Content area
Full Text
Criminal Enterprises and Governance in Latin America and the Caribbean. By Arias Enrique Desmond. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. 301p. $99.99 cloth.
Cities, Business, and the Politics of Urban Violence in Latin America. By Moncada Eduardo. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016. 248p. $65.00 cloth.
During one of my interviews with a Brazilian security official about the state’s battle against a prominent criminal organization, he observed that “there’s no such thing as the ‘parallel state’; it’s not parallel at all because sooner or later they intersect.” A growing literature, particularly in the Latin American context, examines the causes and consequences of crime and violence, and a new set of scholars has pushed this field of study forward by exploring the role of armed criminal organizations as political actors. Yet this literature largely remains at the margins of the broader discipline, with little conversation between scholars studying crime and violence and those studying other political processes, such as elections, policymaking, state capacity, and state-society relations. As the security official’s observation suggests, however, there is much to be unearthed regarding the “intersections” of criminal actors and the state, and the implications of these linkages for political outcomes.
Scholars often reference Latin America’s “twin transitions” during the 1980s, a period characterized by two simultaneous and deeply intertwined transformations toward democratic rule and market economies governed by neoliberal principles. But Latin American countries could be said to have undergone a third transition that also shaped the development of democratic practices and state institutions. Dramatic shifts in the nature of crime and violence began during the early democratic period and rendered Latin America the most violent region in the world. In recent decades, Latin America’s democracies have had to contend with a range of security problems that have posed considerable challenges to governability, stability, and the rule of law. From organized criminal groups and transnational drug trafficking to spikes in street crime and homicide rates, or simply a sharp rise in fear of crime, it is a phenomenon from which few, if any, countries have been immune. Accordingly, in Criminal Enterprises and Governance in Latin America and the Caribbean and in Cities, Business, and the Politics of Urban Violence in Latin America, Enrique Desmond Arias and Eduardo Moncada, respectively,...