Colonialism, State-building, and the Politics of Homicide in America

• In Event: Justice and Injustice: Political Science Perspectives on Crime and Punishment Mini-Conference: The Political Origins of State Violence

Abstract

The continent of the Americas has roughly fourteen percent of the world’s population, yet nearly
onethird
of the world’s intentional homicides. What explains this? Most analyses focus on social
conditions, such as inequality, the drug trade, and the high number of firearms, or political
structures, such as instability and civil conflict. These analyses, however, rarely consider
countries north of the Mexican border, despite the fact that the United States and Canada both
have rates of murder that are substantially higher than other rich, developed countries, and some
Latin American countries, such as Chile, have rates of lethal violence that are lower than that of
the United States. None, however, enjoy the kind of security from murder that is experienced in
most of the democratized world.
This paper is part of a larger project that explores the political origins of lethal violence in the
Americas. Drawing on my previous work, I offer a framework for understanding the
exceptionally high rates of both state violence and street violence in the Americas, rooted in its
history of colonialism and slavery, which focuses on fragmented institutions with low levels of
legitimacy and accountability, and racialized inequality in statebuilding.
The aim in this paper is a threefold mapping project. First, identification of intentional homicide
across the Americas by region to the finest degree possible. Second, identification of levels of
slavery and other forms of legal servitude, and of indigenous political incorporation across the
Americas. And finally, a comprehensive accounting of state institutions focusing on political
accountability and empowerment, including standard constitutional features such as federalism
and presidentialism, but also ontheground
realities of the capacity of local communities to hold
the state accountable for levels of violence. This paper is the first major buildingblock
in the
larger project that seeks to understand why the Americas have such high levels of lethal violence
at the individual and state levels.

Author

• Lisa L. Miller, Rutgers University, New Brunswick