Introduction

More than fifty years after its creation in 1948, the Organization of American States (OAS) is undergoing significant transformations. Contrary to skeptical assessments of this organization, some analysts theorize that at the present historical juncture, the OAS may be emerging from its original role as a secondary instrument of US hegemonic power to become a relatively significant actor in promoting regional inter-state cooperation and consensus. Indeed, there is at least some evidence that indicates that the OAS is assuming new functions and acquiring new powers and, in the process, taking on a much more active role in setting the rules and agendas for regional governance in the hemisphere.

Any examination that deem the OAS as a significant instrument of cooperation and consensus always needs to take into consideration that there are also different views that regard any type of post-World War II effort to build a multilateral system largely as a failure. For instance, John O. Ikenberry (Ikenberry 1989) articulates his ambivalence toward the success of the multilateral efforts by the US in Europe to promote its particular brand of a postwar multilateral liberal system. According to Ikenberry, in spite of its hegemonic power, the US failed in its attempt to bring its own understanding of liberal multilateralism to European states and prevail upon them to create a grouping of western industrial democracies with a distinctive pattern of a deeper security association with the US (Inkenberry 1989, 376 and 395).