Latin America’s Changing Political Landscape: What It Means for Multilateralism

This week’s presidential election in Brazil, alongside recent elections in Colombia, Chile, Peru and elsewhere in the region, underscored the need to look beyond individual results and consider the broader political trends reshaping Latin America and what they mean for the region’s role in the multilateral system.

On October 26, the KAS New York Office, together with the Stimson Center Latin America Program and the Canadian Council for the Americas, hosted the roundtable “Latin America’s Changing Political Landscape: What It Means for Multilateralism.” The discussion brought together representatives of UN Member States, the United Nations, think tanks and policy experts to examine how electoral change, shifting political coalitions and evolving foreign-policy priorities are affecting Latin America’s engagement with the UN and the broader multilateral system.

The region’s recent political changes cannot be understood simply as a uniform shift to the right. Participants pointed instead to strong anti-incumbent sentiment, frustration with established political parties and institutions, and growing demand for political change and tangible results. Even where voters identify as centrist or hold mixed positions across individual issues, electoral competition can push political choices toward more polarized alternatives. Social media, misinformation and culture-war debates are increasingly shaping this process as well.

The discussion also highlighted several implications for multilateralism:

🔷Latin America is not a monolith. Countries face different domestic priorities, political pressures and international interests, which are shaping increasingly varied approaches to foreign policy and multilateral engagement. Across the region, that engagement is becoming more interest-driven and transactional: some governments are likely to invest heavily in the UN and global governance, while others may give multilateralism less priority or increasingly look to smaller coalitions and arrangements outside established institutions.

🔷At the same time, shared challenges can still create space for regional cooperation. Organized crime was highlighted as an issue capable of bringing together governments across political divides, while Haiti remains an important test of the region’s ability to translate common concerns into sustained collective action.

🔷The selection of the next UN Secretary-General offered another example of the region’s continued commitment to multilateralism. Latin American and Caribbean countries have maintained a common position that the next Secretary-General should come from the region. The discussion emphasized that countries should continue to advocate collectively for regional representation while preserving a genuine choice among candidates.

Special thanks to our speakers Henning Suhr, Giovanna Kuele, and Nick Zimmerman for sharing their insights and helping lead a timely and substantive discussion.