Are Neoliberal Reforms Responsible for High Violence in Latin America?: Globalization, Market Orientation, and Homicide, 1970-2022

• In Event: International and Comparative Perspectives on Punishment, Social Control, and Crime

Abstract

Latin America suffers the highest regional interpersonal violence rate in the world, with many of its cities and nations at the top of annual global lists of homicide rates. Research provides evidence of region-specific structural covariates of national homicide rates in Latin America like state legitimacy, monetary remittances, get tough anti-cartel policies like mano dura and similar, firearm availability, and illicit markets controlled by cartels. A stylized fact in the region is also that neoliberal market reforms over the last several decades have been a major cause of high violence rates, especially due to their impact on human development, inequality, commodification of labor, state capacity, and privatization of social services. Despite the popularity of this explanation, there appear to be no direct tests of the association at the national level. In this study we examined the effects of internal market orientation and of globalization on national violence rates in Latin America. We employed panel data on 24-28 nations between 1970 and 2022. We obtained homicide data from the World Health Organization’s Mortality Database, and measures of internal market orientation from the Fraser Institute and of economic globalization from the KOF Swiss Economic Institute. To consider other forms of globalization we also obtained measures from the latter of political globalization and social globalization. Controlling for a wide range of general and region-specific structural covariates of homicide, we estimated effects employing fixed effects models. Our results do not support the hypothesis that either internal market orientation or globalization are positively associated with homicide rates in Latin American nations during this period.

Authors

• William Alex Pridemore, University of Georgia

• Guillermo Jesús Escaño, Villanova Univserity

• Anthony Ferreyra, University of Georgia