. Tied in with the first theme at a more specific, detailed level is a novel form of intervention in the Americas-the OAS dialogue tables, the ascendancy of which we analyse. The "tale of two mesas" at the center of this book points to the significant variation in the recent OAS interventions in Peru and Venezuela in terms of actors, agendas, and achievements. For the purposes of replica-tion in other crisis contexts in the Americas and elsewhere, it is therefore difficult to speak of a single coherent "mesa model" of third-party mediation to defend democracy. Notwithstanding their differences, the two mesas crystallize the persistent challenges that entail operationalizing the declaratory principles of the OAS's democratic solidarity paradigm. We can, however, speak of a novel mode of intervention. Laurence Whitehead has identified three historical forms of intervention or "imposition" to advance democracy in the Americas: incorporation, invasion, and intimidation. 1 These, of course, are all hard or forcible modes of intervention. 2 By contrast, the OAS missions in Peru and Venezuela, with the dialogue tables at their center, constitute a new, promising, and softer mode of intervention: intervention without intervening. That is, through the mesa-focused, intra-elite dialogue processes, the OAS presence (together with the Carter Center and the UNDP in Venezuela) in