New Frontiers in the Study of Crime and Violence

Session Submission Type: Virtual Full Paper Panel

Session Description

This panel will bring together diverse perspectives on the politics of crime and violence in Africa, Latin America, and the United States. Despite the expansion of democracy in recent decades, crime and violence have continued to grow in many parts of the world. This trend takes many forms and is perpetrated by both state and non-state actors, including victims of crime. Scholars of crime and violence have made contributions to our understanding of governance, corruption, democracy, and civil war in political science. This panel will draw on comparative perspectives to interrogate why crime and violence manifest in different ways, how state and nonstate actors interact, and the varied consequences of crime and violence for everyday political life.

Each of the papers in this panel draws on contrasting empirical and methodological approaches to challenge the distinction conventionally drawn between state-sponsored and non-state sponsored violence. Kloppe-Santamaría highlights the participation of state actors in the organization of lynching as well as the interactions between police officers and citizens taking place before, during, and after the occurrence of lynchings. Using the case of post-revolutionary Mexico and drawing comparisons to the United States, Kloppe-Santamaría shows that lynchings cannot be simply defined in opposition to the state. Tapscott also questions whether the relationship between state actors and vigilantes is necessarily zero-sum, introducing the concept of security assemblages to do so. Using a mixed-methods nested study of vigilantes in Uganda, Tapscott finds that vigilantes are more common where other authorities are present, and are more helpful when other authorities are also more helpful. Considered together, these two studies call our attention to places where state and non-state actors do not compete in a zero-sum game for a monopoly over violence. Taking a step back to consider both violent and nonviolent collaboration between actors, Chriswell centers on civil society actors and asks under what circumstances citizens partner with the state to deal with the local presence of organized crime and when they organize around the state instead. Using data from fieldwork and an original survey in Mexico, Chriswell shows that the number of criminal groups, level of state autonomy, and pre-existing civil society organization help to explain divergent strategies of citizen contestation. Moncada further highlights the analytic utility of placing the United States in comparative perspective with a comparative analysis of variation in state responses to vigilante groups within and across major global cities. The project conceptualizes and theorizes the different ways in which urban political authorities have responded to vigilantes in New York City in the 1960s and present-day Mexico City (Mexico) and Cape Town (South Africa). The study tests hypotheses derived from the literatures on armed politics, the political economy of development, and the politics of crime.

To conclude, two Discussants will offer their comments: Professor Angélica Durán-Martínez and Professor Nicholas Rush Smith have both expanded the field’s understanding of crime and policing. The Chair for the panel will be Professor Abby Córdova, whose research has contributed to our understanding of how crime, violence, and economic marginalization affect democracy. As a whole, the papers on this panel leverage new research across a wide range of settings to provide nuanced perspectives on the persistence, meanings and consequences of continued crime and violence. And they do so while linking to and building on broader lines of research in the discipline, including on democracy, order, and governance.

Sub Unit

• Division 12: Comparative Politics of Developing Countries

Individual Presentations

• Vigilantes and State Control of Violence: A Security Assemblages Approach - Rebecca Tapscott

• Rethinking Lynching and the State: Evidence from Post-Revolutionary Mexico - Gema Santamaria, Loyola University Chicago

• The Effects of Criminal Organization Presence on Citizen-State Interactions - Kaitlyn Chriswell, Harvard University

• State Responses to Vigilante Groups: A Comparative Urban Analysis - Eduardo Moncada, Barnard College, Columbia University

Chair

• Abby B. Cordova University of Notre Dame

Discussants

• Angelica Duran-Martinez University of Massachusetts, Lowell

• Nicholas Rush Smith CUNY-City College