Making Peace in Drug Wars: Crackdowns and Cartels in Latin America (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics) - Hardcover

Lessing, Benjamin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1107199638 ISBN 13: 9781107199637

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2017

Synopsis

Over the past thirty years, a new form of conflict has ravaged Latin America's largest countries, with well-armed drug cartels fighting not only one another but the state itself. In Colombia, Mexico, and Brazil, leaders cracked down on cartels in hopes of restoring the rule of law and the state's monopoly on force. Instead, cartels fought back - with bullets and bribes - driving spirals of violence and corruption that make mockeries of leaders' state-building aims. Fortunately, some policy reforms quickly curtailed cartel-state conflict, but they proved tragically difficult to sustain. Why do cartels fight states, if not to topple or secede from them? Why do some state crackdowns trigger and exacerbate cartel-state conflict, while others curb it? This study argues that brute-force repression generates incentives for cartels to fight back, while policies that condition repression on cartel violence can effectively deter cartel-state conflict. The politics of drug war, however, make conditional policies all too fragile.

About this title

About the Author

Benjamin Lessing studies criminal conflict – organized armed violence involving non-state actors who do not seek formal state power. Prior to beginning graduate work at University of California, Berkeley in 2005, Lessing lived in Rio de Janeiro for five years, conducting field research on arms trafficking in Latin America and the Caribbean for international organizations including Amnesty International, Oxfam, and Viva Rio, Brazil's largest NGO. He was a Fulbright Grantee in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. His Ph.D. dissertation, the basis of Making Peace in Drug Wars, was awarded the 2012 UNODC/INEGI Best Dissertation Prize. He has received awards from the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, and the Smith Richardson Foundation. He is a contributor at The Monkey Cage, the Brookings Institution, the Inter-American Dialogue, among others.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1107199638
• ISBN 13: 9781107199637
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 354