Typical Challenges of Governance for Sustainable Regional Development in Globalized Latin America: A Multidimensional Literature Review

Abstract

The paper aims to identify and analyze what types of governance challenges for sustainable regional development in the context of globalization are more frequently found in scholarship regarding Latin America. In order to do so, we carried out a systematic review of scholarly works discussing regional sustainability issues across the region. Analytically, it provides a heuristic multidimensional framework for organizing and typifying the most frequent sustainable regional development governance challenges under study, offering a nuanced and interrelated account of economic, environmental, political, and socio-spatial scientific discussions. According to our findings, scholarship on Latin America shows a bricolage-like scenery where political atomization linked to economic factionalism and fragmentation stand out as frequently analyzed situations. Another frequent topic relates to discussions about political endeavors linked to environmental concerns, connecting incidence strategies with collective environmental conservation approaches.

1. Introduction

On 14 July, 2017, The Guardian reported on the Davos summit—house of market—talks [1]. The panel on “governing globalization”, hosted by those once flagging globalization as a panacea, showed a reflexive mood: the backlash against globalization came center stage as a global trend of political upheavals where extremist swings seemed to capture the accumulated anxieties and uncertainties of globalization losers. Globalization, it seems, did not perform as well as expected, or at least not at the expense of consequential costs. The trend of political upheavals, as news and social media have aired since, has persisted relentlessly. For Latin America, the peak came in 2019. Surprisingly Chile, not long ago the exemplary gem of the free trade laboratory, showed its true colors with a massive mobilization that had almost completed three weeks on the streets when this paper was written [2].

Such trends, more often debated at the country and multilateral level, expose a side that has deep roots and effects in regional processes in Latin America that is embedded in rather complex multilevel configurations. Globalization transforms regions due to foreignization of the economy following processes of capital restructuring [3]. Discussed regional effects of such phenomena include (i) urban centers increasing interconnection while increasing disconnection in less industrialized regions; (ii) inequitable regional development; (iii) an exponential increase in environmental risks; and (iv) the fragility of Latin American economies in the capital inflow process [4,5,6]. In a less critical light, some works have proposed alternatives to mitigate these effects, or to openly tackle other opportunities for regional development [7,8,9]. Others have approached the role of regional institutions on better matching globalization and sustainable regional development challenges [10,11].

By assessing the relevant literature in order to analyze the most common challenges of governance for sustainable regional development, we found that systematic discussion of the regional scale was rather rare in the case of Latin America. This is different at the national scale, though a possible explanation can be the complexity and diversity of forms by which globalization affects the regional level [12] as the literature appears to be a scattered array of works by which the effects of globalization are discussed. Thus, it builds on sparse particular cases, assembling a corpus in which objects loosely link to the topic, following diverse ways of problematization, disciplinary approaches, and scalar reach.

This paper discusses a cross-cutting scrutiny of such a body of literature that aims at shedding light on how sustainable regional development in Latin America has fared in the context of globalization. Specifically, it addresses the following research question: What types of challenges of governance for sustainable regional development in Latin America in the context of globalization are more frequently scholarly discussed?

As background, the analysis followed the heuristic approach of Giaoutzi and Nijkamp [13], coined as the Möbius triangle of sustainable regional development: there are inherent tensions in regional development between economic growth, social inequality, and environmental sustainability, and these tensions coexist as paradoxical forces of regional development processes. We assume that such tensions give rise to challenges of governance for sustainable regional development, understood here as de facto settings arising from the ongoing deployment of auto-organization and collibration interactive strategies from and amongst actors [14]. By taking this stance, we depart from the original perspective to add to a growing body of literature problematizing sustainability from a governance point of view (e.g., [15,16,17]).

Furthermore, this paper seeks for ways to point at such governance challenges as a varied, yet limited set of typical configurations. It therefore follows a typological way of thinking. An ideal type is the “the one-sided accentuation of one or more points of view and by the synthesis of a great many diffuse, discrete, more or less present and occasionally absent concrete individual phenomena, which are arranged according to those one-sidedly emphasized viewpoints to a unified analytical construct.” ([18], p. 90). Following this way of thinking about sustainable regional governance and its challenges, we aimed to provide “hypotheses on how [governance challenges] operate individually, but also contingent generalizations on how and under what conditions they behave in specified conjunctions or configurations to produce other effects.” ([19], p. 235).

The need—and some solutions—to a stronger link between science and policymaking around sustainability has been addressed previously as a relevant aim [20] worth taking up specifically at the regional level. Our cross-cutting approach to the literature aims to support decision-making, offering a way to translate a scattered body of literature into possible typical regional governance configurations. We expect that such an analytical frame could provide policymakers—and any other actor playing a role at the regional level—with a tool that makes sense of the governance environment and sets prioritized courses of action vis-à-vis sustainability.

The paper pieces together three building blocks. The first building block discusses the analytical framework on typical challenges of governance for sustainable regional development. The intention here is not to give a substantive discussion about the framework, as it can be found elsewhere [21], but rather, we aim to present its operational reach to set typical challenges of governance for sustainable regional development in the region. The second building block focuses on the methods and discusses the step by step process by which we found, selected, and discussed the literature on Latin America regional processes from the 90s onward as well as the main features of such literature. The third building block focuses on the discussion of the results and the research findings: we assessed the literature on Latin America in order to find out which sustainable regional development challenges were more frequently studied, and how these look in a multidimensional framework.

In synthesis, the paper contributes to various discussions. First, it provides a multidimensional review of scholarly works on regional processes in Latin America as an attempt to systematically collate relevant discussions over a complex subject. It adds to previous reviews of the field of sustainability in Latin America [22], narrowing its scope of interest to the regional level. Second, it discusses the application of a synthetic analytical framework that offers interpretive reach for sustainable regional development studies and policymaking.

2. Analytical Framework: Typifying Challenges of Governance for Sustainable Regional Development

It has been known for a long time that the complexity and depth of sustainability challenges need to address the integration of disciplinary knowledge, the multi-scale relationships between social and physical processes as well as the complex relationships between knowledge and policy. Such aims actually entail global knowledge governance challenges being closely linked to sustainability large scale transitioning challenges [23].

Brought to the assessment of regional development scholarship, such requirements appear to be difficult. First, governance is by no means a monolithic concept. Scholarly works regarding governance at the regional level have addressed governance in many different ways. Governance can appear, for example, as a normative reference [24]; a polity object [25,26]; a policy object [27]; a public management object [28]; a public management aim [29,30]; and a private management object [31]. As expected, the literature regarding the governance of regional sustainability discusses all types of socio-technical phenomena, detailing its governance specific features, describing specific governance problems around them, or most often, aiming at better governance settings or practice.

Moreover, governance does not always appear as a topic under scrutiny or a reference on discussions about regional sustainable development. However, such discussions often imply governance challenges. As is the case, for example, in works discussing environmental [32,33], socio-spatial [34,35], economic [36,37], and political [38,39] dimensions of regional life.

We attempted a framing and translating effort to bridge these distances by offering a simplified reading to reduce the vastness of scholarship taking place around the tensions of sustainable regional development. Aiming to achieve a panoramic, generic view of the literature, we introduced a framework of typical challenges of governance for sustainable regional development [21]. Such typical challenges are understood as the most common de facto interactive settings in which regional actors find themselves in political, economic, socio-spatial, and environmental dimensions of regional life. Therefore, we build on assessing the multi-actor multi-dimensional situations in which sustainable governance challenges are actually rooted [40,41].

The framework updates and expands Arocena’s work on regional development types [42]. Arocena’s original notion of integration develops configurations of interregional economic linkages, describing degrees of regional integration and degrees of regional response to context. We adopted Arocena’s rationale and adapted some of his notions, expanding it in a threefold way: (1) By including the notion of convergence and finding a way to point and feature its intersections with the notion of integration, bringing governance challenges center stage; (2) by extending the heuristic to address other dimensions of regional life (environmental, economic, socio-spatial, and political); and (3) by displaying the framework analytically and graphically as a single interrelated heuristic.

We gave convergence a governance-related meaning. Convergence comprises the possible configurations of alignment or agreement in, and between, the actors’ intentionality in an interactive setting. We argue that the actors’ intentionality expresses identity positioning strategies vis-à-vis regional pathways [43]. The framework assumes governance challenges to be functions of possible emergent (and interactive) configurations of integration and convergence, proposing as a heuristic a reading of regional governmentality states [44,45]. The rationale is that of posing an overarching, yet simple heuristic that allows for an interpretive and complementary reach to describe typical situations in sustainable regional development.

This approach diverges from a more common stance on local and regional governance discussions in Latin America, set in the search or expectation of multi-actor arrangements in a certain regional setting to be seen both in scholarly work, for example [46,47,48,49,50,51], which are also seen in development practice in hand with programs such as local development agencies [52], local action programs [53], local economic development [54], and more recently, the smart specialization model [55].

Figure 1 depicts an aggregated view of typical challenges of sustainable regional development based on environmental, economic, socio-spatial, and political dimensions. Each dimension combines a differentiated specific status of convergence (x axis) and integration (y axis). Before shortly describing each dimension, it is worth noting the priority of the interpretive aim of the framework by which each specific dimension acquires a certain quality following a typological way of thinking: the search of interpretive reach within the framework turns the balance toward specific (and complementary) disciplinary frames.

The main take on each dimension as well as its specific typological development following integration and convergence configurations is sketched below. As shown in Figure 1, the discussion follows a metaphor of ascending geological layers [56] with the environmental and socio-spatial layers on the bottom, and economic and political ones at the top.

2.1. Environmental Dimension

In this paper, the environment is understood as a synonym for nature when both notions are understood as social constructs [57,58]. As such, its meaning and significance change over time to be subjected to pathways of social groups and communities in a region. Thus, the environmental dimension is operationalized in a twofold way following the framework’s conceptual assumptions by demarcating the relationship between nature and society, highlighting its anthropocentric or eco-centric tendency [59]. Convergence is understood here as a function of anthropocentric or eco-centric predominant values. The anthropocentric view describes a relationship where nature and its components are understood as natural resources to be explored and exploited; its intrinsic value is perceived as property and its management is instrumental [60]. In contrast, the eco-centric view evidences recognition of nature’s intrinsic value as well as its biological and eco-systemic relevance. Integration is understood here as a function of the level of organization of social groups whereby the regional actors’ relationship with nature can be either based on collective or atomized practices.

Collective conservation:Integration refers to the quantity and quality of articulation between the different actors and their relationship to the environment. Higher levels of integration are associated with more organized and collective, coordinated practices around environmental awareness and preservation. Convergence clusters a dominant rationale in the existing relationship between society and nature in a region. A high grade of convergence therefore suggests the prevalence of eco-centric or ecological visions.

Collective predation: This indicates high levels of integration, but low levels of convergence. Such cases portray elevated levels of coordination between the local actors embedded in anthropocentric collective practices of the exploitation or degradation of nature. This can be the case, for example, when there is the presence of a small-scale mining industry with little social or environmental awareness in a region.

Atomized conservation: This features a situation where nonexistent or little articulation and coordination amongst actors takes place in a region where eco-centric and ecological logics regarding the territory and the environment are common and widespread. For instance, regions where ecological initiatives and organizations are operating, yet their actions are rather isolated and fragmented, lacking any further linkages between each other and their goals.

Atomized predation: This describes situations with little or no cooperation or coordination among the local actors with regard to their environment and its natural resources. The prevalence of anthropocentric views and perceptions is typical for such regions where exploitation and degradation of nature are common features, lacking any recognition of the intrinsic eco-systemic value of nature and its resources.

2.2. Socio-Spatial Dimension

The socio-spatial dimension is based on the interdisciplinary background of modern human geography that understands a region as a dynamic geographical space with history, identity, culture, and of symbolic construction among local actors who inhabit and develop their activities in such spaces [61,62,63]. That is, a region is built, transformed, and invented collectively through local processes of constant human, social, cultural, political, and economic interactions with the potential to contribute to regional development [64]. Such processes are continuously reflected in the socio-spatial dimension of regional development and related challenges to local governance.

The socio-spatial operates here in a twofold way. Integration describes the ways in which the socio-spatial configuration is shaped by different forms of daily interactions and interpretations of local actors toward a geographical space. Convergence considers their visions based on a spatial identity, a variable defined by Lussault as a shared reference applied by one or more actors in order to distinguish themselves one from another in a geographical space ([65], p. 91).

Segregation: This describes the unequal distribution of economic, social, political, cultural, or even symbolic events in a geographical space that significantly marks a region while dividing and segregating local actors through invisible barriers, socio-spatial acts of exclusion, and other deeply pronounced spatially rooted differences. Such boundaries and regional disparities are affected by conflicts (potential or real ones) among local actors in a region, urban or rural alike.

Domination: This reflects another type of spatial disequilibrium caused by a disproportion in the integration of local actors where a couple, or one of them, dominates the regional vision of local development, not allowing any competition or opposition. It is characterized by a capture of geographic space and an imposition of the strongest actor or an alliance of a few, pronounced in social and political interactions and economic activities in the space.

Segmentation: This allows a coexistence of different spatial identities and visions without meaning competition amongst one another. Regional visions and actions of local actors are rather free of conflict, compatible or not. Lacking any socio-spatial inequalities, the geographical space is divided into autonomous segments or units of inhabitants and their activities, among which flow and exchange runs freely. Still, the low convergence among actors who interact in the region affects the possible processes of regional development and social cohesion.

Construction: This features a process of constant social, cultural, economic, or political interactions embedded in regional development, which allows a collective vision of a region to be built, potentializing its local diversity, and converting it into a united one through high levels of integration and inclusion, while emphasizing cooperation and articulation among local actors, thus leading to social cohesion.

2.3. Economic Dimension

In the economic dimension, integration refers to the number and the level of supplier–client–supplier-type relationships that economic activities possess in a territory. Thus, a local economic system is integrated when there is a business network rich in connections and with high volumes of transactions, and it is a little integrated when the opposite occurs [66]. In turn, convergence relates to the degree of understanding amongst various coexisting regional development visions regarding the economic choices for a region. Thus, for example, there is a convergence of visions in a territory where the majority of the actors want to use local resources for the same purpose (for example, ecotourism) and there is little convergence when they are divided, having opposing visions (for example, ecotourism vs. large-scale mineral extraction). In particular, the possible scenarios in this dimension are identified as follows [67,68,69]:

Factionalism: This includes a range of possibilities of low integration among local economic activities, while presenting social conflicts (latent or declared) among actors that are related to their visions of local development. This scenario may have a main economic activity that does not sufficiently dynamize local markets and therefore serves as a catalyst for social conflict due to the nonconformism of the actions.

Fragmentation: This represents a scenario in which economic activities are carried out without unleashing social conflicts among themselves—perhaps with low levels of economic production—but have weak economic linkages. Such regions show problems in guaranteeing a minimum level of quality of life for its inhabitants, leading to emigration or injection of external resources for development.

Dissipation: This shows a scenario with strong supplier–client–supplier relationships between local economic sectors, but no convergence among actors about which development path is to be followed. There may not be major social conflicts at the local level related to specific economic activities, but high levels of dissatisfaction with the regional economic supply. Its population longs for a change in economic vocation that allows for resources to be reallocated toward activities with greater social inclusion and environmental sustainability.

Productivity: This includes scenarios of strong interdependencies between local economic sectors and more harmonized or alienated visions of regional development such as large markets that offer employment and business opportunities for the local population. However, it may generate disputes over the share of participation that people and businesses have at a local market as well as the pressures on natural ecosystems due to an expanding economy.

2.4. Political Dimension

The political dimension addresses possible configurations of collective outcomes in decision-making processes, moving from governability to governance, and focusing on the conditions of collective decision-making. This dimension builds on the existence of a set of actions (expression, deliberation, creation of organizational spaces, disposition of resources) through which actors become involved in the elaboration, decision, and execution of public matters. Understood in this context, the political dimension described refers to the many particular ways of interaction between individuals or organizations and the state as well as to its specific relationship between the state and society, in which realities coming into effect are constructed collectively and publicly [70,71,72,73].

In the function of convergence and integration, the political dimension shows possible modes of arrangement regarding intentionality, indifference, or dissent. Integration relates to the actors’ qualities around public, political, and policy related participation, intervention, and collaboration. Convergence relates to the degrees of alignment or understanding between their visions.

Atomization: This describes scarce awareness, participation, and integration amongst citizens and organizations, and therefore a weak presence of both political and policy actors. It shows a panorama where actors have little will or capacity to play a substantial role in the public sphere. This may result, for example, in the inability to formulate shared agendas.

Polarization: This features the participation of organized actors in a mature political system, however a fragmented and conflicted one. Here, strong political views collide with others. Such a governance configuration could feature lock-in situations, for example.

Dilution: This represents a scene of relative degrees of organization, yet not those required for a conducive collective agreement. Here, actors might feature malpractice (coopted agendas or corruption), or sparse or intermittent presence of the actors in the arena due to a lack of capacity.

Incidence: This scenario depicts a configuration of strong interdependence between the actors and their visions that is able to sustain long-term collective entrepreneurship. Governance challenges related to this picture searches to sustain inclusion and legitimacy as well as keep pace and further scale achievements.

3. Methodology: Looking for Patterns of Governance in Globalized Latin America

What types of governance challenges for sustainable regional development in Latin America in the context of globalization are more frequently scholarly discussed? Our approach was based on an assessment of the literature linked to the research topic in a typological multidimensional analytical framework and we aimed for a more nuanced reading of the phenomena taking place throughout the region. Epistemologically, this research design links to an interpretive line of thought [74]. The operationalization of this design followed a twofold qualitative–quantitative process by which the literature was mediated (that is, read, interpreted, and noted) into a quantitative array of data. Figure 2 presents the overall methodological process that the article follows:

This section provides details about the data selection and coding procedures that were undertaken. The first set of potential articles was selected by performing a keyword search in academic databases such as ProQuest, EBSCOHOST, Jstor, Google Scholar, Redalyc, Scielo, Web of Science, and Scopus. The use of indexed databases granted access to peer reviewed journals. The query made use of a keyword equation (i.e., query = terms topic a + terms topic b + terms topic c), where a contained scale descriptors (territorial, local and/or regional), b included challenge descriptors (e.g., sustainable development, governance, challenges, environmental conflict, social conflict, social inclusion, and so on), and c added globalization descriptors (for example, Latin America, [Latin-American country], globalization, foreign investment, MNC, glocal, and/or NGOs). This set of keywords was used by all authors in their data search. The search included more than three keywords and was made in both Spanish and English languages.

Since the search in some databases resulted in a number of articles not directly related to the main topic of this article, keywords were adjusted following an iterative process in order to find the fittest descriptors. In general, we rejected articles where the main discussion did not focus on the challenges of governance for sustainable regional development, or where the empirical data exceeded the boundaries of Latin-America [75]. Thus, the selected articles totaled 71 items, adding together an illustrative data sample that captured a variety of governance challenges in different Latin American countries and sub-regions.

The next research stage was to read the selected articles and incorporate the analysis results into a shared database. To do so, the articles were organized according to the authors and coded under six main aspects:

• Abstract: allowing a shared view of the discussed topics.
• Publication year: identifying any trends describing the topics’ relative importance.
• Geographical location of the discussion: locating the empirical discussions of the article in a country, some countries, the Latin-American region, or the world (including of course, Latin America).
• The scale of the unit of analysis: identifying whether the selected articles work on regional (two or more countries at the same time), national (one country treated as a whole), or subnational cases (one or more territories inside a specific country) in Latin America.
• Dimensions of the typology: assigning each paper to one or more dimensions of the typology provided in the analytical framework, according to its approach. By implication, each single article was included in at least one dimension and a maximum of four.
• Dimension’s quadrants: labelling the articles to quadrants of each of the dimensions identified in the previous step. Despite some articles addressing different aspects of one or another dimension, we chose the quadrant that captured the best main governance challenges under discussion.

This coding procedure allowed us to convert the qualitative data from the articles into a quantitative array, allowing us to tally variables of the same category and express data into graphs and schemes [76]. Two workshops within the research group for assessing results allowed us to further tweak and validate the coding process. In the following pages, we present an overview of the literature under scrutiny and the research findings. Below, the results are discussed in light of the analytical framework of typical challenges of governance for sustainable regional development.

4. Results and Research Findings

The sample of articles privileged recent works and covered the period between 1998 and 2019 (see Figure 3). Before 2000, only two relevant articles were launched, while 19 articles were published in the first decade of the new millennium, and 50 articles in the second. On average, in the 2000s, 1.9 articles per year were published, whilst in the 2010s, five articles were published per year. The increasing trend of the number of published articles can be understood as an increasing interest in the topic and the emergence of new challenges linked to globalization in the region of Latin America.

The articles were published in journals from Europe (the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Spain, and Germany), North America (the U.S. and Canada), and Latin-America (Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and Venezuela), so they were written in Spanish and English. The journals mainly came from disciplines such as geography, sociology, economics, and, in general, the social sciences and interdisciplinary approaches. We found more than two articles in these journals: Ecology and Society (three articles, Canada, H Index 119), European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies (six articles, the Netherlands, H Index 74), Latin American Research Review (six articles, the U.S., H Index 42), and Journal of Latin American Geography (seven, the U.S., H Index 17).

In relation to the localization of the cases treated in the articles, we found that 35 addressed the governance challenges of two or more countries at the same time, 34 worked only on one country, the scope of one article was the world as a whole [77], and three were not located because they discussed a rather theoretical approach [78,79,80] (see Figure 4).

The most frequently addressed Latin-American subregion was the Amazon [81,82,83], followed by Central America (Mexico and surroundings), and the Andean region (Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Chile). In fact, as seen in Figure 4, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, and Ecuador were the countries with more discussed governance challenges in the sample. Additionally, the total sum of articles displayed in the map was larger than 71 (74 articles in total) because three articles had a mixed approach that combined the analysis of a region and of a country [84,85,86].

Finally,

Table 1. Scale of the unit of analysis. Source: authors.

Scale	Number
World	1
Regional	35
National	16
Subnational	19
Theoretical approach	3
Total	74

shows the scales of the unit of analysis used in the articles. It is worth elaborating more over some of these examples to clarify the notion of the scale of the unit of analysis: Escribano discussed fragmentation and cooperation in the global energy governance on a world scale [77], Herrera worked on transnational networks of indigenous organization in the context of socio-environmental conflicts on a regional scale [87], Ruíz and Gentes addressed water governance and integral management of water resources in Bolivia at the national scale [88]; and, finally, Bonilla worked on repertoires of action of Afro-Colombian organizations in the context of the armed conflict in Buenaventura (Colombia) at the subnational scale [89].

According to the latter result, 35 articles worked on a regional scale (understood as two or more countries in the study), 16 on a national scale (a country treated as a whole), 19 on a subnational scale (one or more territories located in a country), one on a world scale (the world as a whole) and three were not located.

5. Discussion: Current Challenges of Governance in Globalized Latin America

This section discusses the selected literature in light of the analytical framework for challenges of governance in the search for sustainable regional development. The section follows a layered order by which detailed and incremental discussion allowed us to make sense of the general trends as shown by the literature, as much as of its more significant distinctions. Guiding questions of the analysis included what dimensions—environmental socio-spatial, economic and political—does the literature address? How frequent is the discussion of specific types of challenge, or quadrants, inside each dimension? How is the literature distributed amongst the dimensions and quadrants? Further adding to the complexity: How do the dimensions and quadrants link to one another to show evidence of multidimensional analysis at place? Which links and quadrants are more and less central regarding the subject? and finally, what answers provide these findings to the research question? In every further step of the discussion, selected papers of the database will be referred to as examples to give the reader some flavor of the literature under scrutiny.

Figure 5 shows the number of papers assigned to each dimension as well as its intersections. As a set, the political dimension is the most representative, related to 43.7% of the papers. This is followed by the economic (24.6%), environmental (20.6%), and socio-spatial (11.1%) dimensions. This figure also shows the distribution of the papers through its linkages to dimensions. Some are unidimensional (36.6%), most are bidimensional (52.1%), and a few are three-dimensional (8.4%) and four-dimensional (2.9%). These results indicate that most of the papers perceived governance challenges from a bidimensional point of view and that most of the papers were studied from the political and economic dimensions. The combinations of political/economic and political/environmental dimensions stand out in the analysis.

Regarding the unidimensional subsets, the majority appeared in the economical dimension with 18 papers. Some recent examples include topics such as Ecuador’s health reforms and the reconfiguration of relations among local civil society, transnational NGOs, and the state [90]; the security and governance in marginalized favelas in Rio de Janeiro [91]; and public policy of childhood and adolescence at the local level in Colombia [92].

Other unidimensional subsets were significantly lower: first, the political dimension with seven papers, among which were some on fragmentation and cooperation on global energy governance [77] and trade and trade policy in Latin America and the Caribbean [93]. Second, was the environmental with only one paper on carbon forestry offset projects [83]; and third, the socio-spatial dimension with none.

As above-mentioned, in the case of bidimensional subsets, the more frequent combinations included the combination of political/economic and political/environmental dimensions with 13 papers each. The political/economic combination included works about justice, social exclusion, and indigenous opposition on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (Mexico) [94]; and community mining consultations in Latin America (2002–2012) [95]. Works on the political-environmental intersection included subjects such as the management of Amazonian protected areas and indigenous territories [96]; and the infrastructure–extractives–resource governance complex in the Pan-Amazon [97]. The next bidimensional intersections were economic/environmental with five papers and politic/socio-spatial with four. The last two bidimensional subsets were environmental/socio-spatial and economic/socio-spatial with one paper each.

Figure 6 displays a heat color palette indicating the higher and lower frequency of papers per quadrant, showing the frequency of typical challenges as posed by the analytical framework. As above-mentioned, the political and economic dimensions had the highest frequency, showing warmer quadrants. Though quadrants in the political dimension were the warmest in the framework, Atomization and Incidence stood out with 16 and 15 papers, respectively. Some examples were on the collective territorial actions in Chile (2011–2013) [98], and a concerted solution of territorial conflicts within the province of Cañar (Ecuador) [99].

Within the economic dimension, the warmer quadrants were Factionalism and Fragmentation, with 13 and 11 papers, respectively, significantly oversizing the quadrant of Dissipation and Productivity, with five and two papers, respectively. Some examples of Factionalism and Fragmentation were on inequality in Latin America [100], and cooperation in global energy governance [77].

The socio-spatial and the environmental were the coldest dimensions (with little or no appearance in the papers). This means that less papers dealt with those types of governance challenges. The environmental dimension features Atomized conservation was the coldest quadrant, while Collective predation was warmer, with three and eight papers, respectively, for example, the conservation narratives in Peru regarding sustainable development [101], and controlling territories and restructuring socio-ecological relations (Montes de María, Colombia) [102]. The socio-spatial dimension features Construction and Segmentation were its colder quadrants, with two papers each, while Domination was the warmest with six papers. Some examples include the challenges for governance for development on the northern border (México) [103], and roads and forest fragmentation in the Amazon [81].

To sum up this point: it is evident that most of the governance challenges are located in the political dimension, almost doubled in quantity to the other dimensions, and was only followed by the economic dimension. Combining a subset of unidimensional political and economic papers, with those bidimensional links to political/economic dimensions, the total tally rounded up to 53.6% of the total set of analyzed papers. It is also apparent that some types were more frequent than others in every dimension: Atomization in the political dimension, Factionalism in the economic, Domination in the socio-spatial, and Collective predation in the environmental one.

Figure 7 shows an interlinked network graph per dimension and quadrant. It displays an integrated view: the quadrants of each dimension are represented by colors (rose for political, yellow for economic, blue for socio-spatial, and green for environmental). The size of each quadrant shows how many unidimensional papers contained each one. The width and the indexes beside the lines represent the quantity of papers linking together quadrants from different dimensions. The value of the indexes corresponds exactly to the number of papers that linked each pair of quadrants.

It is worth highlighting some features of this figure: some quadrants stood out regarding its large or small size. The largest, on one hand, was Dilution in the political dimension with six papers. Among these, the research included Indigenous peoples and the making of plurinationalism in Latin America [104], and afro-descendent organizations and the armed conflict in Buenaventura (Colombia) [89]. On the other hand, Fragmentation stood out inside the economic dimension, with three papers including works on foreign direct investment and territorial disputes [81]. In contrast, the smallest quadrants were Atomized Conservation and Atomized Predation within the environmental dimension and all of the quadrants from the socio-spatial dimension was without a unidimensional paper. This indicates that all governance challenges related to those points of view were analyzed from, at least, a bidimensional perspective.

Therefore, there were three relationships indicating the strongest links between quadrants. The first two connected the political and the economic dimensions through the Atomization and Fragmentation quadrants with three papers, and Atomization and Factionalism with five. Some works referred to foreign investment in Latin America [105,106], the political economy of armed conflict and crime in Colombian regions [107], and governance and conflict due to environmental depletion [79]. The strongest tie connected the political and the environmental dimensions along the Collective Conservation and Incidence quadrants with eight items including illustrating the management of Amazonian protected areas and indigenous territories [96], the governance of environmental risks at the local scale (Chile) [108], and conservation and climate change in Latin America [109]. This relational analysis confirms and details the strong link between the political and the economic dimensions.

Figure 8 describes a multidimensional network graph per dimension and quadrant. The figure allows a clearer view of the more central quadrants. The centrality measures the quantity of links greater than one from each quadrant. The value of the indexes beside the lines corresponds exactly to the number of papers linking each pair of quadrants and includes links with two or more works, erasing the lighter ones. This view brings two quadrants up front: Atomization in the political dimension and Factionalism in the economic one, with five and four links, respectively. Some examples of work in this area include participation toward local governance in peri-urban territories (Mexico) [110]; new social and cultural movements and participatory democracy in Latin America [111]; environmental governance in Latin America [112]; and sustainability and governance environmental governance in Latin America (Mexico, Costa Rica, Brazil, Peru, and Bolivia) [113].

Furthermore, less central or more peripheral quadrants offered alternative links that also connected, but more importantly, added diversity to the governance challenges at place. That is, the case of quadrants with one link such as Segmentation and Segregation in the socio-spatial dimension, and Collective conservation in the environmental one. Thus, it revealed a relational value for the socio-spatial dimension that was not previously observable, for example, in works concerning environmental governance in Mexican natural protected areas [114], and guidelines for rural development public policy for Colombia [115].

In sum, this centrality analysis confirmed the salience of the political and the economic dimensions, while showing the relational value of the environmental and the socio-spatial dimensions. This shows that environmental and socio-spatial governance challenges tend to lean in two or more dimensions. In other words, regional environmental and socio-spatial governance challenges appear in the literature as strongly linked to economic and political processes.

Summing up the previous analysis, a multidimensional literature review of the challenges of governance for sustainable regional development appear as follows:

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Political governance challenges are the most salient, with works relating to the conditions for collective decision-making, specifically regarding the configurations at place toward collective outcomes. Regional economic and environmental processes at place are strongly connected to this dimension.

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The most typical governance challenges under scrutiny for each dimension of regional life in Latin America are:

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Atomization in the political dimension, showing scarce awareness, participation, and integration amongst citizens and organizations, and therefore weak presence as both political and policy actors, showing little will or capacity to play a sustained role in the public sphere.

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Factionalism in the economic dimension, showing works relating to low integration between local economic activities and latent or declared conflicts regarding regional development pathways.

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Domination in the socio-spatial dimension, showing works relating to a disequilibrium in the integration of local actors where a couple or one of them dominates the regional vision of development, often not allowing any competition or opposition.

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Collective predation in the environmental dimension, showing works relating to the pervasiveness of anthropocentric collective practices of environmental exploitation or degradation.

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The most typical multidimensional challenges under scrutiny for sustainable regional governance in Latin America link together:

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Political endeavors around environmental concerns, connecting incidence strategies for collective environmental conservation. It connects organized and collective practices around environmental awareness and preservation while sustaining political inclusion and legitimacy.

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Political Atomization in the context of Economic Factionalism, linking the political and the economic dimensions. It shows works relating frequent regional governance landscapes of scarce awareness, participation, and integration amongst citizens and organizations with low integration between economic activities and views about regional development.

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Political Atomization with Economic fragmentation, again linking the political and the economic dimensions. It shows works relating scarce awareness, participation, and integration amongst citizens and organizations with weak economic linkages or low levels of production. This means having problems in guaranteeing a minimum level of quality of life for regional inhabitants.

6. Conclusions

What types of challenges of governance for sustainable regional development in Latin America in the context of globalization are more frequently scientifically discussed? The answer to this question has provided a profiled multidimensional stocktake of the literature tackling this subject in the region. We conclude by reflecting on the findings as well as on the analytical process.

First, we would like to reflect on the findings against the backdrop staged in the introduction. The main subject of this paper was if and how globalization induced specific tensions regarding the Mobius triangle of sustainable regional development, understood here as a multidimensional stage of governance arenas at play. Considering the findings of this article, scholarly work regarding Latin America most often discusses cases where globalization failed to enable conditions to achieve better setups of regional integration and convergence.

Following our analytical framework, it is worth noting that globalization deploys differentiated regional effects vis-à-vis sustainability challenges. These nuanced readings are relevant for developmental strategies—often carried out by governments or other actors—that could consequently set strategic transitioning goals. The current state of affairs regarding sustainability requires decisive action from all possible actors.

Second, we would like to reflect on the findings against the backdrop of the assessed scholarly work. Here, our results showed that such a scattered body of literature has plenty of room for more systematic approaches to the regional level, specifically furthering the understanding of sustainability multidimensional challenges at place. To that aim, we expect this contribution to enrich the body of analytical frameworks allowing for transversal readings.

Other cross-cutting analysis, for the moment out of the scope and intention of this paper, could be carried out in order to better understand thematic trends in the region (e.g., minorities, protected areas, reiterative topics). Furthermore, complementary scientometric analysis could be carried out in order to better understand the scientific evolution of the topic (e.g., visible [116] and invisible colleges [117], language evolution and effects on topic development, and sponsorship effects on topic development).

Finally, we would like to reflect on the limitations of this work. As an interpretive toolkit, the sustainable regional governance challenges framework allowed us to point at nuances worth addressing in the understanding of complex multidimensional regional processes. These nuances, though, are shown here as a picture describing a static state of affairs. The task pending is to deepen the conceptual understanding and linkages of both intra-and inter-governance types of each dimension, aiming at a developed version that is able to achieve some explanatory reach.

Methodologically, the framework operationalization can also be further improved as well as tested in other settings. Specifically, further research looking for empirical evidence and relevant case studies should be encouraged across disciplines and countries or sub-regions. As a next stage of this research program, it is worth developing a set of indicators and criteria that makes it possible for a more systematic testing method for data classification (both empirical and scholarly) of dimensions and quadrants.