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This book shows how police and politicians in Latin America informally regulate drug markets using corruption and violence.
While worldwide crime is declining overall, criminality in Latin America has reached unprecedented levels that have ushered in social unrest and political turmoil. Despite major political and economic gains, crime has increased in every Latin American country over the past 25 years, currently making this region the most crime-ridden and violent in the world. Over the past two decades, Latin America has enjoyed economic growth, poverty and inequality reduction, rising consumer demand, and spreading democracy, but it also endured a dramatic outbreak of violence and property crimes. In More Money, More Crime, Marcelo Bergman argues that prosperity enhanced demand for stolen and illicit goods su...
The political participation of public school teachers in new democracies has generated heated debates. In some countries, teacher strikes shutter schools for months each year; in others, teachers' unions have become powerful political machines and have even formed new political parties. To explain these contrasts, Mobilizing Teachers delves into changes in education politics and the labor movement. Christopher Chambers-Ju argues that union organizations fundamentally shape teacher mobilization, with far-reaching implications for politics and policy. With detailed case studies of Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico, this book is the first comparative analysis of teacher politics in Latin America. Drawing on extensive field research and multiple sources of data, it enriches theoretical perspectives in political science and sociology on the interplay between protests, electoral mobilization, and party alliances. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.
Leading scholars and policy analysts from around the Americas come together to untangle the factors that have fuelled the implementation of mano dura politics, their rising popularity, and impacts across nine widely heterogeneous countries in Latin America. Beginning with a discussion on the concept of mano dura, the editors move to survey various theoretical approaches to punitivism, and later review of the empirical research evaluating different drivers behind the adoption of tough on crime policies. Since hard-line initiatives often have consequences beyond the general goal of reducing violence, they then analyze the impacts of these policing strategies on crime rates and different democr...
This book provides new insight into the high-stakes struggle to control land in the Global South through the lens of land titling in Zambia and Senegal. Based on extensive fieldwork, it shows how chiefs and communities challenge the state, in an era of increasing scarcity and booming global land markets.
Violent crime tragically ruins lives and communities, yet we know how to stop it and help victims. Governments agree on how to get results at the United Nations, but do not act locally. Science and Secrets of Ending Violent Crime is the result of a lifetime career working to get violence prevention science applied and frustration with too many preventable tragedies. Irvin Waller explains the proven solutions that tackle the causes of violence, and, ways to persuade politicians to buy-in to invest in the appropriate solutions. Investing in effective violence prevention is more affordable and successful than policymakers think; a modest equivalent of 10 percent of what they spend on police, co...
Over the last few decades, debates about policing in poor urban areas have turned from analyzing the state's neglect and abandonment into documenting its harsh interventions and punishing presence. Yet, we know very little about the covert world of state action that is hidden from public view. In The Ambivalent State, Javier Auyero and Katherine Sobering offer an unprecedented look into the clandestine relationships between police agents and drug dealers in Argentina. Drawing on a unique combination of ethnographic fieldwork and documentary evidence, including hundreds of pages of wiretapped phone conversations, they analyze the inner-workings of police-criminal collusion, its connections to...
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for governments to generate the necessary capacity to address important security and institutional challenges; this volume deepens our understanding of the nature and extent of state governance in Latin America. State capacity is multidimensional, with all elements interacting to produce stable governance and security. As such, a collection of scholars and practitioners use an explicit interdisciplinary approach, drawing on the contributions of history, political science, economics, public policy, military studies, and other fields to gain a rounded understanding of the link between security and democracy. Democracy and Security in Latin America...
March 2015 should have been a time of celebration for Brazil, as it marked thirty years of democracy, a newfound global prominence, over a decade of rising economic prosperity, and stable party politics under the rule of the widely admired PT (Workers' Party). Instead, the country descended into protest, economic crisis, impeachment, and deep political division. Democratic Brazil Divided offers a comprehensive and nuanced portrayal of long-standing problems that contributed to the emergence of crisis and offers insights into the ways Brazilian democracy has performed well, despite the explosion of crisis. The volume, the third in a series from editors Kingstone and Power, brings together noted scholars to assess the state of Brazilian democracy through analysis of key processes and themes. These include party politics, corruption, the new "middle classes," human rights, economic policymaking, the origins of protest, education and accountability, and social and environmental policy. Overall, the essays argue that democratic politics in Brazil form a complex mosaic where improvements stand alongside stagnation and regression.
When widespread state-criminal collusion persists in transitions from autocracy to democracy, electoral competition becomes a catalyst of large-scale criminal violence.