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2 results

  • 1 - Informal Regulation of Criminal Markets in Latin America

  • Hernán Flom, Trinity College, Connecticut
  • Book:
    The Informal Regulation of Criminal Markets in Latin America
    Published online:
    18 August 2022
    Print publication:
    25 August 2022, pp 1-23

  • Summary

    This chapter sets up the puzzle of how governments in weak institutionalized democracies regulate criminal markets and achieve relative order. While Latin America is the most violent region in the world, its criminal violence varies according to informal state responses to illicit markets. I collapse these responses into four types of informal regulatory arrangements: particularistic confrontations, particularistic negotiations, coordinated protection rackets and coordinated coexistence. A further intrigue is how elected politicians are able to contain drug-related violence with inefficient police departments prone to corruption and human rights abuses. I unpack the relationships between politicians and police, showing that different regulatory arrangements emerge from various combinations of political competition and police autonomy. This chapter then specifies the study’s research design and scope conditions (i.e., weakly institutionalized democracies) and lays out the plan for the book.

The Informal Regulation of Criminal Markets in Latin America
  • Hernán Flom
  • Published online:
    18 August 2022
    Print publication:
    25 August 2022
  • This book explains how states informally regulate drug markets in Latin America. It shows how and why state actors, specifically police and politicians, confront, negotiate with, or protect drug dealers to extract illicit rents or prevent criminal violence. The book highlights how, in countries with weak institutions, police act as interlocutors between criminals and politicians. It shows that whether and how politicians control their police forces explains the prevalence of different informal regulatory arrangements to control drug markets. Using detailed case studies built on 180 interviews in four cities in Argentina and Brazil, the book reconstructs how these informal regulatory arrangements emerged and changed over time.