The Political Underpinnings of Informal Institutions of Order: Evidence from Urban Latin America and South Africa

• In Event: Civil Society, Citizenship, and Politics in Contexts of Crime and Violence

Abstract

Why do citizens and communities take the law into their own hands? Throughout Latin America and other parts of the developing world, there appears to be a growing recourse among citizens and elements of civil society to varied forms of vigilantism as a way to combat crime, violence, and insecurity. The conventional wisdom explains vigilantism as the byproduct of an absent or low-capacity state unable to establish order. I argue that while a limited degree of state capacity is an important background condition, understanding the more proximate drivers of vigilantism requires greater attention to the broader political and social contexts in which individual acts of vigilantism are conceived, executed, and interpreted. In this paper I thus examine the political and social underpinnings of vigilantism through a comparative analysis of vigilantism across major cities in Latin America and South Africa. More broadly, the study harnesses new research on vigilantism in these settings to shed light on the actors, interests and mechanisms that shape informal political institutions of order.

Author

• Eduardo Moncada, Barnard College-Columbia University