Establishing Criminal Governance in New Territories

• In Event: Development, Conflict & Cooperation in the Global South: Bayesian Case Studies

Abstract

Over the past two decades, powerful criminal organizations (COs) in Latin America have begun expanding their presence beyond their strongholds and into new territories. Scholars argue that COs are unable to operate without some degree of state protection. Yet, when COs expand to territories where they have never operated, they often do not count with the political protection they have successfully established in their historical strongholds. How, then, are COs able to establish their presence and operations in new territories and what implications does this have on local politics? This study offers a theory of state capture by COs that outlines the key state actors that COs seek to capture in new territories (politicians, high-level civil servants, and low-level civil servants) and the logic behind the patterns of state capture. To test the theory, the study looks at Mexico, where powerful COs have dramatically expanded their presence since 2007, and provides qualitative case studies of three municipalities that had never had CO presence but experienced CO intrusion for the first time in 2008. The case studies uncover how COs were able to successfully acquire state protection in these municipalities. Finally, it analyzes the evidence from the case studies using explicit Bayesian process tracing to evaluate the proposed theory vis-à-vis alternative existing explanations.

Author

• Marco Alcocer, University of California, San Diego