Comparative Perspectives on Responses to Crime and Insecurity

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Across the developing world citizens respond to crime and insecurity in contrasting ways. In some cases citizens channel their concerns through formal political institutions, such as elections. But citizens also organize and enact varied forms of extra-legal violence. Through lynchings and vigilantism, citizens directly target alleged criminals using a diverse repertoire of practices. Such responses undermine the rule of law, but also represent opportunities for political and economic actors – as well as everyday citizens – to build power, advance interests, and even safeguard illicit rents. Yet, scholars of the politics of crime and violence have only recently begun to conceptualize and theorize societal responses to crime and insecurity and their broader political consequences.

What explains variation in the strategies and practices that citizens use in their responses to crime and insecurity? How do pre-existing institutions condition the nature and efficacy of citizens’ extra-legal responses? What does the use of vigilantism imply for the conventional distinction that scholars draw between victims and criminals? This panel tackles these and related questions by bringing together a diverse group of scholars to present new research on societal responses to crime and insecurity in parts of Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America. Panelists will present papers that illustrate the strengths and limitations of a range of qualitative and quantitative methodologies for studying this phenomenon.

Bateson opens the panel by upending the conventional view that state absence is the proximate cause of vigilantism. Using qualitative and quantitative evidence from Guatemala, Bateson develops a relational analysis that shows how the state affects processes of vigilantism and, in turn, how vigilantism reshapes the state’s core institutional features. Shifting to Southeast Asia, Jaffrey harnesses survey data and case studies from Indonesia to analyze the conditions under which communities turn to extra-legal violence. Jaffrey finds that the probability of impunity for engaging in public violence is a central mechanism that facilitates violent societal responses to crime. Tapscott’s study further refines our understanding of relations between states and vigilantes. Drawing on qualitative data from extended fieldwork in Uganda as well as original survey data, Tapscott finds that far from supplanting the state, vigilantes instead fulfill critical roles as auxiliary security providers in complex governing arrangements. Moncada closes the panel by analyzing why victims of criminal extortion resist their victimization in sharply contrasting ways, including quiet everyday resistance, periodic acts of violence in tandem with the state, and armed collective violence targeting both criminal and state actors. Using data from fieldwork in Colombia, El Salvador and Mexico, Moncada shows that the intersection between the organizational cohesion of victims and whether the police are autonomous from criminal actors helps to account for variation in the strategies of resistance they pursue.

The panel will conclude with comments and feedback from two Discussants: Professor William Reno and Professor Guillermo Trejo, each of whom has contributed to our knowledge of the politics of conflict, crime and order in the developing world. The panel will be Chaired by Professor Deborah Avant, whose research has contributed to our understanding of how non-state actors influence patterns of violence and governance. Taken together, the papers on this panel draw on original research in diverse settings using equally varied methodologies to analyze the origins, dynamics and consequences of societal responses to crime and insecurity.

Sub Unit

• Division 12: Comparative Politics of Developing Countries

Cosponsor

• Division 21: Conflict Processes

Individual Presentations

• Vigilantism and the State - Regina A. Bateson, University of Ottawa

• Risk in Rampage: How Communities Negotiate Impunity for Vigilante Violence - Sana Jaffrey, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

• Vigilantes and the State: Evidence of a Security Assemblage in Uganda - Rebecca Tapscott

• Resisting Extortion: A Comparative Perspective from Latin America - Eduardo Moncada, Barnard College, Columbia University

Chair

• Eduardo Moncada Barnard College, Columbia University

Discussants

• William Reno Northwestern University

• Guillermo Trejo University of Notre Dame