This chapter develops the theoretical explanation of why transitional justice processes and the reckoning of a repressive history can prevent the outbreak of large-scale criminal violence in new democracies. It first discusses a new conception of organized crime where complicit state specialists in violence are central players in illicit economies and in the production of large-scale criminal violence. It suggests that these engagements often emerge in autocracies, where autocrats allow military and police forces to capitalize on their repressive power to kill political dissidents and on their de facto impunity to control the criminal underworld. If left unaccountable, authoritarian specialists in violence can become leading actors in the production of criminal violence in democracy by defecting to fight turf wars or defending organized criminal groups from positions of power or spearheading Wars on Drugs, Gangs, or Crime. It claims that when new democratic elites expose and sanction authoritarian specialists in violence through robust truth commissions and criminal trials, they unleash a powerful accountability shock that breaks state impunity and deters security forces from using state coercive power to control illicit economies through lethal force. Failure to reckon with a repressive history, and the survival of the violent state, sets new democracies on trajectories of power abuse and criminal wars.

This chapter uses the Latin American case studies presented in the previous chapters to identify general cross-national patterns and historically ground the theory and statistical findings about transitional justice’s (TJ) violence prevention effect. It first shows that during the Cold War all six countries developed counterinsurgent states with striking similarities under autocracy. In all cases, authoritarian specialists in violence capitalized on their power to kill with impunity to dominate the criminal underworld. It then discusses how TJ was a fork in the road. The adoption of robust TJ processes, combining strong truth commissions and criminal prosecution of perpetrators, allowed Argentina, Peru, and Guatemala to dismantle counterinsurgent states, preventing criminal wars and reducing violence and gross human rights violations. But the persistence of state impunity and the survival of the counterinsurgent state led to Wars on Drugs or Gangs or Crime and to turf wars that resulted in mass atrocities in Mexico, El Salvador, and Brazil. The final section discusses how in cases with robust TJ the institutionalization of accountability policies can contribute to the development of self-sustaining peaceful democracies, and how a reformulated TJ toolkit can serve democracies with persistent impunity, trapped in deadly criminal wars, enter into paths of peaceful reconstruction.

This chapter analyzes two countries where criminal economies have thrived in marginalized urban communities, yet only Brazil experiences localized criminal wars while Argentina faces limited violence. The chapter explains how the Brazilian military dictatorship developed a counterinsurgent state with an extensive intelligence and repressive apparatus that allowed its specialists in violence’s involvement in illicit economies. The first democratic government failed to hold authoritarian specialists in violence accountable, and validated a military-era amnesty law, enabling the survival of the counterinsurgent state. Authoritarian security forces adapted counterinsurgency practices to launch wars on crime, sold protection to gangs, or controlled illicit markets, turning Brazil into one of the world’s most violent democracies. The chapter then discusses the development of Argentina’s counterinsurgent state. It analyzes the role of the security apparatus in developing a clandestine carceral system to perpetrate gross human right violations and the participation of authoritarian specialists in violence in illicit markets in dictatorship. After transitioning to democracy, Argentina’s first administration initiated a robust truth commission and the historic trial of the military juntas, unlocking Latin America’s most powerful accountability shock. Multiple truth and justice “boosters” contributed to dismantle the counterinsurgent state, to deflate criminal markets, and to put the country on a path of relative peaceful development.

This chapter explores how, after signing United Nations-sponsored peace agreements to end protracted civil wars, post-authoritarian El Salvador and Guatemala followed different trajectories of peace and violence. It first traces the development of El Salvador’s counterinsurgent state under military rule and its transformation during the civil war. It analyzes how the civil war military establishment, special military forces, and clandestine death squads capitalized on their repressive power to fight guerrillas through brutal force and on de facto impunity to engage in multiple illicit economies. The peace agreement led to an influential truth commission, but an amnesty neutralized it, preserving impunity and the counterinsurgent state. Right- and left-wing governments used counterinsurgent forces to launch Wars on Gangs, and state-gang and inter-gang warfare turned El Salvador into the world’s murder capital. It then discusses the rise of the counterinsurgent state during Guatemala’s civil war and the institutional transformations that empowered the military, elite and paramilitary forces, and death squads to lead a genocidal campaign against the Mayan people while becoming intimately involved in criminal markets. Two truth commissions exposed war atrocities and subsequently a reformed Guatemalan law enforcement, assisted by the International Commission against Impunity, dismantled criminal structures linked to the military establishment, deflating criminal markets, and driving down the murder rate.

This chapter introduces the questions and puzzles that drive the book’s research, outlines the theoretical argument, explains the research design and multimethod approach, and summarizes the main empirical findings. By examining the contrasting experiences of post-authoritarian development in Mexico and Peru, it establishes two paths that Third Wave democracies followed: criminal wars and large-scale criminal violence or relatively peaceful development. Existing explanations focusing on poverty and inequality, state capacity, and history of political instability, predict that Peru would experience significant violence in democracy while Mexico would follow a path of relatively peaceful development. Yet by adopting an ambitious transitional justice (TJ) process to reckon with its repressive history, Peru prevented the outbreak of large-scale criminal violence and criminal wars while Mexico did not. The chapter presents the building blocks of the theoretical explanation. It discusses why we need a new definition of organized crime and large-scale criminal violence that places violent states and authoritarian specialists in violence at the center. It then explains why developing peaceful democracies requires dismantling the violent state and why TJ mechanisms are uniquely suited to this task. It concludes with a discussion of the multimethod strategy for theory-testing and the findings and their implications for the study of peaceful democracies.

This chapter explores why, despite being central players in transnational drug markets, Mexico and Peru’s post-authoritarian trajectories of peace and violence differ. It first examines how the Mexican military developed a powerful counterinsurgent state to fight leftist insurgents and dissidents under one-party rule. Once it succeeded in suppressing rebels through a Dirty War, authoritarian specialists in violence helped transform local traffickers into transnational drug cartels. After democratization, the first administration failed to adopt a transitional justice (TJ) process and subsequent governments deployed the surviving counterinsurgent state to fight a War on Drugs, leading to the proliferation of conflicts that turned Mexico into one of the world’s most violent democracies. Focusing then on Peru, the chapter traces the rise of the counterinsurgent state under military dictatorship, its expansion during the civil war, and its transformation under Alberto Fujimori’s dictatorship. After defeating the rebels, the head of Fujimori’s secret service seized control of transnational drug-trafficking. Following the collapse of dictatorship, the adoption of a robust truth commission and the prosecution of Fujimori’s security apparatus led to the dismantling of the counterinsurgent state, prevented the outbreak of large-scale drug wars, and set Peru on a twenty-year path of relative peace. However, failure to adopt TJ “boosters” opened a new era of violence.

China’s rapid economic development exerts significant political effects. Modernization theory posits, with an optimistic outlook, that sustained economic growth will foster increasing public demands for political liberalization and democratization. Empirical findings presented in this chapter reveal that a majority of Chinese citizens report heightened satisfaction with their civil liberties and political rights following improvements in their overall well-being. Specifically, life satisfaction in the economic sphere demonstrates a positive spillover effect on satisfaction with civic and political rights. Furthermore, life satisfaction across economic, social, and individual dimensions positively influences the political realm, resulting in inflated satisfaction regarding limited civil and political rights.

The cultural prerequisites for democracy have garnered significant attention over the past few decades. Confucian values are often viewed as incompatible with liberal democracy and are believed to hinder the process of democratization. This chapter investigates the impact of Confucian values on the commitment of ordinary Chinese citizens to democratic principles. The findings indicate no evidence that Confucian values inhibit the Chinese public’s support for democracy. However, they are negatively associated with liberal democratic values, which are essential for the resilience and consolidation of a nascent democracy.

How citizens in authoritarian regimes evaluate the practice of democracy in both new and established democracies holds significant implications for the prospects of democratization in their own countries. This chapter explores how Chinese citizens assess democracy in the United States, India, and Taiwan. It is theorized that ingroup favoritism and attitudes toward democracy are the primary factors influencing citizens’ evaluations of democratic practices in other societies. The findings reveal that Chinese citizens perceive the level of democracy in China to be comparable to that of the United States and Taiwan, while offering lower evaluations of India’s democratic system.

Citizens in authoritarian regimes comprehend the concept of democracy through a lens shaped by state manipulation and individual agency. This chapter investigates Chinese citizens’ perceptions of three principles of governance – government (1) of the people, (2) by the people, and (3) for the people – without explicitly invoking the term “democracy.” Notably, the principle of government by the people is the most favored among the Chinese people. Those who frame their understanding of democracy through the lens of government of the people express dissatisfaction with the current state of democracy and are critical of authoritarian politics. Conversely, public interpretations of democracy based on government for the people exhibit an anti-democratic orientation and align more closely with support for authoritarian rule.