Meta-organizations and the making of a neocolonialist global order

This paper 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 the 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, 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 pluriversal understanding of a just global order.