A State-Building Response to Organized Crime, Illicit Economies, Hybrid Threats, and Hybrid Governance

Peace and health: exploring the nexus in the Americas

“…Within this framework, the existing literature has identified various forms of criminal governance prevalent in Central America and shed light on how communities respond to crime and violence in contexts of low state capacity. 59 These responses include social mobilisation, vigilantism and generalised support for extra-legal violence.…”

“…Several studies have also emphasised the role of state-criminal group relationships as a key factor in understanding the challenges that state-sponsored violence and organised crime pose in terms of peacebuilding and democratic rule. Within this framework, the existing literature has identified various forms of criminal governance prevalent in Central America and shed light on how communities respond to crime and violence in contexts of low state capacity 59. These responses include social mobilisation, vigilantism and generalised support for extra-legal violence.…”

Hybrid Governance in Northeastern Mexico: Crime, Violence, and Legal-Illegal Energy Markets

“…A third approach, applied primarily to Latin American cases, addresses grey areas between legality and illegality not as anomalies but as meriting study in new frameworks (Centeno and Portes, 2006; Cross and Peña, 2006; Felbab-Brown, 2018; Fuentes Díaz, 2018; Moncada, 2016). Adopting this perspective, we define hybrid governance as a set of institutional arrangements that overlap legal and illegal norms and practices in contexts where the state is unable to reinforce the rule of law, especially at the local level.…”

“…In some cases, there are low levels of violence where there are high levels of illegality (Garzón, 2010: 20). This is the basis of what some have called the “mafia peace model,” in which governance pacts are broken and the legitimacy of agreements between the state and criminal groups is questioned (Chabat, 2005; Correa-Cabrera, 2017; Cross and Peña, 2006; Felbab-Brown, 2018). Other interests focus on obtaining public evils (e.g., drug dealing, oil bunkering, and extortion) (López-Vallejo, 2014: 20–24; Peters and Pierre, 1998; Risse and Lehmkuhl, 2006: 8; Schuppert, 2011).…”

“…Scholars point out that informal economic activities indicate participants’ inability to afford the costs of regulation (Cross and Peña, 2006: 51; Helmke and Levitsky, 2014). While informal markets avoid the law, they are considered legitimate and socially accepted because they provide affordable prices and well-being to the most defenseless social groups in emerging economies such as Mexico (Centeno and Portes, 2006; Felbab-Brown, 2018). In contrast, illegal markets are the result of criminal activities, producing illegal products outside the state regulatory system.…”