The Politics of Confronting Criminal Violence

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

During the last decade, political scientists have assimilated research on criminal actors, criminal violence, and illicit trafficking into the discipline, linking to long-standing work on civil wars, corruption, and governance. Yet, much of this work primarily focuses on criminal violence rather than comprehensively engaging with the political processes that encourage or dissuade violent and nonviolent criminal activity. Even evaluating patterns of criminal violence requires an understanding of the government incentives and institutional constraints for countering criminal actors. Panel participants study different facets of the political relationship between government, civil society, and criminal actors, using original data to explore the complexities of confronting criminal violence and its antecedents at the local and nationals. Each paper compares these relationships across cities, states, or organizations. This panel will promote a fruitful discussion on government-criminal interactions with panelists and discussants focusing on both 1.) strategies for addressing criminal violence and 2.) criminal actors’ responses to shifting environments.

The first two papers focus on strategies for controlling criminal activity. Durán-Martínez addresses national- and local-level truces with criminal actors using evidence gathered from several cities in Latin America; she evaluates the difficulty of scaling peace negotiations from the local to the national level or the reverse. Pinson examines when governments allow criminal actors to traffic illicit small arms; she tests her theory on the distributional consequences of illicit markets with case comparisons within the Caribbean and Southeast Europe.

The second two papers analyze how criminal actors react to shifts in subnational environments. Farfán Méndez and Pulido analyze how a mayoral leave of absence to run for higher office affects the amount of criminal violence; they leverage municipal-level analysis in five Mexican states. Petrich considers how a terrorist organization’s engagement in criminal activity alters its lifespan, contrasting the trajectories of FARC-EP and M19 after each group’s decision to ally with or remain independent from drug trafficking organizations in Colombia.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 11: Comparative Politics

Individual Presentations

• Scaling Up and Down Truces and Negotiations with Criminal Actors - Angelica Duran-Martinez, University of Massachusetts, Lowell

• Bribes, Bullets and Borders? Why States Allow Illicit Small Arms Trafficking - Lauren E. Pinson, Yale University

• Sit Tight: Political Lacunas and Violence in Mexican Municipalities - Cecilia Farfan Mendez, University of California, San Diego; Amalia Pulido, University of North Texas

• Los Malditos Robin Hood: How Cocaine Altered the Trajectories of FARC and M19 - Katharine Petrich, American University

Chair

• Dorothy Kronick University of Pennsylvania

Discussants

• Omar Garcia Ponce University of California, Davis

• Kendra L. Koivu University of New Mexico