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Author: Hal Brands
Publisher: Strategic Studies Institute
ISBN: 1584874422
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 44
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Book Description
Author: Hal Brands
Publisher: Strategic Studies Institute
ISBN: 1584874422
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 44
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Hal Brands
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781517628680
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 70
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Book Description
In numerous Latin American countries, organized crime and violence are corroding governance and imperiling democratic legitimacy. This phenomenon is most severe in Guatemala, which is currently experiencing a full-blown crisis of the democratic state. An unholy trinity of criminal elements-international drug traffickers, domestically based organized crime syndicates, and youth gangs-have dramatically expanded their operations since the 1990s, and are effectively waging a form of irregular warfare against government institutions. The effects of this campaign have been dramatic. The police, the judiciary, and entire local and departmental governments are rife with criminal infiltrators; murder statistics have surpassed civil-war levels in recent years; criminal operatives brazenly assassinate government officials and troublesome members of the political class; and broad swaths of territory are now effectively under the control of criminal groups. Guatemala's weak institutions have been unable to contain this violence, leading to growing civic disillusion and causing marked erosion in the authority and legitimacy of the state. This problem cannot be addressed through police measures alone; combating it will require a holistic strategy that combines robust enforcement and security measures with sustained efforts to broaden socio-economic opportunities, combat corruption, and, above all, to build a stronger and more capable state. HAL BRANDS currently works as a defense analyst in Washington, DC. He is the author of From Berlin to Baghdad: America's Search for Purpose in the Post-Cold War World (2008), as well as recent Strategic Studies Institute monographs on drug trafficking and radical populism in Latin America. His next book, Latin America's Cold War, will be published in late 2010. Brands has written widely on U.S. grand strategy, Latin American politics and security, and related issues. Dr. Brands holds a Ph.D. in history from Yale University.
Author: John P. Hawkins
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806188936
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
The possibility of violence beneath a thin veneer of civil society is a fact of daily life for twenty-first-century Guatemalans, from field laborers to the president of the country. Crisis of Governance in Maya Guatemala explores the causes and consequences of governmental failure by focusing on life in two K’iche’ Maya communities in the country’s western highlands. The contributors to this volume, who lived among the villagers for some time, include both undergraduate students and distinguished scholars. They describe the ways Mayas struggle to survive and make sense of their lives, both within their communities and in relation to the politico-economic institutions of the nation and the world. Since Guatemala’s thirty-six-year civil war ended in 1996, the state has been dysfunctional, the country’s economy precarious, and physical safety uncertain. The intrusion of Mexican cartels led the U.S. State Department to declare Guatemala “the epicenter of the drug threat” in Central America. Rapid cultural change, weak state governance, organized crime, pervasive corruption, and ethnic exclusion provide the backdrop for the studies in this volume. Seven nuanced ethnographies collected here reveal the complexities of indigenous life and describe physical and cultural conflicts within and between villages, between insiders and outsiders, and between local and federal governments. Many of these essays point to a tragic irony:the communities seem largely forgotten by the government until the state seeks to capture their resources—timber, minerals, votes. Other chapters portray villages responding to criminal activity through lynch mobs and by labeling nonconformist youth as gang members. In focusing on the internal dynamics of poor, marginal communities in Guatemala, this book explores the realities of life for indigenous people on all continents who are faced with the social changes brought about by war and globalization.
Author: James Cockayne
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136643125
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
Peace operations are increasingly on the front line in the international community’s fight against organized crime; this book explores how, in some cases, peace operations and organized crime are clear enemies, while in others, they may become tacit allies. The threat posed by organized crime to international and human security has become a matter of considerable strategic concern for national and international decision-makers, so it is somewhat surprising how little thought has been devoted to addressing the complex relationship between organized crime and peace operations. This volume addresses this gap, questioning the emerging orthodoxy that portrays organized crime as an external threat to the liberal peace championed by western and allied states and delivered through peace operations. Based upon a series of case studies it concludes that organized crime is both a potential enemy and a potential ally of peace operations, and it argues for the need to distinguish between strategies to contain organized crime and strategies to transform the political economies in which it flourishes. The editors argue for the development of intelligent, transnational, and transitional law enforcement that can make the most of organized crime as a potential ally for transforming political economies, while at the same time containing the threat it presents as an enemy to building effective and responsible states. The book will be of great interest to students of peacebuilding, peace and conflict studies, organised crime, Security Studies and IR in general.
Author: Sandra Botero
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009103415
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 363
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Book Description
Latin America was one of the earliest and most enthusiastic adopters of what has come to be known as the judicialization of politics - the use of law and legal institutions as tools of social contestation to curb the abuse of power in government, resolve policy disputes, and enforce and expand civil, political, and socio-economic rights. Almost forty years into this experiment, The Limits of Judicialization brings together a cross-disciplinary group of scholars to assess the role that law and courts play in Latin American politics. Featuring studies of hot-button topics including abortion, state violence, judicial corruption, and corruption prosecutions, this volume argues that the institutional and cultural changes that empowered courts, what the editors call the 'judicialization superstructure,' often fall short of the promise of greater accountability and rights protection. Illustrative and expansive, this volume offers a truly interdisciplinary analysis of the limits of judicialized politics.
Author: Deborah J. Yashar
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316832635
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 436
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Book Description
Why has violence spiked in Latin America's contemporary democracies? What explains its temporal and spatial variation? Analyzing the region's uneven homicide levels, this book maps out a theoretical agenda focusing on three intersecting factors: the changing geography of transnational illicit political economies; the varied capacity and complicity of state institutions tasked with providing law and order; and organizational competition to control illicit territorial enclaves. These three factors inform the emergence of 'homicidal ecologies' (subnational regions most susceptible to violence) in Latin America. After focusing on the contemporary causes of homicidal violence, the book analyzes the comparative historical origins of weak and complicit public security forces and the rare moments in which successful institutional reform takes place. Regional trends in Latin America are evaluated, followed by original case studies of Central America, which claims among the highest homicide rates in the world.
Author: Maria Cristina Garcia
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469669978
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 254
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Book Description
Natural disasters and the dire effects of climate change cause massive population displacements and lead to some of the most intractable political and humanitarian challenges seen today. Yet, as Maria Cristina Garcia observes in this critical history of U.S. policy on migration in the Global South, there is actually no such thing as a "climate refugee" under current U.S. law. Most initiatives intended to assist those who must migrate are flawed and ineffective from inception because they are derived from outmoded policies. In a world of climate change, U.S. refugee policy simply does not work. Garcia focuses on Central America and the Caribbean, where natural disasters have repeatedly worsened poverty, inequality, and domestic and international political tensions. She explains that the creation of better U.S. policy for those escaping disasters is severely limited by the 1980 Refugee Act, which continues to be applied almost exclusively for reasons of persecution directly related to politics, race, religion, and identity. Garcia contends that the United States must transform its outdated migration policies to address today's realities. Climate change and natural disasters are here to stay, and much of the human devastation left in their wake is essentially a policy choice.
Author: Thomas Risse
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107028930
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 373
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Book Description
This book offers a unique combination of quantitative and qualitative research arguing for the persistent power of human rights norms.
Author: Jody Miller
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351495240
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 599
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Book Description
"This volume investigates the significant role qualitative research plays in expanding and refining our understandings of crime and justice. It features seventeen original essays that discuss the relationship between methodology and theory. The result is a theoretically engaged volume that explores the approaches of qualitative scholars in the collection and treatment of data in criminological scholarship.Among the key issues addressed in the volume are methodological rigor in qualitative research; movement between method, theory building, theoretical refinement and expansion; diversity of qualitative methodologies, from classic field research to contemporary innovations; and considerations of the future of qualitative criminological research.Qualitative research use has expanded rapidly in the last twenty years. This latest volume of Advances in Criminological Theory presents a cogent appraisal of qualitative criminology and the ways in which rigorous qualitative research contributes to theorizing about crime and justice."
Author: Janet P. Stamatel
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1440860602
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 374
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Book Description
A thorough and timely investigation of both well-established and emerging crime and punishment issues, this book provides readers with compelling examples of how different countries around the world confront these problems. This book offers a detailed look at 10 "hot topics" in crime and punishment that are shared by many countries. Some of these topics are well-established within the field of criminology, such as patterns of criminal behavior, juvenile delinquency, drug trafficking, policing, and punishment; others are emerging topics that have not been well studied across a variety of countries, such as violence against women, hate crimes, and gun control. Within each topic, the book explores how eight countries experience the issue, highlighting similarities across different places as well as unique treatments of the problem. The chapter on punishment addresses the widespread use of incarceration as criminal punishment but also considers different philosophies with respect to the purpose of incarceration and whether or not this strategy is effective in the face of large-scale criminal events, such as mass atrocities. The country narratives provide historical context for understanding the particular crime or punishment issue, current trends, and relevant statistical data for describing the extent of the issue and changes over time, in addition to contemporary examples of the issue.
