Democracy and Security in Latin America: State Capacity and Governance under Stress

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 is divided in two sections:

• Part 1 focuses on the challenges to governance and key institutions such as police, courts, armed forces. and the prison system.
• Part 2 features country case studies that illustrate particularly important security challenges and various means by which the state has confronted them.

Democracy and Security in Latin America should appeal not only to those seeking to learn more about the capacity of the democratic state in Latin America to effectively provide public security in times of stress, but to all those curious about the reality that a democracy must have security to function.

Gabriel Marcella is Distinguished Fellow and former Director of the Americas Studies at the U.S. Army War College. He served as International Affairs Advisor to the Commander-in-Chief at the U.S. Southern Command, and consultant to the Departments of State and Defense on Latin American security. He has written extensively on Latin American security and U.S. policy, teaching strategy, and the Washington interagency process.

Orlando J. Pérez is Dean of the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Professor of Political Science at the University of North Texas at Dallas. His teaching and research interests include comparative politics, Latin American politics, U.S.-Latin American relations, civil-military relations, public opinion, and empirical democratic theory. As a consultant, he has worked on public opinion surveys, democratization, civil-military relations, and anti-corruption issues for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the UN Development Program. He is the author of Civil-Military Relations in Post-Conflict Societies: Transforming the Role of the Military in Central America (Routledge, 2017); Political Culture in Panama: Democracy after Invasion (2011), and Co-editor (with Richard Millett and Jennifer Holmes) of Latin American Democracy: Emerging Reality or Endangered Species? (Routledge, 2015). He received a BA in political science from Florida International University and an MA and PhD in political science from the University of Pittsburgh.

Brian Fonseca is a Director of the Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy at Florida International University’s (FIU) Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations. Brian’s technical expertise is in U.S. National Security and Foreign Policy. He also serves as a Cybersecurity Policy Fellow at the D.C.-based think tank New America and Chair of the Americas Linkage Committee at the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce. His recent publications include an edited volume with Eduardo A. Gamarra titled Culture and National Security in the Americas (2017) and is coauthor of The New US Security Agenda: Trends and Emerging Threats (2017). His analysis has been featured in local and national media and he serves as the on-air Political Analyst for South Florida’s WSVN-Fox News. From 1997 to 2004, he served in the U.S. Marine Corps and facilitated the training of foreign military forces in both hostile theaters and during peacetime operations.