Violent Democracies in Latin America

Violent Democracies in Latin America PDF Author: Enrique Desmond Arias
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822392038
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
Despite recent political movements to establish democratic rule in Latin American countries, much of the region still suffers from pervasive violence. From vigilantism, to human rights violations, to police corruption, violence persists. It is perpetrated by state-sanctioned armies, guerillas, gangs, drug traffickers, and local community groups seeking self-protection. The everyday presence of violence contrasts starkly with governmental efforts to extend civil, political, and legal rights to all citizens, and it is invoked as evidence of the failure of Latin American countries to achieve true democracy. The contributors to this collection take the more nuanced view that violence is not a social aberration or the result of institutional failure; instead, it is intimately linked to the institutions and policies of economic liberalization and democratization. The contributors—anthropologists, political scientists, sociologists, and historians—explore how individuals and institutions in Latin American democracies, from the rural regions of Colombia and the Dominican Republic to the urban centers of Brazil and Mexico, use violence to impose and contest notions of order, rights, citizenship, and justice. They describe the lived realities of citizens and reveal the historical foundations of the violence that Latin America suffers today. One contributor examines the tightly woven relationship between violent individuals and state officials in Colombia, while another contextualizes violence in Rio de Janeiro within the transnational political economy of drug trafficking. By advancing the discussion of democratic Latin American regimes beyond the usual binary of success and failure, this collection suggests more sophisticated ways of understanding the challenges posed by violence, and of developing new frameworks for guaranteeing human rights in Latin America. Contributors: Enrique Desmond Arias, Javier Auyero, Lilian Bobea, Diane E. Davis, Robert Gay, Daniel M. Goldstein, Mary Roldán, Todd Landman, Ruth Stanley, María Clemencia Ramírez

Violent Democracies in Latin America

Violent Democracies in Latin America PDF Author: Enrique Desmond Arias
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822392038
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 335

Get Book Here

Book Description
Despite recent political movements to establish democratic rule in Latin American countries, much of the region still suffers from pervasive violence. From vigilantism, to human rights violations, to police corruption, violence persists. It is perpetrated by state-sanctioned armies, guerillas, gangs, drug traffickers, and local community groups seeking self-protection. The everyday presence of violence contrasts starkly with governmental efforts to extend civil, political, and legal rights to all citizens, and it is invoked as evidence of the failure of Latin American countries to achieve true democracy. The contributors to this collection take the more nuanced view that violence is not a social aberration or the result of institutional failure; instead, it is intimately linked to the institutions and policies of economic liberalization and democratization. The contributors—anthropologists, political scientists, sociologists, and historians—explore how individuals and institutions in Latin American democracies, from the rural regions of Colombia and the Dominican Republic to the urban centers of Brazil and Mexico, use violence to impose and contest notions of order, rights, citizenship, and justice. They describe the lived realities of citizens and reveal the historical foundations of the violence that Latin America suffers today. One contributor examines the tightly woven relationship between violent individuals and state officials in Colombia, while another contextualizes violence in Rio de Janeiro within the transnational political economy of drug trafficking. By advancing the discussion of democratic Latin American regimes beyond the usual binary of success and failure, this collection suggests more sophisticated ways of understanding the challenges posed by violence, and of developing new frameworks for guaranteeing human rights in Latin America. Contributors: Enrique Desmond Arias, Javier Auyero, Lilian Bobea, Diane E. Davis, Robert Gay, Daniel M. Goldstein, Mary Roldán, Todd Landman, Ruth Stanley, María Clemencia Ramírez

Crime and Violence in Latin America

Crime and Violence in Latin America PDF Author: H. Hugo Frühling
Publisher: Woodrow Wilson Center Press
ISBN: 9780801873843
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Offers timely discussion by attorneys, government officials, policy analysts, and academics from the United States and Latin America of the responses of the state, civil society, and the international community to threats of violence and crime.

Authoritarian Police in Democracy

Authoritarian Police in Democracy PDF Author: Yanilda María González
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108900380
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 375

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Book Description
In countries around the world, from the United States to the Philippines to Chile, police forces are at the center of social unrest and debates about democracy and rule of law. This book examines the persistence of authoritarian policing in Latin America to explain why police violence and malfeasance remain pervasive decades after democratization. It also examines the conditions under which reform can occur. Drawing on rich comparative analysis and evidence from Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia, the book opens up the 'black box' of police bureaucracies to show how police forces exert power and cultivate relationships with politicians, as well as how social inequality impedes change. González shows that authoritarian policing persists not in spite of democracy but in part because of democratic processes and public demand. When societal preferences over the distribution of security and coercion are fragmented along existing social cleavages, politicians possess few incentives to enact reform.

Democracies and Dictatorships in Latin America

Democracies and Dictatorships in Latin America PDF Author: Scott Mainwaring
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107433630
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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Book Description
This book presents a new theory for why political regimes emerge, and why they subsequently survive or break down. It then analyzes the emergence, survival and fall of democracies and dictatorships in Latin America since 1900. Scott Mainwaring and Aníbal Pérez-Liñán argue for a theoretical approach situated between long-term structural and cultural explanations and short-term explanations that look at the decisions of specific leaders. They focus on the political preferences of powerful actors - the degree to which they embrace democracy as an intrinsically desirable end and their policy radicalism - to explain regime outcomes. They also demonstrate that transnational forces and influences are crucial to understand regional waves of democratization. Based on extensive research into the political histories of all twenty Latin American countries, this book offers the first extended analysis of regime emergence, survival and failure for all of Latin America over a long period of time.

Drugs & Democracy in Rio de Janeiro

Drugs & Democracy in Rio de Janeiro PDF Author: Enrique Desmond Arias
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807830607
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
Taking an ethnographic approach to understanding urban violence, Enrique Desmond Arias examines the ongoing problems of crime and police corruption that have led to widespread misery and human rights violations in many of Latin America's new democracies.

Criminal Enterprises and Governance in Latin America and the Caribbean

Criminal Enterprises and Governance in Latin America and the Caribbean PDF Author: Enrique Desmond Arias
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108107982
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
This book examines security in three cities that suffer from chronic violence: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Medellin, Colombia; and Kingston, Jamaica. In each, democratic states contend with subnational armed groups that dominate territory and play important roles in politics even as they contribute to fear and insecurity. Through a nested three-city, six-neighborhood analysis of the role of criminal groups in governance, this research provides a deep understanding of the impact of crime on political experience. Neighborhoods controlled by different types of armed actors, operating in the same institutional context, build alliances with state officials and participate in political life through the structures created by these armed actors. The data demonstrates the effects criminal dominance can have on security, civil society, elections, and policymaking. Far from reflecting a breakdown of order, varying types of criminal groups generate different local lived political experiences.

The Inclusionary Turn in Latin American Democracies

The Inclusionary Turn in Latin American Democracies PDF Author: Diana Kapiszewski
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110890159X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 587

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Book Description
Latin American states took dramatic steps toward greater inclusion during the late twentieth and early twenty-first Centuries. Bringing together an accomplished group of scholars, this volume examines this shift by introducing three dimensions of inclusion: official recognition of historically excluded groups, access to policymaking, and resource redistribution. Tracing the movement along these dimensions since the 1990s, the editors argue that the endurance of democratic politics, combined with longstanding social inequalities, create the impetus for inclusionary reforms. Diverse chapters explore how factors such as the role of partisanship and electoral clientelism, constitutional design, state capacity, social protest, populism, commodity rents, international diffusion, and historical legacies encouraged or inhibited inclusionary reform during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Featuring original empirical evidence and a strong theoretical framework, the book considers cross-national variation, delves into the surprising paradoxes of inclusion, and identifies the obstacles hindering further fundamental change.

Political Movements and Violence in Central America

Political Movements and Violence in Central America PDF Author: Charles D. Brockett
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 052184083X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 407

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Book Description
This book offers an indepth analysis of the confrontation between popular movements and repressive regimes in Central America for the three decades beginning in 1960, particularly in El Salvador and Guatemala. It examines both urban and rural groups as well as both nonviolent social movements and revolutionary movements. It studies the impact of state violence on contentious political movements as well as defends the political process model for studying such movements.

Violent Peace

Violent Peace PDF Author: David R. Mares
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231111878
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
David R. Mares argues that the key factors influencing political leaders in all types of polities are the costs to their constituencies of using force and whether the leader can survive their displeasure if the costs exceed what they are willing to pay. Violent Peace proposes a conceptual scheme for analyzing militarized conflict and supports this framework with evidence from the history of Latin America.

The Politics of Violence in Latin America

The Politics of Violence in Latin America PDF Author: Pablo Policzer
Publisher: Latin American and Caribbean S
ISBN: 9781552389065
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
Latin America is one of the most violent regions in the world. It has suffered waves of repressive authoritarian rule, organized armed insurgency and civil war, violent protest, and ballooning rates of criminal violence. But is violence hard wired into Latin America? This is a critical reassessment of the ways in which violence in Latin America is addressed and understood. Previous approaches have relied on structural perspectives, attributing the problem of violence to Latin America's colonial past or its conflictual contemporary politics. Bringing together scholars and practitioners, this volume argues that violence is often rooted more in contingent outcomes than in deeply embedded structures. Addressing topics ranging from the root sources of violence in Haiti to kidnapping in Colombia, from the role of property rights in patterns of violence to the challenges of peacebuilding, The Politics of Violence in Latin America is an essential step towards understanding the causes and contexts of violence-and changing the mechanisms that produce it.